| Global Insight Perspective | | | | Significance | The scale of the devastation along the US Gulf Coast makes Hurricane Katrina one of the most severe natural disasters the US has ever suffered, and as such it is unsurprising that the authorities have struggled to cope. | | Implications | While some chaos was inevitable, many argue that the state, local and federal authorities should have been much better prepared. The federal administration stands accused of neglecting flood defences and diverting too many resources into the 'war on terror'. | | Outlook | Now that relief supplies and troops are finally arriving in force and the evacuation picks up the situation can start to stabilise. However, formidable challenges remain as the authorities decide on New Orleans' future, cope with the disruption to energy and other supply lines and face the heavy political fallout. | Lawless Wasteland The situation in what remains of New Orleans is the stuff of disaster movies. After levees holding Lake Pontchartrain back from the city burst in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 80% of the low-lying city was swamped. This meant that all utilities and electronic communications failed, and gaining physical access to the city became very hazardous. The majority of the city's population had evacuated in advance on the authorities' orders, but around 100,000 remained behind. These were largely poorer inhabitants who had little means of transport and few friends outside the city they could stay with. People can only survive for a handful of days without fresh water or food, and many among the tens of thousands still trapped in the city are now dangerously dehydrated. Disease is a severe risk with sewage-polluted stagnant water and dead bodies lying uncollected. Hospitals were forced to close and many with conditions such as diabetes have run out of necessary medicines. Desperation prompted people to ransack shops and offices for any supplies, and this quickly turned into a broader looting epidemic. Armed gangs started to roam the streets and there have been reports of horrific crimes. There is growing panic and desperation, and many fear they will not be rescued in time. This has made visiting the main refuges dangerous for the authorities, and some relief and evacuation efforts were suspended as a result. The situation is little better in other devastated towns along the Gulf Coast. Flooding is not so widespread, but there are still thousands of people without basic necessities who are desperate and angry. Getting out of the area is extremely difficult with no petrol (gasoline) available and there are few communication channels through which to let refugees know where to head. Relief and Evacuation Efforts Pick Up The authorities are now mobilising all the resources they can and the situation is starting to improve for many of those originally stranded. Some 76,000 refugees are now being cared for by the American Red Cross at facilities in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Arkansas. These facilities are now full, but many other refuges are being opened up. The flow of buses to the stricken Superdome stadium in New Orleans where tens of thousands have been waiting is finally picking up, but evacuation remains painfully slow. Very few buses have yet reached the city's Convention Center, where the situation is reportedly worse than at the stadium. Engineers have started work on repairing the 700-foot breach in the 17th Street Canal levee with steel pilings. Earlier plans to use sandbags and barges were abandoned. Only when this exercise is complete can water start to be pumped out of the bowl-shaped city. Electricity supplies are starting to be restored to millions of people cut off by the storm, although some 1.8 million remain without power. Congress has meanwhile returned early from its summer recess to work on emergency legislation to provide immediate aid. Some US$10.5 billion in assistance has been approved by the Senate, and the House will look at this proposal today. There are already some 4,700 National Guard members in Louisiana and 2,700 in Mississippi, and the total is due to rise to some 30,000 in coming days, thanks to reinforcements from across the country. Another 7,200 active-duty troops have been dispatched, most of them from the Navy aboard a flotilla of seven ships. The most serious consequence of the disaster for the US as a whole is the disruption to oil production and refining. The Gulf of Mexico supplies around one tenth of the country's requirements, and much of this capacity remains shut down. President George W. Bush has been urging citizens to curb their petrol consumption and extra supplies have been released from reserves. But Recriminations Start The one big question being asked by everyone watching the disaster unfold is how the richest country in the world can have failed to respond more effectively. Indeed, it is not as though Katrina came out of the blue. It was known to be heading New Orleans' way for several days in advance, and the authorities have rehearsed for this type of disaster for decades. The city authorities have been quick to blame the higher levels of government, Mayor C. Ray Nagin among those lambasting the federal response. In truth, there are probably things that all levels of administration could have done better, but the federal administration and President Bush will bear the brunt of initial criticism. There are three key troubling questions: - Did the Bush administration move quickly enough when the disaster broke?
Bush faced much criticism for his perceived slow response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and his reaction to Hurricane Katrina has consequently been watched closely. The New York Times is one of many newspapers to accuse him of failing to show sufficient leadership when it was needed. He took a day to appear on television and the addresses he made were arguably short on the required gravitas and sympathy. Optimistic statements about how the situation was being tackled conflicted with the scenes of survivors' desperation on the news channels. Such criticisms are more about style than substance, however, and it is impossible to say at this point whether there was more the federal administration could have done when the scale of the disaster initially became apparent. Supporters of the administration point out that an emergency was declared ahead of the disaster, and that all that could be reasonably expected was being done. Bush nonetheless faces a major political challenge at a time when his ratings are already at a low ebb. - Has the administration given sufficient priority to hurricane and flood defence?
Potentially the most damaging charge is that the administration has cut funding for flood defences and natural disaster planning, ignoring repeated warnings about the dire threat to New Orleans. Records show that Bush requested fewer funds for storm-defence programmes in New Orleans than was requested by officials. The Army Corps of Engineers battled for more funding to improve the levees that were to break so disastrously. For 2005, the New York Times reports, Bush asked for US$3.9 million for this, a small fraction of that requested. Eventually he agreed a modest increase to US$5.7 million. In the last few months the administration was resisting a plan to spend US$1 billion on rebuilding coastlines and wetlands that can serve as buffers against hurricanes. The programme was eventually approved in spite of the opposition. Opponents argue that this is another example of the administration's cavalier attitude to the environment in favour of short-termist policies. In the administration's defence, even if it had provided all the funds requested this particular disaster would not have been prevented. The programmes would have taken years to complete. Bush can also highlight that previous Democrat administrations' budget priorities were much the same. - Is disaster planning inadequate and has heavy deployment in Iraq contributed to this?
The US has traditionally prided itself on its disaster preparedness, but Hurricane Katrina has exposed alarming weakness. The flood threat to New Orleans has been cited as one of the prime vulnerabilities of the US for decades, and in theory sufficient preparation should have been in place. Officials are saying that the one scenario never anticipated was an actual breach in the levees. At worst, it was thought water might temporarily surge over them, but now it seems risk assessment was sorely inadequate. One of the biggest problems on the ground has been the lack of back-up communications systems. With all power and telephone networks down, the authorities have found it very hard to co-ordinate. This is made worse by the use of incompatible systems and frequencies by different bodies. Another key problem was the inadequacy of evacuation procedures for the poor, elderly and disabled who did not have their own transport. More widely, the recent creation of the Department of Homeland Security and associated reforms arguably neglected natural disaster response in favour of responding to terrorist attacks. Planning exercises involving hurricane response have reportedly been scaled back in recent years. What is more, a large proportion of the National Guard is currently deployed in Iraq, and there are concerns that this has left the US vulnerable at home. Given increasing public restlessness over the problems in Iraq, this argument is particularly damaging for the administration and will increase pressure for an exit strategy. Outlook and Implications Finger-pointing and political point-scoring are inevitable after disasters, but in the case of Hurricane Katrina there are truly perplexing and troubling questions raised. As has been described above, the disaster response has been chaotic and there are now thousands of people who survived the initial winds and floods who could now die of sheer dehydration and starvation. There are major lessons to be learnt regarding disaster planning, resource allocation, and environmental factors behind the intensified pattern of hurricanes the US suffers. Albeit belatedly, the situation for survivors in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast should now begin to improve rapidly, but it will take years to return the city to normality. | |
