Emergency Operations Center Functions Management Research Paper

Analysis of the Local Emergency Operations Center of New Orleans, Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina
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Introduction
The emergency response and operation of the United States was shaken when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the US soil. During this time, the National Response Plan (NPR) was the prevalent government action plan in responding to natural emergencies (Fagel & Krill, 2011, p. 14). The NRP was an emergency response to integrate the tribal, local, state, and federal resources to support and coordinate the assets to recover affected areas (Fagel & Krill, 2011, p. 17). The role and responsibilities of executing the NPR fall first on the Local Chief Executive Officer, which is the mayor or county manager, of the local government (National Response Plan, 2004, p. 8). The Local Chief Executive Officer is responsible for leadership, communication with the public, and facilitating resource-sharing from State or Federal government when the available resources of the Local Government were exhausted during the initial local response of the disaster (National Response Plan, 2004, p. 8).
On the day of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, however, New Orleans sustained extensive damages to properties and loss of human lives because of the strength of the hurricane that breached the levee system, which almost immediately destroyed the communication structures and power connections (Neuman, 2006). Since the Local Government needs to communicate their needs to the next level of government before any resource allocation can be given, local officials struggled in acquiring support because of the broken communication networks. Additionally, the national guards and state-level emergency operations centers were reluctant in assisting due to the lack of official authorization from the chain of command in the NRP (Neuman, 2006).
Despite the advantages of having the NRP, this plan falls apart if the Local Government fails to communicate their situation to the State or Federal government. In this paper, the discussion will focus in analyzing (1) the modes of communication within the local EOC of New Orleans between the public and private sectors; (2) the vulnerable populations within the demographic area; and (3) the public stress management, to evaluate the emergency response problems when the Local EOC of New Orleans failed during Hurricane Katrina.
The Modes of Communication within EOC and Between Public and Private Sectors
Failure of Communication Structures
The primary mode of communication among the officers, commanders, and responders in New Orleans EOC are radios and landline phones (Davis & Robbin, 2015, p. 13). These modes of communication are also central in creating public management networks, communication of information to public and private sectors, and emergency response to vulnerable populations. However, the organization of these communication networks can be disrupted if the communication infrastructures, systems, and equipment are damaged, which can significantly handicap the government's disaster coordination and operation (Davis & Robbin, 2015, p. 9). During Hurricane Katrina, the strong winds and flash floods affected large geographic areas in multiple states with different communities and critical infrastructures exposed at risk. The local government within these states needs strong communication lines to monitor the changes in the conditions of the hurricane and properly navigate the community's coordinated action to protect life and property (Comfort & Haase, 2006, p. 329).
However, the communications in the City of New Orleans failed because of the destruction of infrastructures due to strong winds and subsequent flooding. In the state of Louisiana, the local public safety agencies, such as the Louisiana Fire Department, Police Departments, and even the New Orleans Mayor's office, suffered great damage to facilities and rescue equipment (The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina, 2006, p. 37). The strong winds and flooding in New Orleans forced the Local government to abandon the Emergency Operations Center and establish their command center at a different area to create new reliable networks of communications. However, the local emergency response of New Orleans found it impossible to re-establish the functioning of the command structures during the hurricane. The flash flooding from the breached levee along the local community prevented the response to public emergency hotline 911 or the radio communications (The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina, 2006, p. 36). The local hotline received 911 calls from citizens that are drowning from the flash floods. They received more than 600 calls in just 25 minutes of flooding in their area; however, the local government cannot send help as the public services are blocked by the strong winds and flooding (Davis & Robbin, 2015, p. 13).
According to the study of Comfort (2007), the research finding argues that the failure of the EOC in New Orleans was not due to the lack of communication among its constituents but the misinterpretation of “cognition” in the emerging dangers of Hurricane Katrina. Cognition is the ability to recognize the levels of risk that a community will face as they are exposed to the hazard (Comfort, 2007, p. 189). The initial protocols of the Local Government before Hurricane Katrina made landfall lacked the proper detection, interpretation, and communication of risk to the community. The destruction of communication networks and infrastructures directly resulted from the misattribution of risk and coordination of cognition assessment before the hurricane struck the country (Comfort, 2007).
Old Technologies for the Re-establishment of Communication
The people are dying from the government's lack of effective solutions in addressing communication failure. Some organizations managed to communicate information and coordinate responses using battery-operated two-way radios or walkie-talkies. Some agencies had two-way radios as their backup communication devices; however, some agencies are not able to make them operational when the EOC was abandoned (Davis & Robbin, 2015, p. 14).
Other agencies that do not have access to the two-way radios communicate information by passing through word of mouth. The remaining functional coordinating agencies of the Emergency Operations Center used index cards and erase boards to keep track of the logistics. The communication between departments utilized pen and paper messages that are delivered by human runners to communicate information from the remaining EOC agencies to the nearby city departments (Davis & Robbin, 2015, p. 14).
The people could not use technology in communicating their needs to the government, and at the same time, the government could not communicate its instructions to the people. One solution that the State of Louisiana utilized was putting written messages inside bottles and dropping them from helicopters to the people on the local area (The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina, 2006, p. 37). A few days after the initial contact of Hurricane Katrina, the city personnel can be physically deployed to get the appeals and instruct the residents for the voluntary evacuations and relief operations (Davis & Robbin, 2015, p. 14).
Although communication was re-establ...