Rebuilding After Katrina

By Jane Bullock and George Haddow

Several factors must be considered by local, State and Federal government officials, the business sector and those non-profit groups that will be critical players in the rebuilding of New Orleans, outlying Parishes and communities in southeastern Louisiana and communities in Mississippi and Alabama devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

First and foremost, the focus of the rebuilding effort in New Orleans and the gulf Coast region must focus on reinventing how residents and businesses live and function in such a high risk area. Hurricane Katrina will not be the last hurricane to impact the area and it would be foolish and ultimately wasteful to rebuild to 20th century standards. There must be a commitment by everyone involved in the rebuilding effort - government, the private sector, the general public - to set new standards that will render communities more resilient and that will lessen the impacts of future hurricanes.

The first step in developing and implementing new disaster resilient standards is designing and implementing a program for full community participation in the recovery effort. All residents and community stakeholders must be directly involved in the planning and design processes that will determine how best to rebuild, and in some cases relocate, their homes and businesses.

Multi-jurisdictional consensus building processes have been used successfully in the aftermath of the 1997 floods in the upper Midwest that resulted in the evacuation of Grand Forks, North Dakota and to address the flooding hazard in Napa County, California. In each instance, community, business and non-profit leaders together with ordinary citizens worked together to design long-term plans to mitigate the flood risks to the communities and their way of life. The process can be painful and the competing interests and needs may appear daunting at first but the final results have served to unite the residents and businesses in a community-wide effort to become disaster resilient.

Part of this consensus process involves educating the entire community, including community leaders, concerning the new and old methods for mitigating hurricane and flooding hazards. This process must include full consideration of both structural mitigation actions and non-structural actions. There are of number of structural actions to be considered including strengthening the existing levees to resist a category 4 or 5 hurricane, building storm water diversion canals, enhancing and/or expanding the existing pumping system and dune reconstruction.

But these structural actions alone will not solve the problem. Non-structural actions such as restoring the wetlands below New Orleans, conserving existing wetlands throughout the Gulf Coast region, upgrading and strictly enforcing building codes especially in the area of structural elevation standards must also be considered and incorporated into the recovery plan.

The community consensus building process should result in an understanding and commitment by all members of each community to a plan of action to rebuild to disaster resilient standards. This process must be ongoing and efforts to continue to educate the public and incorporate new standards and practices in the future must be maintained.

It will not be cheap. Right now the damage estimates run in the tens of billions of dollars and rebuilding the infrastructure and the homes and businesses in New Orleans and the region will likely top $100 billion.

The Federal government will play a major role in funding the recovery. It is critical that an individual be appointed to lead the Federal government recovery effort who is an actively engaged partner in the recovery with the authority to make multi-billion dollar investments, has the full confidence and support of the President and who is accountable. This person must be visible and engaged and readily identified with this effort. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes that occurred in the initial Federal response to Katrina where it was difficult, if not impossible, to identify who was in charge of the Federal response.

It is critical that the business community step forward and fully participate in the recovery. The business community has a huge stake in the rebuilding of the community infrastructure and the homes of their employees to disaster resilient standards. The active involvement of the business community in the consensus building process will ensure that their needs are acknowledged, understood and addressed in the recovery. The leaders of the recovery in many of the communities impacted by Katrina are likely to come from the ranks of the business community and their business continuity planners.

Finally, there is no arguing with the fact that Katrina has had impacts far beyond New Orleans and the Gulf Coast witness the price and availability of gasoline in its aftermath. Rebuilding the region to disaster resilient standards will require that we as nation, and in truth the nations of the world, make a full commitment to addressing the impacts of global warming. Katrina is the poster child for the ever increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters that can be directly attributed to global climate change.

Would it not be appropriate if Katrina's legacy to the world is that it prompted global action to reduce the causes of global warming and thereby reduce the likelihood that another Katrina strikes anywhere in the world in the future.

About the Authors
George D. Haddow currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at The George Washington University, Washington, DC. He is also a Principal in Bullock & Haddow LLC, a Washington-based disaster management and homeland security consulting firm. Bullock & Haddow's client list includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the World Bank, the Corporation for National and Community Service, DRI International and several rural counties in North Carolina. From 1993-2001, Mr. Haddow served in the Office of the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as the White House Liaison and the deputy Chief of Staff. In these positions, Mr. Haddow was involved in the day-to-day management of FEMA, responsible for the Director's communications; policy formulation in the areas of disaster response, public/private partnerships, public information, environmental protection and disaster mitigation including the design and implementation of FEMA's national disaster mitigation initiative entitled Project Impact: Building Disaster Resistant Communities. Mr. Haddow managed FEMA's disaster management and mitigation projects in Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Ecuador and the Bahamas. The author may be reached at ghaddow@gwu.edu

Jane A. Bullock currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at The George Washington University, Washington, DC. Ms. Bullock has worked in emergency management for over 20 years, culminating in serving as Chief of Staff to James Lee Witt the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In this position Ms. Bullock served as principal advisor to the Director, reorganized and streamlined the Agency operations, managed the day-to-day operations of the Agency; directed, monitored, and evaluated Agency strategic and communication processes; and oversaw administration of the Agency's resources, including the disaster relief fund, supervising the response and recovery to over 300 disasters. She represented the Administration with Congress, State and municipal governments, foreign officials, constituent groups and the media. She was Chief architect of FEMA's Project Impact: Building Disaster Resistant Communities, a nationwide effort by communities and businesses to implement prevention and risk reduction programs. She was principal on a project to create National Disaster Response and Mitigation system for Argentina and in six Central American and Caribbean countries. In response to the emerging threat of terrorism, she served as part of the Clinton Administration's Interagency Committee on National Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection. Since leaving FEMA, she is a partner in a disaster management/homeland security consulting firm with clients in the United States and worldwide. She is the coauthor of a series of books on planning and building communities in hazardous areas.