The Importance Of Communication In New Orleans

Communication between the people of New Orleans and the city government was a reason why there was so many casualties. During any natural disaster, winds can harm any communication systems, especially a storm like Hurricane Katrina. Most of modern day communication tools rely on obstacles that are built on land, such as radio antennas and cellphone towers. Katrina's fast winds knocked down a 400 foot antenna that was built to last through winds that would blow up to 150 mile-per-hour. Weakening communication for all citizens in New Orleans. “A majority of the public-safety systems serving police and fire departments in the Gulf Coast region ceased functioning, severely hampering the coordination of rescue efforts” (Piper and Ramos). The New Orleans police department lost communication for nearly three days. This proves there was an absence of communication because they could have sent help instead of waiting for a
Most of these breakdowns happened because of the lack in communications. Major generators were placed on ground floors and were capable of being flooded. As an example, one of the polices transmission sites flooded even though it was ten feet in the air. Other contact systems had stopped working because of the loss of power from the run-down generators. The generators couldn’t be fixed for a couple of days because technicians were not allowed past police roadblocks. Backup systems became weak because they were inefficient enough to withstand all the power they needed to produce. Phone lines that were supposed to be reliable went down due to Katrina. About two million phone companies and cell phones were experiencing problems for being out of service. Some New Orleans citizens were trapped in their homes by waters from the floods and had no way to communicate for