Joplin and New Orleans Case Study

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Hurricane Katrina of 2005 and Joplin, Missouri, Tornado of 2011

The success of emergency management in the event of a natural disaster is dependent upon a plethora of various factors. Each disaster is completely different and it virtually impossible to prepare for every scenario that could play out. Yet, in many cases, the resilience of the community depends on how prepared and sustainable the community is in general. Some planners will consider the likelihood of certain events and try to plan accordingly. For example, the levees in New Orleans we designed to withstand the impacts of a category 3 hurricane which was thought by some to be sufficient in this environment. However, Hurricane Katrina was a category 4 hurricane that broke the levee system in 2005. The tornados that hit Joplin, Missouri, were another example of an event that was much stronger and more devastating than was ever previously imagined. In fact, the tornado in Joplin was considered the deadliest tornado in U.S. history since record keeping began. Despite each community being impacted beyond what they were prepared to handle, each community responded with varying effectiveness in many regards. This analysis will compare response efforts that followed Hurricane Katrina as well as the massive tornado that devastated Joplin.

Emergency Responses Comparison

The 2005 season saw the largest number (27) of named storms (sustained winds over 17 m s -- 1) and the largest number (14) of hurricanes (sustained winds over 33 m s -- 1), and it was the only year with three category 5 storms (maximum sustained winds over 67 m s -- 1) (Anthes, et al., 2006). Many researchers now point to data such as this to provide evidence that extreme weather events are becoming more common in a warming world.

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Among these hurricanes, Katrina was estimated to cause damages to the Gulf Coast amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. This disaster was complicated by the fact that most of New Orleans rests below sea level and the levee system designed by the Army Corps of Engineers failed to protect the city from the rising water. As a consequence, over one hundred thousand homes and businesses were flooded in varying amounts and approximately eighty percent of the city was flooded. It was further estimated that over twelve hundred people lost their lives as the result of the hurricane and resulting damage.

By contrast, the scope of the population impacted and the damages that occurred in the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, were comparatively smaller; though it was estimated to be the costliest tornado in U.S. history. The tornado claimed over one hundred fifty lives and lead to property damages nearing three billion dollars. The tornado was rated as an EF5 multiple-vortex tornado and had a width that was nearly one mile wide at its widest manifestation. The tornado made its way through a populated area of Joplin and destroyed many buildings as well as damaged a hospital with winds estimated at over two hundred miles per hour. The American Red Cross estimated that roughly twenty-five percent of the town was destroyed by tornados that hit the region (Spencer, 2011).

In the case of the Katrina, one of the main challenges that local emergency responders had to deal with was the loss of infrastructure and of assets. In the White House's lessons learned report, describes the local situation as (The White House, 2005):

"Many State and local public safety agencies.....

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