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Disaster Relief: Organizations, Speed and Efficiency of Response and Roles
Federal agencies provide a range of assistance to individual victims; state, territorial, and local governments; and non-governmental entities after major disasters, including certain terrorist attacks. Types of aid include, technical assistance, loans and loan guarantees, grants, temporary housing, access to counselling professionals, and medical assistance. This book identifies programs pertinent to the recovery process and provides brief descriptive information to help congressional offices determine which programs bear further consideration in the planning, organisation, or implementation of recovery operations.
Down in New Orleans : Reflections from a Drowned City
"Post-Katrina New Orleans hasn't been an easy place to live, it hasn't been an easy place to be in love, it hasn't been an easy place to take care of yourself or see the bright side of things." So reflects Billy Sothern in this riveting and unforgettable insider's chronicle of the epic 2005 disaster and the year that followed. Sothern, a death penalty lawyer who with his wife, photographer Nikki Page, arrived in the Crescent City four years ahead of Katrina, delivers a haunting, personal, and quintessentially American story. Writing with an idealist's passion, a journalist's eye for detail, and a lawyer's attention to injustice, Sothern recounts their struggle to come to terms with the enormity of the apocalyptic scenario they managed to live through. He guides the reader on a journey through post-Katrina New Orleans and an array of indelible images: prisoners abandoned in their cells with waters rising, a longtime New Orleans resident of Middle Eastern descent unfairly imprisoned in the days following the hurricane, trailer-bound New Orleanians struggling to make ends meet but celebrating with abandon during Mardi Gras, Latino construction workers living in their trucks. As a lawyer-activist who has devoted his life to procuring justice for some of society's most disenfranchised citizens, Sothern offers a powerful vision of what Katrina has meant to New Orleans and what it still means to the nation at large.
Hurricane Katrina : Lessons for Army Planning and Operations
The efforts undertaken by civilian and military organizations in response to Hurricane Katrina were historically unprecedented, but problems did arise in the military response that contributed to delays in accomplishing evacuations and relief operations across the storm-ravaged areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, particularly New Orleans. A number of steps can be taken to enhance future military disaster-response efforts: give the National Guard the federal mission to conduct homeland security activities; make each National Guard unit capable of rapid deployment; prepare governors to call up Guard units to state active duty for out-of-state emergencies; and design a regional approach in the National Guard through the creation of ten National Guard standing homeland security task forces. Designating National Guard and active-duty units for homeland security in the ArmyOCOs unit-readiness planning process also deserves consideration, as does an approach to command and control structure that prepares decision makers to quickly select from a set of predefined alternatives giving the lead to federal or state task forces depending on the characteristics of the emergency."
Lessons from Hurricane Ike
If Hurricane Ike had made landfall just fifty miles down the Texas coast, the devastation and death caused by what was already one of the most destructive hurricanes in US history would have quadrupled. Ike made everyone realize just how exposed and vulnerable the Houston-Galveston area is in the face of a major storm. What is done to address this vulnerability will shape the economic, social, and environmental landscape of the region for decades to come. In Lessons from Hurricane Ike, Philip Bedient and the research team at the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center at Rice University provide an overview of some of the research being done in the Houston-Galveston region in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. The center was formed shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Its research examines everything from surge and inland flooding to bridge infrastructure. Lessons from Hurricane Ike gathers the work of some of the premier researchers in the fields of hurricane prediction and impact, summarizing it in accessible language accompanied by abundant illustrations--not just graphs and charts, but dramatic photos and informative maps. Orienting readers to the history and basic meteorology of severe storms along the coast, the book then revisits the impact of Hurricane Ike and discusses what scientists and engineers are studying as they look at flooding, storm surges, communications, emergency response, evacuation planning, transportation issues, coastal resiliency, and the future sustainability of the nation's fourth largest metropolitan area.
Race, Place, and Environmental Justice after Hurricane Katrina
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans leaving death and destruction across the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast counties. The lethargic and inept emergency response that followed exposed institutional flaws, poor planning, and false assumptions that are built into the emergency response and homeland security plans and programs. Questions linger: What went wrong? Can it happen again? Is our government equipped to plan for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from natural and manmade disasters? Can the public trust government response to be fair? Does race matter? Racial disparities exist in disaster response, cleanup, rebuilding, reconstruction, and recovery. Race plays out in natural disaster survivors' ability to rebuild, replace infrastructure, obtain loans, and locate temporary and permanent housing. Generally, low-income and people of color disaster victims spend more time in temporary housing, shelters, trailers, mobile homes, and hotels--and are more vulnerable to permanent displacement. Some "temporary" homes have not proved to be that temporary. In exploring the geography of vulnerability, this book asks why some communities get left behind economically, spatially, and physically before and after disasters strike.
Second Line Rescue : Improvised Responses to Katrina and Rita
Second Line Rescue: Improvised Responses to Katrina and Rita chronicles the brave and creative acts through which Gulf Coast people rescued their neighbors during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Ordinary citizens joined in with whatever resources they had. Unlike many of the official responders, vernacular rescuers found ways around paralysis produced by a breakdown in communications and infrastructure. They were able to dispel unfounded fears produced by erroneous or questionable reporting. The essays, personal narratives, media reports, and field studies presented here all have to do with effective and often ingenious answers that emerged from the people themselves. Their solutions are remarkably different from the hamstrung government response, and their perspectives are a tonic to sensationalized media coverage. The first part of the collection deals with Gulf Coast rescuers from outside stricken communities: those who, safe in their own homes and neighborhoods, marshaled their resources to help their fellow citizens. It includes some analysis and scholarly approaches, but it also includes direct responses and first-hand field reports. The second part features the words of hurricane survivors displaced from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities to Houston, Texas. In many cases, the "victims" themselves were the first responders, rescuing family, friends, and strangers. All of the stories, whether from the "outside" or "inside" responders, reveal a shared history of close-knit community bonds and survival skills sharpened by hard times. This book is about what went right in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita--in spite of all that went so wrong.