Assignment task:
This is Natural Science! This is about FEMA and their disaster response
FEMA is the national agency that is supposed to aid in the time of natural disasters, like earthquakes. FEMA had a lot of negative publicity in the news because of the way they handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is important to understand more about FEMA's history in order to evaluate their response to Katrina.
FEMA was created in 1979 as an institution to help create order in case of natural events or nuclear events. During the 80s, though, funding shifted more towards the cold war and FEMA drew a lot of criticism for how it handled Hurricane Hugo (89) and Hurricane Andrew (91). So during the mid-90s, new leadership was established and more funding was given to FEMA, which resulted in a much improved response during the later 90s.
Then 9/11 hit, and again, focus and funding shifted away from FEMA to Homeland Security and the war. Unfortunately, when Katrina hit, FEMA was again unprepared, just as it had been only 15 years earlier. This shows how politics and economics often determines natural disaster policy, and how quickly people can forget about previous disasters.
Your specific assignment is to do the following:
Do you think the changes to FEMA in the early 2000's (new leadership, link with Homeland Security, etc) were in line with the mission on the organization? Do you think FEMA as it is today is enough or should there be a whole different approach to how we handle natural disasters?