Applying lessons of Hurricane Katrina

Joint Force Quarterly, Jan, 2008 by Gregory A.S. Gecowets, Jefferson P. Marquis

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In the early morning of August 29, 2005, the eye of Hurricane Katrina reached the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. While the winds at landfall were assessed as only Category 3, the span of destruction and accompanying storm surge reflected the hurricane's earlier Category 5 strength. Tropical storm-force winds and rain extended as far east as the Florida panhandle. A wall of water swamped coastal areas, causing the levees protecting New Orleans to break. Communications were disrupted by failed circuits and cellular towers, as well as by the loss of electrical power throughout southern Louisiana. Regional emergency operations centers became isolated, and some were completely disabled. Unable to offer assistance to others, many emergency responders became disaster victims themselves.

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The damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaks in New Orleans presented the Nation with a catastrophe that it was not prepared for. Responders were overwhelmed. Local, state, and Federal authorities did not understand what was happening and thus did not initially share critical information, quickly organize the response effort, take needed initiative, or work effectively with the media to get the facts to the people.

The private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and government at all levels have taken corrective actions as a result of Katrina. Response capabilities for a future event of that scale have thus improved, but public expectations may be difficult to meet. The gap between public needs and available resources may not always be completely closed. While the onus for an effective response falls on local and state governments as well as civilian Federal agencies, Active duty and Reserve forces provide a powerful capability and will remain a key part of the national effort.

This article provides a framework for analyzing incident management and highlights challenges that affect the level of unmet requirements in a catastrophe. Based on the findings of two studies conducted for the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) by the Joint Center for Operational Analysis (JCOA) in 2005-2006, the focus is on response timeframes and activities instead of longer-term recovery and restoration. Furthermore, the article presents a broad brush appraisal of national response capabilities more than 2 years after Katrina. It is not intended as a comprehensive report card of post-Katrina corrective actions.

Response to Katrina

Two ways of characterizing incidents are time and space. In terms of time, a triggering event may come with warning (hurricane) or without warning (chemical leak). Its duration may be finite (earthquake) or open-ended (pandemic). Similarly, an event can occur in a specific place (terrorist attack on a landmark) or propagate beyond a defined boundary (malicious computer code). In the case of Katrina, national weather forecasters accurately predicted the timing, location, and intensity of the storm prior to its landfall and urgently communicated their findings to government officials and the general public (a "warned" event).

In one of the largest and most successful evacuations in U.S. history, many gulf coast residents heeded official orders to vacate their homes and travel outside the path of the storm. Local, state, and Federal agencies took steps to prepare for the expected disaster, prepositioning resources and alerting responders. Incident managers took advantage of pre-storm connectivity to coordinate via email, teleconference, and video conference. However, government officials at all levels were unprepared for the consequences of the New Orleans levee breaks. The breaks inundated 80 percent of the city with floodwater, incapacitated first responders, and stranded the 20 percent of residents who had not evacuated. The breaks pushed the status of Katrina from a bad storm to a catastrophic incident. Immediate requirements for life-sustaining capabilities quickly outstripped available resources, creating a gap of unfulfilled need.

Several challenges contributed to growth of the gap and inhibited rapid response. Most significant was that policy and law placed the Federal Government largely in a supplemental (pull system) role for natural disasters. Federal law (the Constitution, Stafford Act, and Insurrection Act) put state leadership at the center of incident management and tied Federal response to specific state requests. The overall relief effort was framed by the National Response Plan (NRP), which called for a sequential reaction: local, then state, then Federal. Department of Defense (DOD) policy regarding defense support of civil authorities (DSCA) had been to provide assistance "to Federal, state and local responders only when civilian capacities become overwhelmed." (1) Additionally, the traditional reliance of disaster professionals on local knowledge and on-scene management--reinforced by years of successful response to noncatastrophic natural disasters--contributed to a culture of "wait until asked." In other words, state and Federal officials were reluctant to anticipate the needs of local responders. Other elements that interfered with a rapid effective response included the following.