[posted on behalf of a student]
Hurricane Katrina was not handled well and became the catalyst for change of how incident managements were handled. There were many failures on the federal level. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other agencies, at the time of Katrina did not require for the people in leadership positions to have experience in incident management. This is why the director of FEMA at the time of Katrina, Michael Brown, supervised judges at horse shows before becoming director and got the job only through his connections not by experience. One of the other problems that happened with Katrina was the communication infrastructure was down so there was a lack of communication with every party because there was no ability to communicate easily. There was a lot of communication breakdown because of this and the lack of communication between the different levels of government and groups. One of the other problems was that there was a slow response from FEMA and the federal government as they waited until after the storm to start sending people instead of setting up before the storm. The paperwork and logistics were not done before the storm as it should have been. Another problem was that FEMA did not want to have individuals to help because they felt that the individuals were a liability, so they continually turned down volunteers from helping. From Katrina there were a lot of changes to FEMA and the way that all incident managements were done.
One of the first changes is that everyone within leadership positions have to have experience in incident management and prove that they have successfully handled an incident. Now when the communication infrastructure is down they have Wi-Fi networks that can be powered through power grids out side of the incident area. Organizations have step up social media accounts to communicate with the public to get out accurate information quickly. From the local to the federal level everyone is required to have the same training so that everyone is using the same “playbook” and everyone can use common terminology to try to prevent communication breakdowns among the different levels. The next change is when there is an incident that can be predicted (such as a huricane) everything is prepped ahead of time. Paperwork is done ahead of time as much as possible so that they don’t have to wait for paperwork do be done and processed. People and supplies are stationed close to the incident before it happens so that people can start working immediately and supplies can start being distributed immediately instead of having to wait for it to arrive. Finally they are now okay with having volunteers help and encourage the support of groups such as the American Red Cross and other organizations that specialize in volunteering at incidents. From these changes responses to incidents are still not perfect but they do go much better than they did at Katrina. It allows for better, faster responses to help save lives and start helping people get back to their lives as quickly as possible.