emse232

Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

Crisis and Emergency Management

December 2007 Volume 13 - Number 3

Perspectives...

Article on personal perception of the terrorism risk, a personal experience with a disaster or thoughts about the Hurricane Katrina disaster or any other recent disaster
By: Firas Makarem

In a course lecture on Emergency Management, I listened to a guest speaker from the Associated Press talk about her industry’s perceptions of the Department of Homeland Security and “Washington”, stating that from a reporters’ perspective, it was not a matter of “if” something would go wrong, but “when” it would. Her perception may very well be true, and the first thought that came into my mind following her statement was the events of Hurricane Katrina.

Like the perception of “Washington”, the floodplain management community, both private and federal, has long been bracing for the catastrophic failures that took place following the storm in 2005. As someone that has been involved in floodplain management for the last 13 years it was not a total surprise to see the failures at the local and state level. What was a surprise of course was the pace at which the federal government responded and the ensuing actions and policies that were put in place as a form of damage control. These actions were always reactive in nature to the point where it was common to reference FEMA’s actions as managing to “media clips” rather than managing to the situation.

From a big picture perspective, the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans are not unique in dealing with the issues of levees and implementation of floodplain management techniques to minimize the impacts of flooding. They also have the same access to federal programs as do other states and local communities around the country. What is different however, is the level to which the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana have been engaged in establishing a strong local understanding, local programs, and local emergency managers to implement them. One such program is FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP). On an annual basis, more than $200 million is made available to states and local communities around the country to utilize the program for projects that will mitigate flood risk. The State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans are not able to take advantage of such programs. In my personal opinion, that is due primarily to the focus of the local officials and politicians on ideas that drive the economy through tourism and can serve as a platform for re-election. To me this was evident since the 9th Ward and other economically challenged segments of the community only came to be an issue after the devastation of the hurricane and never before, knowing very well that these challenges existed all along.

I learned through FEMA’s Public Assistance Director in New Orleans that there are still challenges to date with expending the tens of millions of dollars made available to the city and state via grants primarily because of a lack of capability to write the grant applications, justify the projects, and show a solid management and accounting system. I have also learned that there has been a recognition of this issue and something is being done about it. The Chief of the California Division of Water Resources volunteers his time on a monthly basis to assist the City of New Orleans officials with “getting back on their feet” and recovering to a point to where they are more organized and better prepared for the next disaster.

I hope that the recognition of the local ownership is realized and invested in and that the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana take the long terms view in building local capability and leveraging the federal resources instead of relying on them. We have to learn from this very expensive lesson so we can continue to teach future generations of the wonderful rich culture and history of the City by having the ability to do it via field trips rather than just reference it in the history books.