America's Response to Hurricane Katrina

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America’s response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was stress, heartache, and emptiness from the loss of everything that some of them owned. It caused devastation to the people who lived there, because they lost their homes, as well as family members on this terrible day. Some Americans felt like they were not treated fairly by several organizations and first responders. People were not prepared for the amount of disaster that struck on that day. Some people decided not to evacuate prior to being told of the disaster heading their way. Other Americans chose to leave as early as a month in advance. Thousands of people had to be evacuated. You could see on the news reports of people on top of their rooftops, being swept away in the flooding of waters, sitting and waiting on help from responders or those that could help evacuate. Thousands of evacuees where African Americans who chose to hold on to faith beliefs, or riding out the storm, because they survived other hurricanes before. With these particular issues, some of the responses to Hurricane Katrina started to become racially motivated.The media focused on African-Americans and people in poverty. One proof that news medias were biased against African-Americans—one image showed a black person carrying supplies labelled as ‘looting’, while a white person in an identical situation was labelled as ‘finding’ supplies (Wiley & Sons 2007). Contributing factors that caused the response to become such a disaster are as follows: 1. Breaking of the levees 2. City not prepared for the amount of damage done by the flooding 3. Blaming of the government & the president 4. The response by the military & first responders 5. FEMA and Red Cross 6. Governor of New Orleans The breaki... ... middle of paper ... ...., Ompad, D. C., Menke, A., Tynes, L. L., & Muntner, P. (2007). Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder in a New Orleans workforce following Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Urban Health, 84(2), 142-152. Elliott, J. R., & Pais, J. (2006). Race, class, and Hurricane Katrina: Social differences in human responses to disaster. Social Science Research, 35(2), 295-321. Malhotra, N., & Kuo, A. G. (2008). Attributing blame: The public's response to Hurricane Katrina. The Journal of Politics, 70(01), 120-135. Schneider, S. K. (2005). Administrative breakdowns in the governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. Public Administration Review, 65(5), 515-516. Stephens, N. M., Hamedani, M. G., Markus, H. R., Bergsieker, H. B., & Eloul, L. (2009). Why did they “choose” to stay? Perspectives of Hurricane Katrina observers and survivors. Psychological Science, 20(7), 878-886.

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