What were problems caused by the government during Hurricane Katrina?

Question

What were problems caused by the government during Hurricane Katrina?

Answer 1

the mayor and governor were not smart enough to handle it.

Answer 2

After Katrina, by law the US Gov't can't just go into a state and take over.  FEMA has to be invited by the state.  LA state officials wouldn't allow FEMA to come to New Orleans, they also didn't allow the Red Cross or the Salvation Army into NO.

The reason the state of Louisiana had keeping out water, aid and other vital help?  There was a crack in the Superdome where a lot of people were waiting for supplies. The state of Mississippi allowed FEMA into the state and received immediate help and had no problems. So which government caused problems?

Answer 3

The criticisms of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina primarily consisted of condemnations of mismanagement and lack of leadership in the relief efforts in response to the storm and its aftermath. More specifically, the criticism focused on the delayed response to the flooding of New Orleans, and the subsequent state of chaos in the Crescent City. The neologism Katrinagate was coined to refer to this controversy, and was a runner-up for "2005 word of the year."

Within days of Katrina's August 29, 2005 landfall, public debate arose about the local, state and federal governments' role in the preparations for and response to the hurricane. Criticism was prompted largely by televised images of visibly shaken and frustrated political leaders and of residents who remained in New Orleans without water, food or shelter. The deaths of citizens by thirst, exhaustion, and violence days after the storm itself had passed also fueled the criticism, as did the treatment of people who had been evacuated to facilities such as the Louisiana Superdome. Others alleged that race, class, and other factors could have contributed to delays in government response. The percentage of black victims among storm-related deaths (49%) was below their proportion in the area's population (approx. 60%).

The government was accused of making things worse, instead of making things better, by preventing help by others while delaying its own response. In accordance with federal law, President George W. Bush directed the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, to coordinate the Federal response. Chertoff designated Michael D. Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as the Principal Federal Official to lead the deployment and coordination of all federal response resources and forces in the Gulf Coast region. However, the President and Secretary Chertoff initially came under harsh criticism for what some perceived as a lack of planning and coordination. Eight days later, Brown was recalled to Washington and Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen replaced him as chief of hurricane relief operations. Three days after the recall, Michael D. Brown resigned as director of FEMA in spite of having received praise from Bush with the now-well-known phrase, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

On September 2, 2005, during a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina relief on NBC, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, Kanye West was a featured speaker. Controversy arose when West was presenting, as he deviated from the prepared script:

I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.' And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the teacher-the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help — with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way — and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!

Mike Myers, with whom West was paired to present, spoke next and continued as normal by reading the script. Once it was West's turn to speak again, West delivered the controversial phrase "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Although the camera quickly cut away to Chris Tucker, West's comments still reached the East Coast broadcasts, and was replayed or discussed afterwards.

Kanye West and Mike Myers met again on a brief sketch on Saturday Night Live, in which Myers joked that since the telethon, the government has stripped him of his American citizenship ("still got my Canadian citizenship to fall back on," Myers joked), and placed him under heavy government surveillance.

Criticism from politicians, activists, pundits and journalists of all stripes was directed at the local and state and governments headed by Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. Nagin and Blanco were criticized for failing to implement New Orleans' evacuation plan and for ordering residents to a shelter of last resort without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. Perhaps the most important criticism of Nagin was that he delayed his emergency evacuation order until 19 hours before landfall, which led to hundreds of deaths of people who (by that time) could not find any way out of the city.

The destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina raised other, more general public policy issues about emergency management, environmental policy, poverty, and unemployment. The discussion of both the immediate response and of the broader public policy issues may have affected elections and legislation enacted at various levels of government. The storm's devastation also prompted a Congressional investigation, which found that FEMA and the Red Cross "did not have a logistics capacity sophisticated enough to fully support the massive number of Gulf coast victims." Additionally, it placed responsibility for the disaster on all three levels of government.

Answer 4

The massive corruption in New Orleans/Louisiana compromised the neglect of the levees. Once they broke, it was a whole new ball game. Many parties on many different levels can be given a portion of the blame after the levee broke, but city and state leaders knew how important it was to care for the levees in the first place and they chose to move allocated dollars to other pork barrel projects.

I'm from Minnesota and we were pretty devastated by the collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis in August 2007. As a citizen of the state, I make it the responsibility of my city and state leaders investigate why the collapse happened, help the victims, inspect other state bridges and make sure the new bridge is built quickly. That bridge carried 55,000 motorists a day and because of construction incentives and heavy state and local attention,  a new bridge spanning the Mississippi  will be completed in 13 months!! The city and state are most responsible for the local infrastructure, not the federal government.