Hurricane Katrina - Assignment Example

1. After Hurricane Katrina, most aid appeared to go to New Orleans and the surrounding area, whereas equally, if not more, deva d areas on the Mississippi Gulf Coast were seemingly ignored. How can risk managers take this attitude into account in their preparation? There are several different explanations for the apparently poor matching of financial aid and the damage suffered by a locality. According to Hildreth (2009), the disproportionate response in the distribution of aid was more in favor of Mississippi rather than Louisiana “even though Louisiana [of which New Orleans is a city] had incurred significantly more damage from flooding”, which the study attributes to “Mississippi’s stronger political standing with the Bush administration and the Republican Congress” (Dao, 2006; Walsh, 2007; Waugh, 2007, cited in Hidreth, 2009:407-409). This comment appears to suggest that personalities and political favors are partly to blame for inequities in aid distribution. This aside, it is likewise reported that during the initial disaster, FEMA released only 74 per cent of the estimated $2.87 billion in public assistance funding for Mississippi, however additional releases were made in succeeding weeks (Hildreth,2009:405). The case for Mississippi thus appears to be partly attributable to poor planning at the fiscal management level, because although the aid allocations had already been appropriated, the allocation could not immediately be released for lack of fund availability. A further insight that may be drawn is that the prompt action of the mayor of the city of New Orleans was instrumental in the quick release of funds. This may be a factor to be considered, because local leadership act more quickly in their jurisdictions compared to state leaders. Size may be a factor, because a city mayor can attend more quickly to his constituents because his attention is concentrated to its smaller area and population, and he is in closer proximity to it. On the other hand, state leaders have a wider area to address, and a greater number of people. According to the readings, preparedness activities take place prior to the occurrence of a disaster, and in the course of preparation the public and all participants must be involved in the planning and training. This is a vital principle which could be used in the case of speeding up the faster response to a state such as Mississippi. Emergency response must be done quickly, therefore a network of organizations reporting to key local risk managers must be organized even before disasters occur. During the preparation phase, an estimated budget for aid to address the immediate crisis, and subsequent financial support to sustain the recovery phase, should be allocated. The planning for this should be headed by the local risk manager with the assistance of his emergency response network. In addition to this, the speed of response performance by the risk manager is based on IT-assisted asset allocation systems (Chen, Rao, Sharman, Upadhyaya, & Kim, 2009). Mississippi may have more quickly received the appropriate funding if it had been supported by an IT-based information system geared for the speedier transmission of damage reports so that decisions for aid allocation of needed funds would be better aligned with the immediate response and recovery need. For managers to decide on fund priorities, they must receive informative damage reports from all those places for which funding is to be apportioned. References: Hildreth, W.B. (2009) “The Financial Logistics Of Disaster: The case of hurricane Katrina.” Public Performance & Management Review, 32(3):400-436 Brown, D.C.G. (2011) “Providing for Security and Safety: National Public Capacities for Crisis and Contingency Management and Related International Coordination.” Accessed 20 October 2011 from http://iias-congress2011.org/documents/DCGBrown_Providing_for_Security_and_Safety.pdf Chen, R.; Rao, H. R.; Sharman, R; Upadhyaya, S. J.; & Kim, J. (2009) “An Empirical Examination of IT-Enabled Emergency Response: The Cases of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.” Communications of AIS, 2009 (26):141-156 2. Even assuming that Dr. Cols conclusion that Qinglong County, Chinas emergency management officials were able to prevent loss of life after the 1976 earthquake -- and there is some evidence in her article that her information is secondhand -- could such an approach work in a democratic country such as the United States? According to Dr. Col, despite the collapse of about 180,000 buildings in the Qinglong County at the time of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake, not a single life was lost as a result thereof (Col, 2007:9). In her study, Col enumerated six lessons garnered from the Qinglong event: (1) All levels of government must be involved in disaster management and mitigation; (2) National policies must be proactive and widely understood; (3) Operational decision-making and organizing must be delegated to the lowest level of government possible; (4) Local-level administrators must adapt plans and mitigation strategies to meet changing conditions as the disaster develops; (5) All channels of communication – vertical and horizontal – must e open and operational, thereby increasing community understanding, sharing perceptions of risk, and ease of coordinating actions; and (6) Citizens must participate in all stages of preparation and execution of emergency management measures (Col, 2007:9) In so far as these six lessons are the contexts of emergency management steps taken in Qinglong, then there is no reason why they cannot be applicable in the United States. While it is true that an inordinate amount of discipline and control must be exercised by the leaders over their followers in such a scenario, the discipline and control may be exerted through training and careful planning, rather than by coercion. In Col’s summation, there are no implications that may be attributed to political system or public governance, other than that of emergency response mitigation. In practice, however, there may be influences exerted by the type of government and the freedom enjoyed by the media in the way emergency situations may be addressed. Government authorities and the media perform different functions in times of crisis than in times of normality (Lee, 2010:9). In a democracy, politicians and members of the media may find themselves at odds on the matter of divulging information to the public. During crises, however, it is conceivable, even necessary, for government officials and media to cooperate with each other, the media acting as information disseminator of government’s public announcements, and also as conduit for feedback to the government crisis network. Because of the need to establish a synergy between media and government, it will be necessary for members of the media to be involved, not as observers but as participants, in the crisis management planning and preparation phase (Olsson & Zhong, 2010:32). In this situation, media is placed under the control of government for emergency response and mitigation, which is not tolerated in a free and democratic country in the absence of a compelling purpose such as war or crisis. During emergency situations, the imperatives imposed by the contingency require that certain personal rights and liberties be temporarily curtailed in order to save lives and property and ensure public safety In this sense, the Qinglong experience, occurring as it did under a communist regime, would have fewer adjustments to make during crises. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, the lessons drawn for us by Dr Col from the Qinglong crisis readiness program would still be highly useful and applicable even in a democratic country. References: Col, J-M (2007) “Successful Earthquake Mitigation in Qinglong County During the Great Tangshan Earthquake: Lessons for Hurricane Katrina in the United States.” Chinese Public Administration Review, 4(1/2):9-20 Lee, J.E. (2010) “Crisis Communication Strategy Is Needed.” In Transactions on Emergency Management (Special Issue), Chen, A., ed. Accessed 20 October 2011 from http://emr.casipm.ac.cn/Admin/MListing/MListingFiles/ICCEM-EMTAP%E8%AE%BA%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86.pdf Olson, E-K & Zhong, K. (2010) “Transboundary Crisis Management Practices”. In Transactions on Emergency Management (Special Issue), Chen, A., ed. Accessed 20 October 2011 from http://emr.casipm.ac.cn/Admin/MListing/MListingFiles/ICCEM-EMTAP%E8%AE%BA%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86.pdf Read More