ABSTRACT
CONTENTS Introduction................................................................................................ 4 Delusion of Preparedness ............................................................................ 4 Indian Ocean Tsunami ............................................................................... 5 From Delusion to Illumination?.................................................................. 9
Hurricane Katrina ............................................................................ 10 Deteriorating Infrastructure....................................................................... 11 Emergency Response, Poverty, and Racism............................................... 11
Shortcomings of the Federal System.......................................................... 13 Illumination from the Dark Lessons of the Storm..................................... 14 References ................................................................................................. 15
Introduction Only during the first half-decade of the twenty-first century we have witnessed around the world astounding incidents of disaster with great human impact on a magnitude rarely matched during recorded history. These include the intentional disaster forced on the United States on September 11, 2001 by terrorists’ attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC when nearly 3,000 people of all nationalities perished; the sudden and unexpected Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004 that resulted in 283,106 known fatalities (USGS 2006) although it impacted far less developed coastal regions of the world; and, Hurricane Katrina flooding that destroyed an American city as a result of rising waters with 1,280 known deaths recorded in Louisiana alone (Ringle 2006). The hurricane’s winds destroyed much of the gulf coast region of the United States that had seen considerable coastal development over recent decades, and it put more citizens at risk than the previously remote, barrier-islands conditions.
