He said that they were simply caught in a storm whose intensity surpassed the established level of protection. In response to a massive rainstorm in May 1995 that killed 6, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project or SELA (Bunch 2005)
It was observed that the levee system of New Orleans had defects in themselves. It was not built high enough to perform against a Category 5 storm like Katrina (Carrns and McKay 2005)
The levee system that protects New Orleans from the Gulf has proved ineffective in warding off waves from the Lake, as evidenced by the aftermath of Hurricane Georges in 1998, Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and Hurricane Katrina. The natural location of the city, the height of the levees, their design and funding are critical issues that must be addressed in view of the likelihood of succeeding hurricanes (Folkman 2005, Handwerk 2005)
A distance of 90,000 square miles was declared a federal disaster area, a size almost that of the United Kingdom, with approximately five million of the population without power. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described these occurrences and the flooding of New Orleans as probably the worst catastrophe or set of catastrophes in the country's history The city lies 6 feet below sea level: the worst threat to the people of New Orleans is water (Galle 2005)
This status remains until the threat is over and the emergency situation disappears. Coastal Louisiana is one of the world's significant wetland areas, which has lost more than 900,000 acres since the 1930s (Galloway 2003)
Unfortunately, the government agencies responsible for protecting the wetlands have looked the other way as developers have callously drained thousands of acres of precious wetlands, leaving the city dangerously vulnerable to floods. (Karl, para on "Systematic Failure") To make matters worse, funds for strengthening and raising the levees for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain have been consistently cut by the administration
By allowing looting to occur, or by participating in it themselves, the officers were clearly violating their professional ethical responsibilities. The result of this duality of ethics is clearly an ethical problem for the officers (Macintyre, 142)
To fully understand the situation in New Orleans, one must first understand the issues underlying ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas can stem from a variety of sources, including a conflict between personal and professional values, between two principles, between two actions, each with strong positive aspects as well as strong negative aspects, and between ones' perceived values and one's personal values (Walters, 41)
Samuelson writes, "What Wall Street is to money, or Hollywood is to entertainment, the Gulf Coast is to energy. It's a vast assemblage of refineries, production platforms, storage tanks and pipelines -- and the petroleum engineers, energy consultants and roustabouts who make them run" (Samuelson)
The ensuing years show a steady decline in the income gap but the trend emerged again in the early 70s when income disparity started appearing again. "From the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century, inequality appears to have increased even further" (Dovring, 1991)
"The results of a survey in 1996 by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University reflected a total of 82% of the public, to varying degrees, believed businesses were at fault" (Ryscavage, 1999)
"According to Mr. Schoeneck, 39, an accounting manager for an electrical utility, American dream is to earn a reasonable living and to be able to spend quality time with family and friends in a community that cares" (Scott and Leonhardt, 2005)
The ability of different countries to produce similar goods at lower costs mainly due to low cost labor also introduced the concept of outsourcing. "Businesses could earn a bigger profit producing them where business costs were lower, and where the workers would not demand overtime or sick leave" (Witte, 2004)
The four major factors responsible for failure: 1) long-term words of warning were disregarded and authorities ignored their duty of preparing for a natural disaster for which they were forewarned; 2) governmental authorities made erroneous decisions or took inadequate action in the time just before and subsequent to calamity; 3) a failure occurred in systems which authorities depended on for aiding them in response, and 4) governmental authorities at each level were incapable of providing effective leadership. Furthermore, the above individual failures took place against a background of failure to cultivate the ability for a nationwide, coordinated response to an actual catastrophe, whether man-made or natural, over time ([Senate Report, 2006] U
This necessitates vehicle and driver inventory, and well-defined instructions for use. 1. Coordinated support services like fuel and emergency repair (Litman, 2006)
While effective management is capable of modifying disasters, one cannot expect it to eliminate them. Still, it is evident that an increased sense of urgency, enhanced coordination among responder groups, and more efficient management of communication tools and information (intelligence) could have minimized losses brought about by the disaster (Moynihan, 2009)
Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The storm is currently ranked as ...
Hurricane Katrina, at one point a Category Five storm, caused millions of dollars in damage and left a death toll in the thousands.
Hurricane Katrina changed the Gulf Coast landscape and face of its culture when it hit in 2005. Key events show the progression and setbacks of the damage ...
Hurricane Katrina was a long-lived hurricane that made landfall three times along the United States coast and reached Category 5 at its peak intensity.