Assignment #3

Academy Award Nominee documentary film Trouble of the Water captured the day before the hurricane Katrina. An aspiring rap artist Kimberly Roberts turned her video camera to her neighborhood to record how other people reacted to the hurricane. While she was taping conversations with people around her neighborhood, she kept saying that she cannot afford to move and those poor people have nowhere to go. “Nowhere to go?” I started wonder where were local and federal government to help those people? Where were policemen to help people to evacuate? Where were hundreds school buses that supposed to transfer the city residents to outside of New Orleans? Although the city had long history of floods and hurricanes, there was no prepared reaction or evacuation plan for the hurricane. Unpreparedness was observed in both local (micro) and federal (macro) government level, which caused more human casualties.

Because natural disasters devastate the residential areas so quickly, evacuating potential victims on time is critical. That’s why local government immediate rescue plan is a significant matter. Although the city of New Orleans knew that many residents didn’t have car and couldn’t afford to move, the city didn’t react quickly to save them because simply they were unprepared. They could use school buses to transfer the city residents out of the city. Frontline -the storm showed that local government didn’t use hundreds school buses to evacuate people because they didn’t have bus operators. Where were operators (National Guard)? National Guard didn’t receive any request from the city. The TV program also emphasized that local law enforcements and firefighters didn’t prepare for emergency evacuation. Some people luckily made phone calls to 911 operators, but most of them didn’t get help because those who supposed to help the residents were busy to save themselves.

Federal government unpreparedness was much obvious. The purpose of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was to coordinate local and federal government organizations to provide aids in places like New Orleans. In order to perform efficiently, they should have road maps for any kinds of natural disasters. However, what they did during the Katrina was nothing more than a bunch of unorganized group of people. Frontline showed how FEMA failed to perform their tasks. Former FEMA director, Michael Brown, didn’t know how many people needed shelters and how serious the situation was. Also, federal government sent national guards five days later which was too late to recue people. Trouble of the Water and Frontline both showed images of so many people lying on the ground after Katrina. However, there was no rescue worker or National Guard with them in the images. It took so long until FEMA effectively helped people.

Lack of interoperability between the residents and local or federal government was another problem in New Orleans. Frontline showed why interoperability was important to prevent human casualties. Places where hurricanes or earthquakes happen usually don’t have electricity and phone service. In other words, people don’t know where they have to go. According to trouble of the water, many residents didn’t know what exactly happened to the levee. They couldn’t call and they didn’t know where they had to go. Frontline said that the city had a chance to build the interoperability system couple of years earlier before the hurricane, but they used money for other purposes. What were more important than saving lives? Ridiculously, they had money for buying bulletproof vests for canines and air-conditioned garbage trucks. Sadly, they didn’t have money for building the system.

How do we prepare for our final exams? The answer is depending on how hard and how important the exams are. If we think that questions are harder and it is important to our GPA, we probably start studying couple of weeks earlier. We probably hire a tutor to get ready. Preparedness is the best way to prevent unlikely results. What about the case of the Katrina disasters? For a long time, many experts had predicted disasters like hurricane Katrina. People had enough time to reduce the hurricane casualties. Especially, local and federal governments were well aware of the consequence of hurricane-induced sea surges, waves, and rainfall in New Orleans (Bergal 4). However, they stubbornly ignored their responsibilities and they also failed to make efforts to prepare for the hurricane. We couldn’t stop the hurricane Katrina to come to New Orleans, but we could save many lives if our government prepared for it.