FEMA is Unprepared for the Next Hurricane Katrina, Disaster Experts Warn

Stephen Murphy had only lived in New Orleans for a few weeks when Hurricane Katrina began brewing in the Gulf. Murphy, then a graduate student and now the director of Tulane University’s disaster management program, decided to evacuate.

“I was a newbie to New Orleans,” he said. “My neighbors were kind of like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you evacuating? We’re having a party.’ I joked – I had a pickup truck with my kayak in it. I said, ‘You want me to leave this for you?’”

When Katrina came ashore near the Louisiana-Mississippi border on August 29, 2005, the impact in New Orleans was dire. The city, something of a bowl surrounded by levees that broke during the storm, flooded and stayed that way for more than a month. Over 80% of city residents evacuated ahead of the storm. Many of those who stayed couldn’t afford to leave. At least 1,833 people were killed.

In the days and years following Katrina, the federal response received intense scrutiny. The response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which is tasked with mitigating, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters, was widely seen as a failure. FEMA, Murphy said, became a four-letter word in New Orleans.

Samantha Montano, the author of “Disasterology” – a book about U.S. vulnerability to disasters in the face of climate change – and an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, said that in the past two decades, FEMA and the emergency management profession as a whole have been trying to improve systems and processes so that a disaster like Katrina doesn’t happen again.

But as the Trump administration cuts federal workers, denies disaster relief, and toys with the idea of abolishing FEMA altogether, that progress is at risk. Meanwhile, the cuts come at a time of mounting vulnerability as climate change makes hurricanes more dangerous and deadly for growing coastal populations. And when disaster survivors get angry at FEMA, it’s usually because they want more support from the agency, not less.

“I do think it’s safe to say that many of the gains that FEMA has made since Katrina have backslid in the past four months,” Montano said.

The story continues in Yale Climate Connections.