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News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Katrina's Unnatural Disaster
The Center for Progressive Reform has released a comprehensive report detailing how the systemic failures of the federal government to heed past calls for health, safety and environmental protections contributed to the magnitude of devastation in New Orleans. The report also examines policy decisions related to emergency response that led to the dismal failures of FEMA to adequately evacuate, shelter, rescue and relocate storm victims. From the report:
It is clear even at this early stage that the Hurricane Katrina tragedy is not a .wakeup call, as some have described it; rather, it is a consequence of past wake-up calls unheeded. By any reasonable measure, government failed the people of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster of enormous proportion, but its tragic consequences have been made even worse by an unnatural disaster--the failure of our government adequately to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the devastation that the hurricane brought.
The report concludes with an analysis of "how and why poor policy-making and short-sighted planning guaranteed that Katrina visited disproportionate suffering on New Orleanians who were poor and African-American."
The full report is available at: http://www.progressivereform.org/Unnatural_Disaster_512.pdf
Posted by Genevieve Smith
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