Speech 1335, Professor Parisi Leader: Josiah Morales Tomer Yakov Raymond Segers-Seargent Prosenjit Das Keshia Jackman

Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 hurricane that was formed on August 25, 2005, is known to be one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the United States. We will focus on the variables that have helped Hurricane Katrina to induce a severe emergency situation in the city of New Orleans that was shut down due to extreme overwhelming weather conditions. These factors were due to the failure of the city of New Orleans to prepare itself adequately for national weather disaster such as Hurricane Katrina. We will seek out the problems and determine solutions to the question: Why the lack of preparation for Hurricane Katrina? The lack of preparedness was seen among the delays in construction and response units for the hurricane. There were large geographic bridges and border line protection guards that were not repaired and technologically maintained to handle such conditions as a hurricane. The city was supposed to upgrade and renovate their systems, but this renovation was postponed. The fact that the border lines of New Orleans were not up to date on maintenance and engineering codes just helped the storm elevate the severity of this situation. There was a lack of technical, organizational and policy commandership for the preparedness of New Orleans and the Southeastern Louisiana regions for the hurricane. This lack of preparedness, allowed the hurricane to take advantage of the weakened infrastructure and create severe repercussions that

are still present even to this day. We plan to look into what these effects were and try to find a solution that leads to better preparedness plans in case another major disaster hits the coast. The problem that has occurred in New Orleans was evident to the fact that Hurricane Katrina was classified as a category five Hurricane (New Orleans, 2012). This hurricane flooded and severely damaged the gulf Coast, hitting New Orleans and Mississippi the worst. The problem that caused these severe damages and destruction in New Orleans was the fact that Katrina the Hurricane destroyed the water levees that have protected New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico and thus created massive floods into the city (New Orleans, 2012). When the levees service failed, it caused a disruption of the underlying sewage infrastructure. This disruption caused major damage to the water and sewage systems. This deficiency in the citys structure aided in the water supplies contamination. Because of this deficiency and the lack of strong stable infrastructure, the sewage and water piping lines of the city of New Orleans exploded and thus over flooded many regions of the city (Ragin, 2012). The result of these floods caused by Hurricane Katrina was catastrophic, killing 1,836 people, mainly from Louisiana and Mississippi. Katrina was the largest hurricane to approach the United States in recorded history; its sheer size caused devastation to over 100 miles of land. Katrina was the most costly hurricane. It cost 75 billion dollars in repairs. Furthermore, the Bush administration spent 105 billion dollars in repairing it. Then there is the forest industry which lost up to 1.3 million dollar in forest. In addition, the effects of the flood were seen in the City's streets and Neighborhoods of New Orleans. The strong Sea tides and currents that fueled up the floods came from the Mississippi River Delta, and Big Lake around the Mississippi border lines.

The hurricane caused floods in this entire region, creating severe damage to property such as houses, cars and government buildings. The damages were severe, especially in the lower Ninth Ward and Chantilly, which were the two largest Neighborhoods in New Orleans the closest to the state water and shore border line. It can be seen from the large number of people who died in this devastating natural disaster as well as the amount of money it cost the US to rebuild places hit hard by this devastating travesty that they were not prepared. There was an action plan set in motion in case such a travesty were to occur but problems had risen in the plan which were evident prior to this disaster and were not addressed properly. In both Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, action plans proposed an emphasis on evacuation trough transportation. However these plans noted that tens of thousands of civilians did not have modes of transportation, particularly the disabled or sick residents, would not be able to evacuate on their own. A provision to this however was that civilians unable to evacuate would be prompted to stay behind in shelters even though in this plan it clearly states that shelters may not have adequate supplies to meet the needs of the sick and elderly and were also at risk of damage from rising waters . Given this action plan, the Red Cross had deemed years prior to this action plan that since the shelters were at risk, in the case any hurricane rose past a category 2, shelter would not be open, giving no one shelter. The Red Cross also would not send their employees or volunteers because they would be at risk. This actually took place during Hurricane Katrina. This was confirmed by the director of Emergency Preparedness Walter Maestri in the New Orleans Times Picayune. Given these factors, the issues that developed through the lack of preparation and the complete disregard for the problems that took place all of it could have been avoided if correct measures had been taken.

