Hurricane Katrina
It is now twelve years since the occurrence of Hurricane Katrina, and the affected city is yet to recover fully. The Katrina Hurricane led to the massive death as people exceeding 1800 lost their lives along the coast. The town was destroyed as a close to one million houses were destroyed during the Katrina Hurricane event (Donahue, Amy, & Tuohy, 2006). At the moment, the city is still recovering. Some areas have been rebuilt, while in some areas, those who were unable to rebuild their homes made decisions of shifting to the neighboring states. The Catastrophe was so terrible, which resulted in blames being placed on the leaders for failing to device a rescue plan to help its citizens during the Catastrophe resulting in an increased number of death, and many people were left homeless.
The aftermath of the Katrina Hurricane event has forced state, local, and federal government to review the mistakes that contributed to the losses witnessed during the Catastrophe to avoid future mistakes from happening (Irons, 2006). At the moment, the government is drafting a better national response plan that could help in addressing the national engagements in all kinds of catastrophes, crisis management operations, and consequence management. The applicable crisis objectives in the newly devised National response plan is meant to reduce the numbers of death in cases of catastrophes, protection of the community and environment, reducing damages to different buildings, accelerating the resumption of normal activities and stock and equipment protection.
The Unified Command forms part of the National Incident Management systems used by the state-federal response when addressing all kinds of catastrophic disasters. Under the National Response Plan, the control linkages and the military unified are based on structured arrangements that are informal. All these components recognize the legal sovereignty of the state, federal responsibilities, and the local governments which function under the present federalist form of government. The unified command systems call for collaborative approaches and consensus building in any disaster response that involves the appointed and elected officials (Peduzzi, 2019). The Unified Command systems under the National Incident Management systems are tasked with the responsibility of providing a consistent National response approach that could be used by the state, tribal, territorial, federal and local governments that could be used efficiently and effectively in the preparation of a plan that can be used to respond, prevent and recover from the effects caused by catastrophes regardless of the size, cause and complexity.
The National Incident Management in embracing the Unified Command Systems articulated various aspects of the use of rules in establishing an active span of control, guidance of building organizations from the bottom, unified command, and categorization of resources. The National Incident Management In correlation to a unified command system provides a doctrine basis of the national response plan to address all kinds of hazards that might hit the nation, crisis management operations, and consequence management operations (Peduzzi, 2019). The Unified Command system provides a uniform set of procedures and processes that can be used by emergency responders from different levels of government while conducting response operations. In addressing different kinds of catastrophes, the various dimensions of emergency management include preparedness, prevention, mitigation, and response recovery.
During the Katrina Hurricane, the leaders faced a challenge on national preparedness. The government had insufficient plans and emergence response framework to support those people Katrina who were affected during the Katrina Hurricane event. Since the government did not have a ready food plan, the residents were forced to shelter themselves without the provision of essential needs such as water, food, and security. This led to an increased number of death that was witnessed during the Katrina Hurricane event as more than 1800 people lost their lives while those who happened to survived risked being homeless as many homes and buildings were destroyed resulting to loss of property in the city. Besides, the logistic and the administrative personnel faced challenges in implementing immediate emergency interventions since they faced challenges of figuring out the kind of assets that were required, the assets that could be accessed or the assets that were present at a specific place and time (Sobel & Leeson, 2006). Notwithstanding, the federal administrators, after developing a reasonable plan of what was to be done, they faced challenges of deciding on the elective sources that would be appropriate during the Catastrophe and also they could not promptly determine if the federal government was in a position to tackle the Catastrophe.
Conclusion
The events of the Katrina Catastrophe call for the implementation of emergency response management plans to help in addressing the national engagements of different kinds of catastrophes, crisis management, and consequence management. The National Response Plan will help to reduce the number of deaths as witnessed in prior disasters, protection of the community and environment, reducing damages to different buildings, accelerating the resumption of normal activities and stock, and equipment protection. Lastly, the objectives of the newly devised National Response plan should be stressed on reducing the number of death in cases of catastrophes, the security of the community, and the environment, reducing damages to different buildings, accelerating the resumption of normal activities and stock and equipment protection.
References
Donahue, Amy, & Tuohy, R. (2006). Lessons We Don’t Learn: A Study of the Lessons of Disasters, Why We Repeat Them, and How We Can Learn Them – Homeland Security Affairs. HOMELAND SECURITY AFFAIRS. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.hsaj.org/articles/167.
Irons, L. (2006). Hurricane Katrina as a Predictable Surprise – Homeland Security Affairs. HOMELAND SECURITY AFFAIRS. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.hsaj.org/articles/690.
Peduzzi, P. (2019). The Disaster Risk, Global Change, and Sustainability Nexus. Sustainability, 11(4), 957. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11040957
Sobel, R., & Leeson, P. (2006). Government’s response to Hurricane Katrina: A public choice analysis. Public Choice, 127(1-2), 55-73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-006-7730-3