Book Description
The city was ruined. Over 1,100 people died.
This book examines the participants in this incredible event - the experts, the victims, the refugee camps and the fury of a major hurricane, from the initial warnings right through to the devastating and continuing aftermath.
From the Author
It also aims to help them obtain some kind of impression - beyond mere facts - of the participants in this event, be they people, buildings, attitudes, acts of nature, engineering failures, political and bureaucratic failures, or human nature.
Other books on the subject of Hurricane Katrina have taken the approach of a simple chronological narrative - this happened, then that happened, then something else happened. Other books are simply collections of "gee whiz" images - gee whiz, look at that big boat on the highway, gee whiz, look at the damaged casino, gee whiz, look at the flooding and misery.
I wanted to take a different approach, something perhaps more analytical and representative of the impact on a society, and from the point of view of that society, rather than, for argument's sake, the point of view of a meteorologist with a map and a timeline.
After all, most people are not really interested in clouds and windspeeds and air pressure. People are interested in how the monster called Hurricane Katrina knocked out New Orleans. And how people reacted. And who got blamed.
To achieve this I wrote many short chapters on many different aspects of the event. As a result it may sometimes be difficult for the reader to get a sense of the timeline for that chapter in relation to all the other chapters, but I feel that this is more than compensated for by the achievement of an overall historical record that captures the essence of the people and places who stood in the way of a mighty storm.
Excerpted from Hurricane Katrina by Darren Robinson. Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
On Sep 13 President George W Bush took responsibility for the first time for the government's slow reaction to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Following days of mounting criticism, Bush agreed that the disaster exposed serious problems in the country's response capabilities at all levels of government. He told a White House press conference he took responsibility to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job.
For the duration of this disaster, people were practically lining up to take a swipe at FEMA. On September 15, Governor Blanco blasted FEMA and the federal bureaucracy for failing to organize payments for body recovery, work largely contracted to private company "Kenyon". FEMA claimed that body recovery is not their job.
In an apparent show of initiative the Governor went ahead and authorized the State of Louisiana to pay for the recovery services. Presumably her state will be reimbursed to a great degree by the Federal Government at a later date.
The Houston-based Kenyon company sends out teams of doctors, funeral directors and various medical personnel to recover bodies in the wake of large scale disasters. The bodies are first located by the military and then recovered by the Kenyon teams.
The company was previously noted for opening an International Repatriation Center in Phuket, Thailand, where foreign victims of the Tsunami disaster were prepared for return to their families.
FEMA hadn't always done it so tough. Its performance after Hurricane Andrew’s decimation of Florida was highly regarded, but when absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, it appeared to have lost purpose. It lost its presidential cabinet position and despite the fact that the DHS was awash with funding, FEMA received progressively less money.
FEMA is specifically charged with guiding disaster response and the DHS is charged with its oversight in the event of catastrophe (both man-made and natural).
