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• 1 media/When the levees broke.jpg 2017-04-27T10:12:45-07:00 When the Levees Broke 12 plain 2017-05-04T16:23:23-07:00 Upon returning from a tour of the tsunami devastation in Asia in January 2005, Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), immediately gathered his aides in an effort to prepare for what would be a similar catastrophe at home. Eric L. Tolbert, a former top FEMA official recalled that “New Orleans was the No. 1 disaster we were talking about. We were obsessed with New Orleans because of the risk.” While some in New Orleans blame FEMA, the homeland security director for New Orleans at the time, Terry Ebbert, called the fiasco a “hamstrung bureaucracy” as local state and federal officials were just as responsible since they cooperated on disaster planning. In 2000, the impact of a fictional “Hurricane Zebra” was examined and in 2004, the effects of “Hurricane Pam” were observed. This second simulation predicted 10 to 15 feet of water in parts of the city and the evacuation of one million people. Interestingly, neither exercise anticipated the levees to fail. Days after both the breach of the levees and Hurricane Katrina, former President George W. Bush stated in an interview on Good Morning America: “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees. Now we’re having to deal with it, and will.” Regardless of this oblivion, unlike a terrorist attack or even another natural disaster like that of an earthquake, Hurricane Katrina gave considerable notice of its arrival.
   
  Per the urging of FEMA, on Saturday, August 27^th, 2005, President Bush declared an emergency in Louisiana, allowing the agency to assure financial assistance to state and local governments and to deliver ready-to-eat meals, medicine, ice, tarpaulins, water, among other supplies to the region. By the next day, Katrina has become a Category 5 hurricane, this prompting Louisiana Mayor Ray Nagin to order a mandatory evacuation. A FEMA spokeswoman claimed that it would have been up to local officials to hire buses to move people without transportation out of the city, especially since New Orleans is a city with so many of its residents living in poverty. With that being said, the hurricane came at the most inopportune time – the end of the month – whereby such citizens were waiting for public assistance, their checks, that would at the beginning of the next month. In other words, they did not have money for gasoline, bus fare, or lodging.
   
  Former Louisiana secretary of environmental quality from 1987-1988, Martha Madden, revealed that the potential for disaster in Louisiana was always obvious and that FEMA was aware of this for 20 years. In addition, she argues that the United States Army Corps of Engineers should have had arrangements in place with contractors who had emergency supplies at hand, including sandbags or concrete barriers, which are the same materials used for things such as oil spills. It is disheartening that the catastrophic flooding of this city was caused not only by a powerful storm, but primarily also by fatal engineering flaws in the city’s flood protection system. What is likewise disappointing is that the Army Corps of Engineers admit this setback after the fact. The issue is however far more complex than that. According to a high-profile 2006 report underwritten by the National Science Foundation, local officials in New Orleans had contributed to the disaster by essentially forcing the corps to build less-effective protection for the city than the corps had originally wanted to build. Initially, the corps proposed a plan that would put gates at the mouths of the canals that could be closed as the storm approached, but this idea was replaced by the proposal of the city’s levees board members and other officials, who pushed for the construction of several miles of levees and flood walls along the canal. Since the storm, nevertheless, the corps has built a $14 billion hurricane system around the city.