Hurricane Katrina: The Aftermath of a Government Failure

Type :

Case study

Pages :

5 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

04/28/2008

Category :

Political science

Sub category :

Ecology & environment

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Summary :

The days leading up to Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans
The ability to act fast
The problems at FEMA
The fifth day after Katrina's devastation
Rapper Kanye West's public statement about the President
The overabundance of refugees remaining in the city
The devastation in New Orleans today
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

In the late days of August 2005, forecasters and meteorologists closely watched a storm soon to be named katrina brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. Like many other infamous hurricanes of similar magnitude, the tropical storm began rather quietly and only caused initial high winds and some tangential storms off the Florida coast. But after coming ashore in Florida on August 27, the National Weather Service advised that the Gulf coast along Louisiana and Mississippi should prepare for the worst, fearing that the storm, after returning to the Gulf, would again pick up speed and head for more vulnerable areas (Knabb 2). They were right. Mere days later, a storm surge ravaged the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana unlike any in recent history. New Orleans, protected from the Gulf by doomed-to-fail levees in many lower income parts of the historic city, was violently attacked by gusting winds and heavy rain, and areas near the levees were completely destroyed by the hurricane's floodwaters when the weak barricades collapsed. Wiping out entire neighborhoods and city boroughs, katrina's wrath left New Orleans under several feet of water and made damage incalculable for days and weeks after the terror had begun. Countless city residents were left homeless and without temporary shelter less despite the mandatory and volunteer evacuation efforts that had begun before the storm came ashore. Disease spread through the area as mold and rodents soon took to the damp environment (Cooper 54). Further exploiting the tragedy, scenes of helpless people clinging to trees and living on their rooftops for days became regular B-roll footage for cable news stations, as did disturbing reports and imagery of accumulating dead bodies floating through the flooded city (Roig-Franzia).