Computer models predicted disaster
New Orleans scenario 'well anticipated,' experts say, so what happened?
Reuters
Updated: 8:02 p.m. ET Sept. 2, 2005
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175204/
WASHINGTON - Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since
Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models,
so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.
"The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well
anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an emergency
management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis,
Disaster, and Risk Management at George Washington University.
Computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other
institutions made detailed projections of what would happen if water flowed
over the levees protecting the city or if they failed.
In July 2004, more than 40 federal, state, local and volunteer
organizations practiced this very scenario in a five-day simulation
code-named "Hurricane Pam", where they had to deal with an imaginary storm
that destroyed over half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the
evacuation of a million residents.
At the end of the exercise Ron Castleman, regional director for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency declared: "We made great progress this week in
our preparedness efforts.
"Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as
search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school
restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick
response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies," he said.
In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State
University, "It's inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they were."
He said a slow decline over several years in funding for emergency
management was partly to blame.
Levee failure predicted
In comments on Thursday, President George W. Bush said, "I don't think
anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
But Louisiana State University engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have
warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times
Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One" examining what might
happen if they did.
It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to
heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed
in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access
to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the
consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week.
Craig Marks who runs Blue Horizons Consulting, an emergency management
training company in North Carolina, said the authorities had mishandled the
evacuation, neglecting to help those without transportation to leave the city.
"They could have packed people on trains or buses and gotten them out
before the hurricane struck. They had enough time and access to federal
funds. And now, we find we do not have a proper emergency communications
infrastructure so aid workers get out into the field and they can't talk to
one another," he said.
Most of those trapped by the floods in the city of some 500,000 people are
the poor who had little chance to leave.
Wrong priorities?
Ernest Sternberg, a professor of urban and regional planning at the
University of Buffalo, said law enforcement agencies were often more eager
to invest in high tech "toys" than basic communications.
"It's well known that communications go down in disasters but people on the
frontlines still don't invest in them. A lot of the investments that have
been made in homeland security have been misspent," he said.
Several experts also believe the decision to make FEMA a part of the
Department of Homeland Security, created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,
was a major mistake. Rubin said FEMA functioned well in the 1990s as a
small, independent agency.
"Under DHS, it was downgraded, buried in a couple of layers of bureaucracy,
and terrorism prevention got all the attention and most of the funds," she
said.
Former FEMA director James Lee Witt testified to Congress in March 2004: "I
am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and
respond to disasters has been sharply eroded.
"I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first
responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with
has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is
like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management,'" he said.
Underlying the situation has been the general reluctance of government at
any level to invest in infrastructure or emergency management, said David
McEntire, who teaches emergency management at the University of North Texas.
"No-one cares about disasters until they happen. That is a political fact
of life," he said.
"Emergency management is woefully underfunded in this nation. That covers
not only first responders but also warning, evacuation, damage assessment,
volunteer management, donation management and recovery and mitigation
issues," he said.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
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