A Leadership Failure Rather Than an Initiative Failure in Handling Hurricane Katrina (Essay Sample)

A Leadership Failure Rather Than an Initiative Failure in Handling Hurricane Katrina
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Abstract
Hurricane Katrina of August 29th2005 demonstrated the failure of the American leadership to learn lessons on how to handle deadly emergencies even after the 11th September attack by terrorists on the United States. Not only did the hurricane devastate New Orleans city but also the greater Gulf coast of America. From the events that happened before and during the catastrophe, it is arguably right to state that in as much as there was a failure of initiative, most mistakes were as a result of the failure of leadership. This paper aims at exploring and explaining the instances that displayed a failure of leadership during in the occurrence of hurricane Katrina.
Introduction
Hurricane Katrina is by far the most devastating hurricane that has ever hit the United States. It is one of the most damaging catastrophe that has blatantly exposed the lack of preparedness in the emergency response of the American government. The government failed to learn the lessons of emergency preparedness of the 9/11 terrorist attack by once again allowing poor leadership in emergency response to take the live of Americans during the hurricane. Rather than blame the initiative failures alone, leadership was the major cause of increased losses during hurricane Katrina. The unfortunate lesson from the leadership to citizens from the events is that no one can really expect any urgent help from the government in the face of massive emergencies. These instances of leadership failures are discussed below.
The Whitehouse was partly to blame on the lack of preparation on pre-landfalls. Despite the fact that President Bush directed Governor Blanco to carryout mandatory evacuations, the President showed reluctance in handling the crisis with the sense of urgency it deserved(Shughart, 2006).For example, the President stayed in his Texas ranch until two days past the landfall. President Bush should on the contrary have travelled to Washington to handle the emergency. It was after two days since landfall that the president convened his cabinet and a assigning a Whitehouse Task Force that would oversee the government’s response actions.
Moreover, the Secretary Chertoff failed to activate the NRP’s Catastrophic Incident Annex that would have done away with the uncertainty concerning the federal government authority and need to take action before the landfall. The action would have signaled that the all agencies in the federal government were supposed to take immediate actions deemed necessary in tackling Katrina(Landy, 2007). This action would have further increased the urgency for federal help rather than wait until individual states were overwhelmed by the hurricane only to respond when it was too late.
Furthermore, the department responsible for preparation and responding to domestic emergencies such as natural disasters, the DHL displayed widespread failures in leading the federal responses towards Hurricane Katrina. The urgency failed to relay to the federal government the urgency of the hurricane(Senate, U. S., 2006). In addition, the Secretary of state, Chertoff should have engaged in the preparations before the landfall over the weekend. On the contrary,...