Emergency Management and Budgeting After Hurricane Katrina

Introduction to Emergency Management

When emergency strikes, all levels of government do what is required and spend what is necessary, worrying about paying for it later. Some governments maintain contingency or emergency funds for disaster response. It is the responsibility of governments to protect their citizens from disasters, and even when a disaster strikes they remain responsible for helping those citizens recover. In most cases, emergency funds are exhausted and governments must call for additional emergency measures. In the United States, a special session of the legislature is typically called to seek additional appropriations.

Hurricane Katrina as a Case Study in Failed Response

In cases of emergencies like Hurricane Katrina or the September 11 attacks, people look to their governments for rescue and relief. Hurricane Katrina has become a critical example of how emergency response and its management can fail. The storm devastated the Gulf Coast region, but the response mounted by the world's most developed nation was exposed for the world to see. Relief came in a slow and disorganized manner. Poor planning was one of the key reasons for the inadequate response in the wake of Katrina. Beyond planning failures, widespread abuses in government emergency cash assistance programs for disaster victims also came to light. Later reports found that mandatory evacuation warnings in the New Orleans area were issued too late, leading to preventable deaths and prolonged suffering.

FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was established under the provisions of the Stafford Act of 1988 to deal with disasters and emergencies. FEMA and similar organizations are designed to handle all aspects of emergency response to disasters. In March 2003, FEMA joined 21 other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As Cohen, Cuellar, and Weingast (2006) explain:

"The new strategy sought to bring a wide range of agencies with domestic programs within the umbrella of the DHS. Three separate components of the DHS umbrella furthered Bush's domestic policy goals: one legislative, one organizational, and one budgetary. The legislative component gave all the agencies moved to DHS new statutory responsibility that differed from their legacy mandates. Specifically, agencies brought within the umbrella had a new law requiring them to act. In contrast to the agencies in the Reagan era, the agencies moved to DHS now faced a set of statutes with conflicting goals — their legacy mandates versus the new homeland security mandate."

After its inclusion in the Department of Homeland Security, many critics called for FEMA to be restored as an independent department. Bureaucracy became a major issue under the new organizational structure. The goals and missions of the agency shifted toward fighting terrorism rather than preparing for natural disaster response. Because Homeland Security's primary focus is anti-terrorism, its funding and budgetary allowances — including grants to state and local governments — were redirected during the preceding four years toward preventing and responding to terrorist attacks. When a natural disaster struck, the result was a crisis in New Orleans.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, calls were made to fix FEMA with respect to both its organization and its funding. Numerous problems were identified. FEMA's budget had been cut each year since 2003, and its staffing levels were similarly reduced. Among the worst decisions was the elimination of one of its three emergency management teams responsible for overseeing federal disaster relief efforts. Funding previously allocated for natural disaster and emergency management was redirected toward terror-related activities. Officials failed to recognize that forces of nature can be just as crippling and devastating as terrorism. The realization eventually came that resources must be managed in a way that enables a fast, massive, and coordinated response to any type of disaster.

Conclusion: Lessons Learned

An important aspect of emergency management when government fails is the response from the public, which helps considerably when all budgetary planning and actions fall short. As Yates (2005) observed, "Hurricane Katrina revealed poverty and desperation — but also the natural generosity and kindness of Americans who have never been willing to let others suffer needlessly. It also revealed the inherent weakness of centralization and, alarmingly, it revealed also an administration eager to justify the assumption of new, and potentially abusive, powers. The real lessons of Katrina are that acts of power, exercised in top-down fashion by the federal government, are not the way to go."

The experience of Hurricane Katrina underscores the necessity of maintaining robust, well-funded, and mission-focused emergency management agencies at all levels of government. Shifting FEMA's resources and attention toward counter-terrorism at the expense of natural disaster preparedness had devastating consequences. Effective emergency management requires sustained investment across all eight stages of disaster response, realistic threat assessments, and the organizational independence necessary to act swiftly and decisively when catastrophe strikes.

References

Smith, J. (2006). Budgeting for disasters: Part I. Overview of the problem — budgeting philosophies and practices can be applied to different disaster response challenges: Planning, prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response, recovery, remediation, and reconstruction. The Public Manager, 35(1), 11+.

Cohen, D., Cuellar, M., & Weingast, B. (2006). Crisis bureaucracy: Homeland security and the political design of legal mandates. Stanford Law Review, 59(3), 673+.

Emergency management: Bush, Congress should look at structure and funding. Sarasota Herald Tribune. September 7, 2005: A12.

Yates, S. (2005). Expanding federal power: The real lessons of Hurricane Katrina — new government programs mean expanded federal powers and increased dependence on government. The New American, 21(23), 12+.

Depoorter, B. (2006). Horizontal political externalities: The supply and demand of disaster management. Duke Law Journal, 56(1), 101+.

Hurricane Katrina 'a national failure.' The Birmingham Post. February 14, 2006: 9.

Behreandt, D. (2005). Katrina exposes fatal flaws: Hurricane Katrina did more than destroy the Gulf Coast — it laid bare the failure of government at all levels. The New American, 21(20), 10+.