Thoughts and comments on the below response to this question Discuss the federal government's response to the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. Was it successful or a failure? Give examples specific to oversight. Evaluate local and state government efforts to integrate support.

When evaluating the federal governments response to the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, we can conclude that it was a failure. There was no plan that was properly carried out. Due to unorganized and ineffective efforts of response, so many people lost their lives. Even though the federal government should not be solely held accountable for the failure of response and recovery efforts, they still play a huge role. The important issue to analyze is how much power the federal government has in these situations because unless the local government involves the federal government, than the response is limited and ineffective. At the same time, we watched in the video about how the national response of deployment and command organizations were ineffective. It took days for the troops to arrive. Even though the government knew such hurricane was likely to happen, they were not prepared or prepared enough. On contrast, David Boaz states that Louisiana was given more federal funds for army core of engineers civil projects over the past years, but they chose to not spend it on flood projects. (Dyer, 1)

The Federal government provides federal grants, but the local government decides how to spend that money which leaves a lot of responsibility for the local government. Also, why would the president request to help rather than the governor requesting help from the federal government. First of all, both parties are at fault here because the federal government should have been involved from the beginning knowing the level of extremity, but others might say that maybe they wanted to see how the state could handle this on their own. Even if so, why wait five days? On the other hand, the Louisiana governor still doesnt request help even though the extremity is so severe and waits for the federal governments offer to be involvement. (Dyer, 1) On top of this, people who are stuck in the middle of this mess are threatened with looting even though they are homeless and hungry without any support from the local-federal-state government.

Again, the federal governments response to recovery is viewed as a failure because of late involvement, not organized troops, waiting days for the troops to arrive, and threating people criminally charge them. Its apparent that there was a communication problem considering the damaged infrastructure. In the federal governments defense, FEMA isnt responsible for providing mass care or transportation but rather tasks agencies to provide those services according t the state and local officials identification of necessary missions and required commodities which FEMA- through its organizational structure, coordination practices, and administrative support- will assign to a federal department or secure from private sector. (LSU, 2) These factors highly push the failure responsibility to the local government. For example, local government is criticized for not using public transportation to evacuate the people who were left behind. When the governor refused the Presidents request to federalize the state national guard, it only created delays and caused chaos between state and federal command structures. When there is no proper way of leading, there is no way help can be allocated properly and efficiently. The issue with local and state government is that even though they knew that there was going to be a hurricane, they didnt properly prepare for it and made the wrong decisions afterwards in receiving assistance and being able to provide support to the people. The federal government couldnt have been involved unless the local and state government involved them. There is a lack of proper communication between state and local government along with collaboration efforts. Local government expected people to evacuate in less than twenty-four hours and didnt provide any form of transportation to the people who didnt have transportation. (Clearly impossible) Waiting for disaster to happen until help is received was an ineffective form of collaboration.