What went wrong? - just the facts, please

[dreamshark]

I am getting SOOO tired of this. The Culture War Over Katrina, that is. That was Salon's term - really it's more like the Katrina front on the Continuing Culture War. Like everybody else that has been paying any attention at all, I have been deeply moved, disturbed and obsessed about the disaster in New Orleans, but identifying targets for tearful rage and pouring energy into inveighing against them just isn't my style. I'm trying to understand those of my friends who are reacting this way, but it's hard. I have to tell you, if your postings on this topic have been laced with vitriol about Bush, FEMA, the military, the looters, The Bush-haters, The Bush-lovers, etc., I have probably stopped reading.

I'm a very high T on the Myers-Briggs. We respond to crisis by suspending emotional judgements, gathering facts, and making lists. If this reaction is alien to you, you should probably stop reading this now. (Ok, cakmpls are we alone now? )

This was a horrible natural disaster. In the best of all possible worlds, where planning had been prescient, and not a single mistake was made by the agencies and humans responding to the disaster, there still would have been death, despair and destruction. However, with hindsight there are clearly things that could have been done differently to lessen all of those. Here's my list of the biggest and most damaging mistakes, in priority order.

1) The City of New Orleans apparently had an evacuation plan that was entirely based on people getting in their cars and driving out of the city. On the plus side, they executed that part of the plan remarkably well, reversing the highways and getting 400,000 people out of the city in 24-48 hours. On the *HUGE* downside - 27% of the households in New Orleans didn't own a vehicle.

2) All of the city services within New Orleans (police, fire, etc.) relied on a centralized communication infrastructure (wireless?) that was no longer functional after a hurricane. There was no backup system. Police cars couldn't even talk to each other.

3) Although some thought had gone into designating emergency shelters within the city of New Orleans, and there apparently were some supplies of food and water, no provision whatsoever had been made for dealing with human waste. Even a single storeroom in the Superdome filled with 10-gallon plastic buckets with tight-fitting lids would have made a big difference.

4) Having a centralized agency to coordinate disaster response (that would be FEMA) is not a bad idea. However, setting up such an agency so that inaction on its part blocks essential parts of the disaster response from happening is exactly the wrong way to go about it. When the centralized agency is overwhelmed, regional organizations should have the authority to do what needs to be done. Reports are still coming in on this, and some of them appear to be unsubstantiated rumors, but it sounds like in many cases FEMA was not only ineffective, but directly COUNTER-effective.

5) Everybody knew that a sufficiently large storm-surge would overfill Lake Ponchartrain to the point where the storm walls could rupture. More money could have gone into reinforcing the levies and storm walls. I put this at #5 because I don't think there is any clear answer to how much would have been enough. Nobody really knew how big a hurricane it would take to rupture the walls, let alone how much money it would have taken to keep every single wall from rupturing. New Orleans was always asking for more money to shore up its defenses. In hindsight, obviously someone should have listened.

Comments

[kalikanzara.livejournal.com]

On the first, the evacuation plan, see:

http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.html#004751

Sadly, I think it's a case of the people in charge making a plan, because they know they needed to, but not being familiar with it, or doing what was needed to implement.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Once again, a link to a post that I simply cannot read. While there may be some information buried between the angry outbursts, I find it difficult to sort out. The facts the blogger cites actually contradict his generalizations. He accuses the city first of having a plan but failing to follow it, then of "planning to fail," then of "complete catastrophic failure." But the portion of the plan he cites clearly states that the primary means of evacuation would be private vehicles. Buses are mentioned as a possibility, but if there is a portion of the plan that spells out how and when the buses might be used, the poster doesn't quote it.

The primary evacuation plan actually seemed to be planned and carried through quite successfully. Getting 400,000 people out of the city in that time frame is no small feat. The plan did not fail. It was, however, massively inadequate. That's why it is #1 on my list.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

The plan worked great for the people with their own cars, but for the sixth of the city that relied on public transport it pretty much fell over and went "clunk", with ugly effects. I feel bad for Mayor Nagin - after a successful couple of years fighting corruption, he got whacked by a threat that he apparently didn't spend a lot of time worrying about. I don't blame him for that: you only have so much time to do your job, and if you're constantly worrying about low-order possibilities you'll never get anything substantive accomplished. Governor Blanco, not so much - it was her call to order mandatory evacuation, and she had to be pushed into it. It's all Monday morning quarterbacking at this point, really.