Disaster Management: Empirical Study

Unfortunately disasters happen all the time in the world no matter what the preparation a country goes through there are going to be times that a disaster of natural or manmade creations will occur. How the infrastructure of the reaction to the disaster is handled will determine how much the people in the area suffer. Unfortunately there have been a large quantity of disasters for experts to study and find methods that work well for disaster management and those that should be avoided.

FEMA

One of the most significant impacts on modern day disaster management is based on the poor response of the United States Federal Government in reaction to the Katrina disaster. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and put much of the city under water, destroyed basic services and left thousands of people homeless and trapped for many days. AS days rolled into months there was one failure by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, (FEMA) This agency didn’t provide relief, and in fact actually exacerbated the suffering of the people affected by the hurricane. Emergency management needed to be changed in order to reassure people that if a disaster hit their area the government would have a clue as to how to respond to the disaster.

Japan Not Much Better

During a recent tsunami, Japan was hit, areas of the country were destroyed and people were left homeless and without hope. Worse still, one of their nuclear reactors had a melt down and nuclear particles were released into the atmosphere and environment. The public and the world was not well informed about the relative security and safety of the situation and people were infected with radioactive material. It seemed like the government in Japan lacked the basic communication skills to express to the world what was happening, as if by not being totally honest would make things less destructive. This disaster is still affecting the natural environment of the world and it is believed that the fish in the pacific ocean off the coast of the United States will have some sort of radioactive infection as soon as 2014.

Conclusion

Disaster management has a long way to go as we have been able to study the virtual ineffectiveness of disaster management agencies across the globe. The manner in which governments provide for the well being of its citizens is going to determine the faith that all citizens have in that government agency. Failure is not an option when it comes to keeping people safe and sound because it is by the confidence of the people that governments are allowed to rule.