To propose a solution that we would all agree on, we decided to have a set criteria. In these criteria, we wanted the solution to remove the issues that lead to the lack of preparation of Hurricane Katrina. We also decided that the solution needed to provide a plan that would ensure the safety of the society. The solution also needed to provide a method to deal with future events, in our case another category 5 hurricane. With the safety of the society is highest in our priority, the large amount funding and resources is needed to solve this problem. When trying to solve the lack of preparation, we found that the lack of funding, resources and workforce would cause some problems if not implemented correctly. Within our extensive research we found many solutions that would solve the lack of preparation for Hurricane Katrina. A solution that can be seen as evident but beneficial is grasping an understanding of the risk of a hurricane and the risk it poses to the gulf coast; in doing so we need to consult professionals who have gained experience on this situation. Knowing the severity of this situation we would pull specialist in not only in evacuation but weather, survival, geography, economist and people who have been in similar situations as well. Working alongside these specialists would help us develop an action plan that would help us save most if not all civilians as well as resources present in the gulf coast. Another solution we found was to find an establishment that is large enough to support housing to many within a safe distance from the gulf coast, and has a different water supply than the gulf given the gulf coast water will be contaminated at this point. We would start evacuation as soon as the weather charts shows that there is a chance of flooding in doing this it prepares for the worst given the unpredictable future. In doing so the evacuation will start for those who are

sick and elderly this will be carried by buses that will pick up those who unable to commute to the designated areas assigned for pick which why we start evacuation procedure early ensuring no one is left to face the impending danger which awaits. Additional solutions found show its best to prepare for the hurricane or any disaster by being financially ready for such a disaster at a drop of a dime. This will help in efforts to transport, feed, house, and medical support. In doing so things will also be accomplished a lot smother. With the founding government will also be able to receive help from other parts of the country in order to help revive help in any way possible. The solution that we found to be the best option is the choice of having the different professionals come together to reduce the damage and number of lives lost. This solution will ensure the safety of the community. If all of the specialists come together and share the information that they have, it gives awareness to people in the community, making them more able to handle the situations that may arise in natural disasters. The government can also use these professionals to help plan for other disasters to come. In planning, the government can put aside funds for the problems that will be known to arise. Taking example from Hurricane Katrina, they can see where their planning went wrong and get insight from someone who has been through a natural disaster already, from a survivalist, from a weather specialist and get help from someone with good evacuation plans. This solution meets the criteria that we came up with for solving the problem. A plan can be put forward to implement this solution. The first step would be finding the specialists who would benefit the project and are extremely good at what they do. The second step is bringing all of these people together to talk about what they each can do to come up with

Hurricane Katrina

a blueprint that will stand through another natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. This blueprint should include when individuals should start evacuating, plans to go out and educate the community on how to prepare adequately for these events and how they plan to help the government with work at their emergency plans. In conclusion, we looked at the main issue that we believe impacted the devastation that came with Hurricane Katrina. The failure to prepare for this category 5 hurricane led to severe damage and devastation. We found that a lot could have been done to prevent the tremendous loss of lives. There were plans set but not executed; there were structures that needed to be rebuilt. We looked at all of these problems and came up with a solution that we think would best solve the problem and help if the gulf coast ever has to deal with another disaster such as Katrina.

References The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: Assessing Pre-Katrina Vulnerability and Improving Mitigation and Preparedness. (2012). The National Academies Press. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12647&page=R1

Ragin, D. F. (2012). Health Psychology: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Health - Deborah Ragin. Pearson | Higher Education. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Health-Psychology-An-InterdisciplinaryApproach-to-Health

"Discovery Channel: Surviving Katrina: Facts About Katrina." Discovery Channel: Surviving Katrina: Facts About Katrina. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.

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Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Planning

http://lra.louisiana.gov/assets/docs/searchable/reports/emerpreparedness_1.pdf

Handwerk, B (2005) National Geographic: New Orleans Levees Not Built for Worst Case Events

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_levees.html

History.com: Hurricane Katrina

http://www.history.com/topics/hurricane-katrina

Wolshon, B (2006) Evacuation Planning and Engineering for Hurricane Katrina

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