Emergency Operation Planning Failure

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Outcome: The City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana failed their disadvantaged citizens such as low-income citizens, senior citizens, or populations with other special needs. This mainly occurred because their plan had not taken these populations into consideration thoroughly. Although the first evacuation phase was relatively successful (90% of population evacuated), the lack of a plan for these special populations dramatically disadvantaged them during the response phase of Hurricane Katrina. One of the reasons that local officials claimed not to make a plan for populations such as hospitals and nursing homes is because the facilities responsible for them were supposed to have their own emergency operation plans. Since these plans were not implemented, a considerable amount of senior citizens died in …show more content…

First, there was no plan in place for special populations such as nursing homes, hospitals, and low-income people in the event that they were not able to get out of the city and levees broke. As a result, several senior citizens died because they were abandoned in the emergency. Hospitals also were not able to get necessary supplies after the hurricane struck. Additionally, these people were not planned for when determining shelter capacity after search and rescue missions had been completed. So rescued survivors were placed in shelters (some of which were impromptu) with little to no supplies. To further complicate matters, emergency managers did not know that these shelters existed so they did not stock them. One of the critical response tasks that planning entails is developing operational plans that are all-hazards response plan that serve to effectively manage the life cycle of a disaster. (FEMA) The response portion of these plans were either not developed or not executed after Hurricane Katrina struck. A disproportionate amount of disadvantaged populations died as a

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