Answer:
he fury of nature followed by the fury of citizens railing at government ineptitude – in this case, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – is a disturbingly familiar scenario. The frequency of public dissatisfaction with government response to major disasters raises two important questions for the well-being of our republic: “Is public fury justified?” and, perhaps more importantly, “Is railing at government the best approach to ensuring effective action in the next disaster?” This lesson examines contemporary expectations of government in the wake of disaster and the prevailing assumption that only government is big enough to deal with major disasters by first looking at those tasks that government does well. Then, we will turn our attention to when and why government is unlikely to meet our expectations.
Because human society has shown great resiliency through the ages (See Introduction), we can learn from those instances where it has not. Events like Hurricane Katrina, which spawned the “storm [that] infuriated Americans” referenced above, provide a body of evidence to help us evaluate what government can do when its citizens are struck by disaster. Implicit in asking what government can do is a second question: “What can’t government do?” Also implied is the assumption that government should do only those things it can do well, and should not do those things for which it is, by nature, ill-suited.
Historically in the United States, disaster response and relief has not been considered the responsibility of government, and most especially not the federal government. People caught in natural calamities turned to family and to community organizations like churches and private charities for support. State and local governments readily engaged in rescue operations and the task of re-establishing and enforcing civil order when necessary, but the federal government maintained a hands-off stance until the early 20th century. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire prompted the first-ever federal allocation of disaster aid. Congress appropriated $2.5 million* in disaster aid – a small gesture compared to modern FEMA response – to cover the cost of food, blankets, tents and other relief supplies requisitioned from West coast Army depots. While President Roosevelt telegraphed California Governor Pardee and San Francisco Mayor Schmitz to express concern and offer “assistance,” the assistance consisted mainly of sending Secretary of Commerce Victor Metcalf to the city to keep the White House informed of developments. Tellingly, Roosevelt declined assistance and donations from abroad, saying that the U.S. had sufficient resources, and he directed offers of domestic assistance from such sources as the city governments of Chicago, Boston, New York, and from John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to go to the Red Cross rather than to the notoriously corrupt San Francisco city government. (Strupp, 18-23)
From that small initial aid “reimbursement,” the federal role in disaster relief has grown – some would say exponentially. In 1950, Congress gave the President the power to designate “disaster areas.” The designation triggers the availability of federal funds for rebuilding infrastructure and public buildings like schools, courts, libraries, police and fire departments, and other public institutions. In 1969, the Disaster Relief Act made federal aid available to individual citizens. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter issued the executive order that created FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
The disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries can be studied as real world experiments, generating data to analyze and evaluate how effective the government is in the growing number of disaster-relief roles it has taken on. We have chosen Hurricane Katrina as the case-study focus of this lesson. (Please see entry in the “Catalogue of Disasters” appendix to the Introduction for background data on Hurricane Katrina.) Katrina may seem unique in our contemporary national experience of major disasters, but in the larger historical perspective, this is true only in the specifics of time and place. The story of inadequate and failed government response has been told and retold, and the anecdotes circulating in the media and on the Internet are disturbingly like those from the last disaster and the one before that. We recognize that the nature and quality of the information to be gleaned from anecdotes varies and that care must be taken when using anecdotes as evidence. To that end, the Katrina stories selected to illustrate points of analysis in this lesson are those we believe to be representative of modern government disaster response and relief.
