COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF SOCIAL RESPONSE TO WIDESPREAD DISASTERS TRIGGERED BY HURRICANE KATRINA

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Hurricane Katrina, which struck the U.S. Gulf Coast with catastrophic loss of life and property, triggered a series of unprecedented social, economic and environmental disasters. It revealed great weaknesses in U.S. emergency management policy and program such as 1) Failure of disaster preparedness, response and relief coordination among state, local and federal agencies in the storm-affected areas; 2) Inadequate public information to support policy decisions and public response; 3) Chaotic movement and shelter operations induding failure of basic human service delivery in shelters and inadequate contingency planning for relocating needed services; and 4) An unprecedented need for recovery and reconstruction resources with likely national security and policy reform implications. Field survey targeting to learn those topics were conducted twice during Dec.10-18, 2005, and March 18-27, 2006. And the following results were acquaired.1) A disaster usually called the Hurricane Katrina Disaster is consisted from three events such as Hurricane Katrina, Levee breach in New Orleans, and Hurricane Rita. And Levee breach in New Orleans was unexpected in the real sense. It caused large criticize about disaster response for the Hurricane Katrina.2) Drastic renovation for disaster management system in US weakened leadership of FEMA in disaster response. However, new disaster management system such as National Response Plan, and National Incident Management System worked well.3) Disaster response activities according to Emergency Support Functions which defined in National Response Plan were successfully managed. Coordinated responses by federal and state government were conducted in Joint Meld Office.4) Louisiana State established special organization for recovery activities called Louisiana Recovery Authority. Louisiana Recovery Authority established disaster recovery plan and also made a decision on housing recovery granting maximum USD150,000.