Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina is one of the nation's most significant environmental catastrophes in recent memory. Thousands of New Orleans residents were forced from their homes by the raging flood waters. These people had nothing to eat or a place to sleep, lost hope after several agonizing days of waiting for help to arrive. There was clearly a breakdown in disaster preparedness by the local, state, and national governments. The same government that was put in place to protect and serve us as citizens of the United States. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has raised other, more general public policy issues about emergency management and environmental policy.

Katrina has created a health care crisis of unimaginable proportions. In the latest its approaches to getting housing aid to people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, FEMA has shifted its strategy from doling out incremental portions of housing assistance to cutting checks for up to $26,200 per household for approximately 60,000 households whose homes FEMA has determined can be declared destroyed without need for inspection.

Much of the criticism thus far has focused on the failure of authorities to evacuate the tens of thousands of low-income residents in New Orleans who lacked the means to leave for higher ground inland and the slowness and inefficiency of the federal response following the rupture of the levees protecting the city

Just as the government has known about the vulnerability of the levees in New Orleans to a severe hurricane, so too has the problem of incompatible and ineffective communications for first responders and emergency personnel. Katrina overwhelmed the nation's complex communications system, raising serious questions about whether federal and local governments need new powers to organize a rapid response. Moreover, it seems clear that first responders ought to have a reliable, mobile network that they can share.

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