Planning Efforts to Reduce Future Disaster Impacts Research Paper

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SAFETY

Hurricane Katrina and the Plan Efforts to Reduce Related Disaster Impacts in Future

Hurricane Katrina

The hurricane Katrina is one of the deadliest hurricanes to occur in the United States. The hurricane hit Louisiana, Florida, and New Orleans amongst other places. It led to losses, evacuation of people, loss of lives and many businesses came to stand still. New Orleans had flood preparedness systems, which did not help, and floods persisted for weeks. The tragedy was contributed to by the lack of risk preparedness systems. Scientists have estimated lower storm surges and small coverage of wetlands in the 20th century. The winds, surges, and wetlands help to weaken the powerful winds. The areas are still vulnerable to hurricanes and storms in the future due to the geographic location. New Orleans city is also sinking geologically rapidly. Lessons learned from the hurricane Katrina should be used for disaster preparedness.

Federal officials had too little information from the media concerning New Orleans. This enabled worsening of the situation increasing the level of damage. There was a delay in response from federal officials. This also raised more fear and anxiety on the people who were affected. There was rumor and chaos, lack of community and personal preparedness. Poor coordination plans, ambiguous authority relationships and lack of preparation. There was uncertainty about disaster mental plans and role of health department in the disaster. NDMS team did not assess the situation before deploying teams. There was constant communication breakdown with confusion in the airports.

Risk assessment strategies

FEMA has come up with strategies that can be used during disasters; strategy for Communicating during the disaster, and all operations involved. During disasters, mangers should be able to communicate to the public media and staff partners so that information is timely. During planning and decision making communicating to different customers is considered. During Hurricane Katrina, lack of communication and situational awareness had deliberating effect on response teams. Department of homeland security (DHS) has come up with a communications plan to inform, guide and reassure public, before, during and after a catastrophe.

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This will enable robust coordination between all operational teams and the public.

Situational awareness is observed to be a key strategy for disaster response to be effective. Knowledge on the level of damage, number of people injured, condition of homes, the current response efforts and the number of people killed will help in decision of the response teams on resources required. Effective communication from the disaster site will help response teams. During the recovery phase, information communication is also crucial because people are still in demand of information. Putting in place communication strategies will ensure that people get information to improve their preparedness, which will help in mitigating the effects. They should be informed about the nature of the risk and the impacts. They will know how the programs put in place intend to help them when disaster strikes. This will help the communities to beware of prior disasters and mitigate the effects. Situational awareness was a hindrance to government response during Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA has put up a management system, which has a section for public information when incidents occur; the system is the incident command system (ICS). It enables the public to report to public information officer concerning the incident, size, public responders and current situation. (HSAS) Homeland security advisory system is another step taken to gain trust from the public in the alert system. DHS has emphasized a planning preparedness strategy to be used based on; prevent, protect, respond and recover. This program covers terrorism, catastrophic support ongoing preparedness and address pandemic like influenza and anthrax.

There has been the establishment of a risk management and analysis office (RMA.) This office analyses the methods used across DHS. It helps to establish a framework, common across the management and analyses the DHS security risks. It ensures integration of the programs as they use a common approach. DHS use HAZUS software in determination of varying magnitudes of floods and their impacts.….....

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