ABSTRACT
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast of the United States. With storm surges ranging from 12 to 27 feet in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, Katrina took more than 1,300 lives, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and inflicted well more than $25 billion in damages. But it was not just the winds and storm surge that led to such damage. The select bipartisan committee charged with investigating the disaster concluded the following:
We are left scratching our heads at the range of inefficiency and ineffectiveness that characterized government behavior right before and after this storm. But passivity did the most damage. The failure of initiative cost lives, prolonged suffering, and left all Americans justifiably concerned our government is no better prepared to protect its people than it was before 9/11, even if we are. (Select Bipartisan Committee 2006, p. 359)
Soon after the disaster, analysts blamed the problems on “a colossal failure of leadership” (Clift, 2005) and pervasive management problems throughout the system: “At every turn, political leaders failed Katrina’s victims …. There’s plenty of blame to go around-the White House, Congress, federal agencies, local governments, police and even residents of the Gulf Coast who refused orders to evacuate” (Moss Kanter, 2005). Whereas such conclusions may well be warranted, it has since become clear that pervasive problems could be found throughout the entire system, which was designed to deal with such events. Again, from the congressional committee:
Leadership requires decisions to be made even when based on flawed and incomplete information. Too often during the immediate response to Katrina, sparse or conflicting information was used as an excuse for inaction rather than an imperative to step in and fill an obvious vacuum. Information passed through the maze of departmental operations centers and ironically named “coordinating” committees,
losing timeliness and relevance as it was massaged and interpreted for internal audiences.” (Select Bipartisan Committee, 2006, p. 359)
The take-away message is that the system designed to deal with natural disasters (e.g., Katrina) represents a complex web of relationships among (1) local, city, state, and federal governments; (2) public, private, and military organizations; (3) paid and volunteer workers; (4) emergency planners and first responders; and (5) myriad other constituencies. The system that was designed to anticipate such disasters, to minimize their consequences, and to help people respond efficiently and effectively after they occur failedand failed miserably. Moreover, although hundreds of recommendations for improvement have been proffered, few clear-cut remedies to prevent similar circumstances in the future have been forthcoming.
