Heroism during Hurricane Katrina - Research Paper Example

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not able to respond on time instead they delayed setting up an immediate operation center in New Orleans, in addition to that, they seemed not to have a concrete plan of action to work upon. Including the president of the day Mr. George Bush appeared to be unaware of how bad the situation was on the ground or entire affected region, the number of people stranded or missing, the figure of homes destroyed or under floods, and much aid was needed (Levitt & Whitaker, 2009). One reporter described the aftermath of the disaster as a “total disaster zone” and a place people are “getting absolutely desperate” daily. Overall emergency needed proper management at different levels and coordination.

Many people had nowhere to call home any more while at Superdome where people had gathered the suppliers were running low day by day, the officials were so adamant but finally accepted about 15,000 more refugees running from the storm that following Monday after which they locked the doors. The so-called City leaders were seen as status because they had no appropriate plan to follow while tens of thousands citizens were desperate looking for food, water, and at the same time shelter. This led them to Ernest N. Morial and Convention Center complex but what they found was chaos all over, in other words, it was now impossible to depart from New Orleans to any other place, this increased desperateness especially the poor people who had no cars and had to go nowhere, for example, some group of people attempted to walk over famous Crescent City Connector overpass to the close by town of Grema but it was in vain since the standby police officers carrying short guns stopped them and insisted for them to go back

http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2010/08/hurricane_katrina_altered_demo.html

Hurricane Katrina also affected with greater margin parts of Louisiana, Alabama, and finally Mississippi although more people were desperate in New Orleans. Before the disaster struck, New Orleans was known to be inhabited with black population mostly who comprised about 67% whereas a total of 30% black population lived in poverty but with the occurrence of Hurricane Katrina the situation became even worse (Tarshis & Dawson, 2011).

Conclusion
Therefore the real casualty of this disaster rose to 2,000 people while more were seriously affected, about 90,000 square miles were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of the people who were evacuated are now scattered all over the country but a few years down the line the recovery and rebuilding are still in progress as those who stay around the Gulf Coast currently have moved on and resettled back.