Hurricane Katrina: a democracy disaster

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Teddy Roosevelt said many incisive things, including this:

“To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

Nearly a century later – o-n-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d years, this unholy alliance is alive and well, and hurricane Katrina showed that it gets in the way of providing the most essential services that Americans have every right to expect from their government when natural forces lash out, especially when lives are at stake.

The 2005 Katrina catastrophe should go down in American history as a wakeup call about our government’s deterioration.  As New Orleans quickly flooded, stranded and suffering victims asked “How can this be happening in the United States?”  Television audiences saw what they are accustomed to seeing in third world countries.  The failure of levees that caused widespread flooding in New Orleans, however, was repeatedly predicted and, therefore, preventable.

Emergency response failures were also evident, including: No city plans to evacuate some 125,000 mostly poor and African American residents who were known to lack the ability to leave on their own, to quickly evacuate the many hospitals in the city, to evacuate tourists, to maintain law and order, and to pre-position necessary supplies in the city’s evacuation centers.  The governor failed to move National Guard units into the city when it became clear a very strong hurricane would devastate the city.  The Corps of Engineers did not even have a plan ready to implement when levees failed.  There was no communications backup critical to emergency responders despite the predictable failure of land and cellular phone systems in such a situation.  As the Washington Post editorialized: “Given the known risks, the response of government – local, state and federal – to the approaching storm was inadequate, uncoordinated and inept.  …If the response to an anticipated risk is so poor, what, then, would happen in the face of a surprise event such as a bioterrorism incident or nuclear attack?”

Decades of politicians did not take the necessary steps to protect the below-sea-level city from inevitable flooding caused by a major hurricane.  Fittingly, in 2001 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the top three likely major disasters facing America.  Also in 2001, an article in Scientific American was entitled “Drowning New Orleans.”  Among the notable things it pointed out were: “A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands.  …New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen.  …A direct hit is inevitable.  ..Thus far, however, Washington has turned down appeals for substantial aid.”  A federal plan was created after a 1965 flood, but the project was never funded to completion.  Mike Parker, former civilian head of the Army Corps of Engineers emphasized: “I blame a lot of our leaders over the past 40 years.”  With more adequate funding, he said: “Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in.”  A senior Corps official admitted: “The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature because we were not authorized to provide a Category Four or Five protection design.”  Katrina was a Category Four when it hit New Orleans.

Nevertheless, President George W. Bush said this a few days after the calamity and awful government response was evident to the world: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”  Anybody?  Was this an intentional untruth or was Bush’s staff ignorant of what every knowledgeable person knew?  Tim Russert on Meet the Press asked incredulously: “How could the president be so wrong, so misinformed?”  Apparently, outright lying to justify poor federal action was not even considered.  And it was a lie.  The head of the National Hurricane Center has said that he notified local, state, and federal officials 32 hours before landfall that Katrina would be catastrophic with flooding virtually certain.

Despite all the clear evidence of what was inevitable and required, there was a drastic cut in funding for the New Orleans flood control system by the Bush administration because of the Iraq war funding needs, tax cuts, and corporate handouts.  Funds that the Corps wanted for preventing a flood catastrophe were slashed by 44.2 percent from 2001 through 2005.  In early 2005, the Bush White House opposed funding that the Louisiana congressional delegation sought for flood control.  It also drastically cut funding for FEMA, perhaps explaining why there was no supply of satellite phones.

Despite the facts, soon after the Katrina disaster hit White House spokesperson Scott McClellan claimed that “flood control has been a priority of this administration from day one.”  This lie matched the Bush lie for chutzpah and disrespect for the public’s intelligence.  The framing of the event by the Bush administration was that it was the nation’s largest and worst natural disaster, designed to excuse the administration’s neglect and incompetence.  Better framing is: Hurricane Katrina did not destroy New Orleans as much as bad politicians and bureaucratic bungling did.  Nature throws us hazards; people turn them into disasters.  The hurricane could not be stopped, but the flooding should have been prevented and when it wasn’t the government should have provided faster aid.  Thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of terribly disrupted lives, and a cost over $100 billion could have been prevented by spending some $20 billion for both wetlands restoration south of New Orleans and beefing up the city’s levee system.

Only on Internet blogs was a connection made between the Katrina disaster and the failure of elected representatives in American democracy to serve the public interest; here are two examples:

1) Democracy is a bit of a crude instrument.  Public officials have strong incentives to direct funds away from dull-but-worthy endeavors and toward well-financed interest groups.  …Unless voters and the press demand the heads of officials who screw up, future screw-ups are guaranteed.

2) The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.

Katrina should become a metaphor for America’s failed representative democracy.  Americans need to remember that government is a necessary good.

Note: This article was first published by JUST Response on September 7 2005. Joel S. Hirschhorn’s current book is Sprawl Kills – How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money, his next one is Fake Democracy – Status Quo Busting to Save Our Republic. He can be reached through www.sprawlkills.com.

Return to top

Return to opening page