Hurricane Katrina Research Paper

As one of the most destructive natural disasters in United States ' history, Hurricane Katrina took hundreds of lives and amounted to billions of dollars in damage. As victims see their fallen homes and shattered lives, they wonder how this catastrophe could have happened. Some argue that hurricanes are unpredictable phenomena that cannot be controlled, and that our government responded to the best of its ability. Others, however, realize that controlling a storm is completely different than preparing for one. While President Bush may not have control over the weather, he had experts predicting a catastrophe like Katrina years before it developed. The Gulf Coast region was completely exposed and unprepared for major hurricanes, but President
Weather experts, however, did realize the potential for such a natural disaster, and President Bush had this information at his fingertips. The article Big Blow in the Big Easy was written before Hurricane Katrina had evolved, and it discusses several smaller hurricanes in New Orleans ' history, and how the city has narrowly escaped several major disasters. After the tropical storm Cindy blew past New Orleans without even becoming a category one hurricane, the author asks if it is "time to breathe easy" in the Gulf Coast region. By the same weeks ' end, however, Hurricane Dennis was "barreling toward the Gulf of Mexico."3 These obvious patterns of harsh hurricanes and tropical storms in the Gulf Coast region raised an alarm to Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University 's Center for the Study of Public Health impacts of Hurricanes. Even before Hurricane Katrina was "on the map," Heerden realized that "if a hurricane comes next month, New Orleans could no longer exist."4 By ignoring these predictions, President Bush risked the lives of thousand of citizens, and cost the United States billions of unnecessary dollars that could have been saved by preparing for
Now, after the hurricane, some blame the unpredictability of natural disasters for the lives lost and costly damage instead of Bush 's failure to prepare. The evidence and clear potential for this disaster was published before Hurricane Katrina, leaving only one real question: why Bush left the Gulf Coast region fatally exposed. President Bush ignored the potential of Hurricane Katrina and deserves full responsibility for the preventable damage and lives that were