Global Voices Online

Hurricane Katrina was third major hurricane and first Category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm surge from Katrina caused catastrophic damage along the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama while the hurricane is estimated to be responsible for $75 billion in damages, making it the costliest hurricane in United States history and the deadliest U.S. hurricane with a death toll of over 1,418 people since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. Yesterday, the White House released their own findings of the disaster's relief response and related reccomendations in a 228-page report titled “The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned“.

Several news agencies online have published various view points on the White House Katrina report such as the International Herald Tribune who stated that “the report recommends a more active role in handling major disasters for the Department of Defense but does not give details on how such changes might be made”, Reuters AlertNet commented “the 217-page report acknowledged inadequate preparation for the storm but it did not single out anyone for blame” while an article in the New York Times said that “the report indirectly echoed frequent criticism that the Homeland Security Department was too focused on possible terrorist strikes”. BBC News found that most reccomendations in the report “focus on the need for communication between government departments, federal agencies and relief organisations” and the online edition of TIME answered the question of whether the report says anything which hadn't been said before by stressing that it (report) “is hell-bent on looking forward as this happens to be politically convenient”.

I've gone through the 228-page report but I noticed that much of Main Stream Media have failed to give readers and viewers a realistic picture of the reccomendations stated in the report yet and so I decided to focus upon some of the reccomendations by asking the various people and organizations who were involved with Katrina relief efforts on what they thought of the reccomendations featured in the White House Report and their suggestions on disaster relief response on the whole. This blog posting is the first of a 4-part series on Hurricane Katrina: Rethinking Disaster Relief Response where I will be featuring interviews with Skype Journal, a telecom engineer from New Jersey, a paramedic at Ambulance Service of Manchester, a lawyer from Suburban Chicago and Internet2.

On page 104, Reccomendation#37 in Appendix A of the White House's Katrina Report, Communications has been identified as a critical challenge during disaster response where it is said that inadequate situational awareness during the response to Hurricane Katrina resulted in decision makers relying on incorrect and incomplete information. Now in order to restore operability and achieve interoperability, the report has found that there is a strong need for rapidly deployable, interoperable, commercial, off-the-shelf equipment that can provide a framework for connectivity among Federal, State, and local authorities.

So I asked the editor of Skype Journal, Philip Wolff, whether he agreed with the statement that although available technologies can provide short-term operability and support long-term interoperability for emergency responders, the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) should consider commercial, off-the-shelf solutions in order to keep pace with technology changes. I also asked him what are the other alternatives that the DHS should consider which can be implemented and here is what he had to say:

“I generally agree, but I think there are several other points which are important. First, by all means gear up; take your credit card to the store and pack up, understanding that your gear will be obsolete every nine months. Next, look at how policy changes may create entirely new capabilities”.

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