Hurricane Katrina A Natural Disaster

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Introduction
“Katrina was the most anticipated natural disaster in American history and still government managed to fail at every level.” New York Times journalist David Brooks
Hurricane Katrina was one of the strongest storms to impact the coast of the United States during the last 100 years (Waple). Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29, 2005 as a Category 4 storm with wind speeds around 145 mph and a predicated coastal storm surge of up to 28 feet (Waple). Katrina caused widespread devastation along the central Gulf Coast states of the US cities such as New Orleans, LA, Mobile, AL, and Gulfport, MS. What happen after landfall has been widely covered by the news media, researchers, the government, etc.
Hurricane Katrina was the “largest physical disaster this nation has suffered in modern history.” Due to this no other national disaster can serve as a standard for measuring the effectiveness of the national effort. An example is the terrorist attacks of September 11. The terrorist attacks physically destroy a small area, less than one-half square mile each. Single jurisdictions managed the immediate relief effort, throughout the entire response. The immediately affected population ranged in the tens of thousands. In contrast, Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines and disrupted the lives of millions of residents. (Sharpio)
Hurricane Katrina revealed that, despite major renovations in emergency response including transforming the once powerful FEMA moved from a direct link to the President to reporting to another department. Also Hurricane Katrina showed the new National Response Plan (NRP) was not well understood by key leaders in the national government. Americans are prob...

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...ng and preparing for this scenario. Even after FEMA became aware of Hurricane Katrina striking New Orleans with certainty, it chose not to pre-deploy the resources clearly identified in the Hurricane Pam exercise.
Relief
Another failure of the FEMA and the federal government was the mismanagement of relief efforts. FEMA had no clue what was needed, or by whom. Unprecedented amount of examples of a mismanagement of relief efforts by FEMA can be found. Such as FEMA refusing to send trailers to Mississippi that could be used as temporary housing, turned away critical generators needed by hospitals and victims, turned away trucks with water, and refused Amtrak’s offer to evacuate victims of New Orleans.
FEMA also keep private disaster aid cooperation’s out of the disaster area. An example of this was the Red Cross asked to help with essential relief supplies, but was

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