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Just over one year ago, a violent hurricane with winds in excess of 125 mph beat down on the southern coast of Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana.  Biloxi, in its direct path sustained severe damage—houses reduced to splinters, cars crushed to Ferrari height, and many people displaced.  Yet the city that suffered the greatest damage was New Orleans.  This is easily explained by its dangerous physical location: a large part of the city sits below sea level, with insufficient levees for a cat 5 hurricane, and pumps operating around the clock to ward off the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf.  What then, made Katrina such a disaster in everyone’s eyes?

 

According to the Constitution of the United States, one of the numerous responsibilities of the federal government is to “promote the general welfare of the people.”  The government successfully did this in New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  Of course, many people express their discontent with FEMA, which no doubt had some problems, the least of which was their ill-trained manager, Michael Brown.  However, in a relatively short period of time, over 50,000 people were evacuated, after the hurricane struck.  It is important to factor in the time required to move the evacuation vehicles and equipment to the site, and navigate them through streets that are literally underwater.  To put it into scale, one coach bus can hold about 55 people.  To evacuate 50,000 people, that is nearly 1,000 coach buses.  Of course, other mediums of evacuation were used, but it is no small feat to have a fleet capable of evacuating a dangerous, flooded city instantaneously.

On September 3, some 42,000 evacuees were evacuated from New Orleans, including those remaining in the Superdome and Convention Center. Efforts turned to the hundreds of people still trapped in area hotels, hospitals, schools and private homes.

  Our memories are plagued by the image of a fleet of school buses slowly being gobbled up by the water.  No doubt, there could have been drastic improvements in the evacuation plan, but 42,000 is a very impressive number, all organized by the governemnt.
 

The largest lesson from Katrina is about New Orleans.  In 2001, a Popular Mechanics article stated the dire situation New Orleans faced.  Interestingly enough, it was published on September 11, 2001, another tragic date in our history.  It is a foolish idea to be pumping time and money into a city that constantly is having water pumped out.  Hopefully, we will learn a lesson from this and not rebuild the city. 

 

To say that the government did not promote the general welfare during that situation would be like saying that gravity does not affect us.  In fact, while the government made efforts to rescue people from their flooding homes, some of the people refused assistance. 

[One person] says he’s been stranded for a week, but declined help. Thousands of other New Orleanians are doing the same…Rescue helicopters have even come under sniper fire, police say, as some resist relocation.

  These people intentionally ignored mulitiple evacuation orders, electing to stay in their house, creating a large obstacle for rescue efforts.  Fortunately, around 80% of the city demonstrated good decision-making skills and evacuated when the orders were given.  This hurricane proved a learning experience with many unnecessary tragedies, and a positive government response to a crisis.

 

Sources: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0906/p11s01-ussc.html

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1282151.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans

This entry was posted on September 17, 2006 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Constitution and others. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.