Disaster in our life time
Disaster in our life time
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005. It flooded 80% of New Orleans. This displaced millions of people and caused the death of 1883 people. This flood water also trapped 100 000 people in the city. Food became scares the water undrinkable because it was flooded with sewage. There was no place to go people got trapped on their roofs or attics just having to wait to be rescued. The rich fled the city and the poor, the homeless and the elderly were trapped. There were significant barriers to providing healthcare, barriers like: people could not be reached or leave because of the massive amount of water. There was no facilities available to provide health care in. Coupled with the country being completely unprepared for a disaster on this scale. The government had to send the National Guard in to render assistance ,because the local community did not have the manpower to do so. But it took the government days to respond and when they did it was not enough because of the lack of experience in dealing with a crisis on this scale. Although FEMA had ranked New Orleans had been ranked as the most vulnerable city in case of a natural disaster nothing was done to prepare for this. This is largely due to economics and politics. Economically the government did not want to put money in to preparing for something that might happen. The top three FEMA directors were all political appointees with no experience. So today ten years later the city is still rebuilding tens of thousands of people cannot return because there no housing or jobs available to return to. I can’t imagine how it must have been a healthcare worker during that time. How to provide care with no equipment or facilities available coupled with completely being overwhelmed by the amount of people needing care. To me it seems like trying to put a forest fire out with a cup of water. This now brings up the question, “are we better prepared for the next disaster?” I personally don’t think so. People tend to forget quickly, coupled with political discourse and having the financial ability to prepare for a disaster. When it comes to finances there is a lot of disagreement about who needs to fund the disaster preparedness. Nobody wants to and in the end nobody is prepared. We can merely try and prepare ourselves and try and help as many as we can when a disaster occurs
