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Hurricane Katrina: A Man-made Disaster Essay

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At 7:10 EDT on August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall, etching lasting memories of those living in and around the New Orleans, Louisiana. It was this day that Hurricane Katrina came ashore and caused what was to be thought as one of the “most destructive storm in terms of economic losses” ("Hurricane Katrina —," 2007) of all times. Who was to be blamed for the failure in emergence management response and preparation, no one seemed to know or understand. Those left in the wake of this disaster could only stand by and wonder who was at fault, what preparation were to be in place and why wasn’t there a quicker response to help the hundreds of thousands that needed immediate aid and disaster assistance.
Failures of the Katrina …show more content…

216). Hurricane Katrina brought to light many failures in the aftermath of what was to become one of United States biggest blunders. One of the largest failures of Katrina was the inability to communicate both before during and after the storm hit landfall. Warren Rudman stated in the PBS “The Storm” video that the “failure of interoperability fell on the Congress, the administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” ("Frontline "The Storm"," 2005). It was this failure that Mr. Rudman felt had the largest impact on all levels of the emergency management causing the failures that resulted. Two example of this are 1) as stated by the public safety wireless network which said that Delaware, Michigan and North Carolina had successfully implemented their interoperability system so why didn’t Louisiana and 2) that when given a federal grant from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that the city of New Orleans didn’t succeed in their system “because of pushback from the “big tech companies” to the major without directive from the federal government” caused the program to be not completed (Frontline “The Storm”, 2005).
Can You be Prepared One of the key questions that anyone in emergency management preparation will ask themselves is can they be fully prepared. This is the million dollar question that those

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