3 Years Later: Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

It hasn’t been one year that the Katrina survivor’s have been living in the FEMA trailers… it hasn’t even been two years… it has been three years that Katrina survivor’s are still living in the FEMA trailers that are miles away from schools, jobs, grocery stores, playgrounds, and doctors’ offices according to (Alternatives to the FEMA trailer parks 2007). The government waited so long to send these trailers to the survivor’s that it caused suspicion that the government did not care enough for our fellow citizens or respond quick enough to this tragedy. The rebuilding of New Orleans and new rental production is proceeding slowly. The governments’ response to Hurricane Katrina was costly and inefficient. Instead, the federal government needs to play a more active role in assisting in the redevelopment of   New Orleans. On August 27, 2005, two days prior to Hurricane Katrina,   Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco announces that there will be a state of emergency in the state of Louisiana,(Katrina: What Happened When, 2005). The next day Blanco asks President Bush to declare a state of emergency on the state of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina. On this day Katrina is categorized as a number three storm, predicted to become a category four storm according to( Katrina, 2005). One day prior to Hurricane Katrina, Katrina is upgraded to a category four storm with wind speeds reaching up to one-hundred and forty-five miles per hour. Six hours later Katrina is upgraded to a “potentially catastrophic” category five storm.
The NOAA predicts “coastal storm surge flooding of fifteen to twenty feet above normal tide levels.” As speeds began reaching up to one-hundred and seventy-five miles per hour, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin orders a mandatory evacuation of the city. The evacuation call comes only twenty hours before Katrina would make landfall- less than half the time that researchers said it would be necessary to evacuate the city, (Katrina,2005)....