1) What role did the National, State and Local Governments have in preventing, mitigating and reacting to Hurricane Katrina?
The national role was FEMA, The state, local and national didn’t have a plan for this size disaster. Also the staff has been cut along with the funding. They did not have a good enough plan and did not act quickly enough. It took six days before anyone did anything.
2) Evaluate how each level of government performed its duties. Be specific and back up your points with facts and logic.
Local: The local government new that this huge storm was coming and should have had the city evacuated and had buses and other vehicles provided for evacuation.
State: The state should have monitored what the local government was doing and helped them out if they needed it. The state also should have come up with better plans, and make sure that the city was evacuated.
Federal: The federal government should have been there a lot sooner than they were, it took them six days and even when they were there they didn’t provide the right care that was needed.
3) After reading the "FEMA and federalism" article, take a stand about the role of the federal government in natural disasters.
I think that the federal government shouldn’t be notified unless they are needed, like if there was a house fire I don’t think that you need to call FEMA but with something as severe as Hurricane Katrina I think they should have acted a lot faster than they did, it took them 6 days to get to New Orleans and even after the people didn’t have food and weren’t rescued. We pay taxes for them to act fast, and we expect them to act fast.