Planning Efforts to Reduce Future Disaster Impacts

SAFETY

Hurricane Katrina and the Plan Efforts to Reduce Related Disaster Impacts in Future

Hurricane Katrina

The hurricane Katrina is one of the deadliest hurricanes to occur in the United States. The hurricane hit Louisiana, Florida, and New Orleans amongst other places. It led to losses, evacuation of people, loss of lives and many businesses came to stand still. New Orleans had flood preparedness systems, which did not help, and floods persisted for weeks. The tragedy was contributed to by the lack of risk preparedness systems. Scientists have estimated lower storm surges and small coverage of wetlands in the 20th century. The winds, surges, and wetlands help to weaken the powerful winds. The areas are still vulnerable to hurricanes and storms in the future due to the geographic location. New Orleans city is also sinking geologically rapidly. Lessons learned from the hurricane Katrina should be used for disaster preparedness.

Federal officials had too little information from the media concerning New Orleans. This enabled worsening of the situation increasing the level of damage. There was a delay in response from federal officials. This also raised more fear and anxiety on the people who were affected. There was rumor and chaos, lack of community and personal preparedness. Poor coordination plans, ambiguous authority relationships and lack of preparation. There was uncertainty about disaster mental plans and role of health department in the disaster. NDMS team did not assess the situation before deploying teams. There was constant communication breakdown with confusion in the airports.

Risk assessment strategies

FEMA has come up with strategies that can be used during disasters; strategy for Communicating during the disaster, and all operations involved. During disasters, mangers should be able to communicate to the public media and staff partners so that information is timely. During planning and decision making communicating to different customers is considered. During Hurricane Katrina, lack of communication and situational awareness had deliberating effect on response teams. Department of homeland security (DHS) has come up with a communications plan to inform, guide and reassure public, before, during and after a catastrophe. This will enable robust coordination between all operational teams and the public.

Situational awareness is observed to be a key strategy for disaster response to be effective. Knowledge on the level of damage, number of people injured, condition of homes, the current response efforts and the number of people killed will help in decision of the response teams on resources required. Effective communication from the disaster site will help response teams. During the recovery phase, information communication is also crucial because people are still in demand of information. Putting in place communication strategies will ensure that people get information to improve their preparedness, which will help in mitigating the effects. They should be informed about the nature of the risk and the impacts. They will know how the programs put in place intend to help them when disaster strikes. This will help the communities to beware of prior disasters and mitigate the effects. Situational awareness was a hindrance to government response during Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA has put up a management system, which has a section for public information when incidents occur; the system is the incident command system (ICS). It enables the public to report to public information officer concerning the incident, size, public responders and current situation. (HSAS) Homeland security advisory system is another step taken to gain trust from the public in the alert system. DHS has emphasized a planning preparedness strategy to be used based on; prevent, protect, respond and recover. This program covers terrorism, catastrophic support ongoing preparedness and address pandemic like influenza and anthrax.

There has been the establishment of a risk management and analysis office (RMA.) This office analyses the methods used across DHS. It helps to establish a framework, common across the management and analyses the DHS security risks. It ensures integration of the programs as they use a common approach. DHS use HAZUS software in determination of varying magnitudes of floods and their impacts. The FEMA program has ensured that people from the state to local level knowledgeable on the importance of disaster preparedness.

Measures put in place by NDMS to counter disasters; they include strong medical leadership. Medical disaster teams should be run by medical experts qualified for disaster management. There has been a stable medical funding, in addition to the budget estimates.

Improvements

Hazard efforts need to be improved by; carrying out modernized flood mapping country wide, and more accurate to mitigate future disasters. Detailed analysis and elevation should be well stored as data, which can be used by DHS. This information can be used in handling other disasters effectively. Lidar software used in evaluation has helped in detecting earthquake in forested areas, and it has been remarkably effective. Government should come up with organizations that deal with surprise events like disasters, which occur, in large scale. This will prevent crisis between government resources and public demands like compensation, insurance, subsidies and incentives.

Government should put in place hazard regulations and standards, which are costly effective. Collapse of a building or destruction of a business can cause negative external losses to the economy apart from losses caused to the owner. These losses are not covered with insurance policies hence can cause damage to the economy. There should be mental health professionals who engage directly with disaster planning teams to mitigate the effects of catastrophes. After action reports given to FEMA, should be implemented since many have not been enforced. FEMA should monitor state compliance and implementation.

Broad-based community preparedness

It is necessary to include support of the broader community in risk preparedness and mitigation. This is because it takes the public and private people to manage the disaster. Communicating to the community on the different disaster preparedness, will change the way they react and behave during and after a tragedy. Their involvement will help in creating sound policies when they seek a return of their investments; they help in making cost-effective decisions will be of benefit to them, while reducing the risks involved.

Geographic and socioeconomic considerations

There has been flood plain mapping projects on high-risk areas to help in evaluation of data for preparedness. Best mapping methods like lidar technology, which use laser measurements collected from aircraft, is used for analysis because it is accurate and cheap. FEMA uses the technology for flood map update or when it requires new data. Political consideration in hazard preparedness ensured there was an empowered, strong federal agency in the position of leadership. FEMA was given direct access to the white house to give them the authority and credibility to perform its functions.