Hurricane Katrina hit the central Gulf Coast close to New Orleans on the date of August 29, 2005. The storm flooded the entire New Orleans region, destroyed property worth $100 billion, and killed approximately 1,800 people. A recovery plan was put in place and 72,000 men and women were deployed within 12 days after the disaster. During any catastrophic event, the support of the federal government is important in providing help since the state and local resources become constrained and inadequate. However, the damages caused by the storm were greatly enhanced by the failures the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond to the disaster in a timely manner. Failure of federal government agencies to provide help during hurricane Katrina because of laws and regulations cause unnecessary loss of life and properties. The lack of knowledge about the Posse Comitatus Act and the politics involved during the crisis did not allow a faster emergency response to New Orleans, LA.
Narrow Interpretation of the Posse Comitatus Act
The failure of the federal government to respond quickly and send military personnel on active duty or other military assets can be attributed to the narrow and poor interpretation of the Posse Comitatus Act, abbreviated as PCA. The PCA is an act which forbids the federal government from making use of its armed force for law enforcement. Their law enforcement personnel can only be used in extreme cases and circumstances that have been approved by the Act of Congress (McGrane, 2009). A poor interpretation of the act would make it appear that the federal government has a limitation in sending its law enforcement agencies to handle different situations.
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However, a complete breakdown of the PCA shows that the federal government can instantly deploy federal troops in the event of a catastrophic emergency like Hurricane Katrina. The deployment of federal troops by the authority when responding to natural disasters is thus in accordance with the constitution and the PCA. This can be found in the Stanford Act and the Insurrection Act (McGrane, 2009). Even though the federal government faces significant restrictions in the domestic use of its federal troops, the restrictions do not stop the government from responding to different catastrophic situations in a timely manner. The poor interpretation and limitations of the Federal caused the federal troops and military to be highly dependent on procedures and requests for assistance. The limitations generally resulted in the slow application of federal resources during the initial response.
Failure of the state and government to work together
The failure of the state and government to work together caused a significant level of indecision when handling various issues. The entire recovery plan was faced with slow decisions over the deployment of supplies and medical personnel. For instance, the bodies of those that had died were uncollected for several days. The federal and state officials remained indecisive over a recovery plan and disposal of the bodies (Townsend, 2006). The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) waited for the state of Louisiana to make the decision about how the bodies would be handled. However, the governor of Louisiana later blamed FEMA’s slowness in actualizing a deal with the contractor.
The failure of the state to work with the government also affected other areas like that of organizing evacuations and the provision of federal resources and troops to Louisiana. The result was that the active military operations and other federal assistance were to be coordinated. The National Guard and the duty military were highly uncoordinated because they were working under two different bosses; the President and the Governor. Such poor coordination of different agencies that would aid the recovery plan caused tardiness in the entire operation.
Before the advent of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA’s relationship with the local and state officials had been eroded. The relationship had been destroyed due to the transfer of the preparedness grant programs to the Department of Homeland Security. The transfer of the funds made the effectiveness of FEMA to become reduced (Townsend, 2006). The standard practice is that the federal government gets involved at the request of the local government when their resources become diminished. The request and acceptance by the federal government to take part in solving the problem took longer as a result of the previous conflicts.
Involvement of politics during the crisis
The involvement of politics during the entire crisis slowed down the entire response. Throughout the slow response of the hurricane by the National government, the top emergency management official in New Orleans called the effort by the federal government a national disgrace. He went on to question whether the reinforcements were ever going to reach the desperate city. The emergency operations chief in New Orleans also noted that there was no deployment of any FEMA officer three days after they were deployed (Gomez and Wilson, 2008). This was because the troops were highly ineffective during the first four days after the hurricane.
Top federal officials were blamed for not been proactive throughout the entire response. They engaged in false politics where they would give faulty information to the public. The federal officials were found to have been inadequately trained. Most of the FEMA executive body was full of political appointees that had little experience in disaster management. The result was that they would largely engage in too much talk but were highly unfamiliar with their roles and responsibilities in the entire disaster recovery plan.
The slow response by the Military personnel to the crisis
The entire catastrophic event was marked by a slow response and arrival of military personnel to the crisis. A large number of duty troops failed to arrive until after the end of the first week of the disaster. However, there were other troops that arrived such as the Department of Defense and the National Guard troops. Earlier in the week, the troops that had arrived ordered their military to push most of its available assets towards the Gulf Coast (Wombwell, 2011). However, they were largely limited in their resources and needed the assistance to conduct the entire operation. Even after the arrival of the federal troops, they were engaged and distracted in a pointless turf war which slowed down the entire operation.
There was a limited number of medical teams from the federal troops that would aid in the affected areas. The low number was experienced even after the Department of Health and Human Service and FEMA made efforts to activate their emergency health capabilities. There was only one team which was available to provide adequate and immediate care in the first days after the storm (Wombwell, 2011). The inadequacy of the federal medical team showed that they were highly unprepared for the disaster.
In conclusion, the federal government sent help as soon as possible but the failure of an immediate response caused the unnecessary loss of life and properties. The poor interpretation of the Posse Comitatus Act caused an initial delay in the initial deployment of the troops. Even after the troops were deployed, the failure of the state and government to work together made the entire process slow. The state government engaged in politics which slowed the entire recovery process. While the first response is a big responsibility for the local and the state government, Hurricane Katrina showed that the federal military should be ready to be called upon for future catastrophic events.
References
Gomez, B. T., & Wilson, J. M. (2008). Political sophistication and attributions of blame in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Publius: The Journal of Federalism , 38 (4), 633-650.
McGrane, S. (2009). Katrina, federalism, and military law enforcement: A new Exception to the Posse Comitatus Act. Mich. L. Rev. , 108 , 1309.
Townsend, F. F. (2006). The federal response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons learned. Washington, DC: The White House .
Wombwell, J. A. (2011). Army support during the Hurricane Katrina disaster . DIANE Publishing.
