Reference no: EM13174891

Disaster Relief on Influencing Settlement in Evacuations

Anticipating future events and policy options requires more than an after-the-fact assessment of what happened before. Making useful predictions it requires analysis in order to infer possibilities in the future. This is contingency planning. Consider these facts: Settlement sites are usually forced settlement sites and the related problems usually include: no reliable water supplies, and, as we witnessed in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, a high water-table. Public health problems associated with settlements should have been properly considered when planning for disaster relief. Policies for dealing with such situations must be established during the planning stage. Other expected problems include:
-- Random defecation. This is hard to control when populations have no experience of, or access to, latrines.
-- A population that is too frightened, too hostile, or too socially fragmented to collaborate effectively.
-- Extreme difficulties in case-detection and epidemic investigation. This situation can occur because of continual movement of the population, often combined with insecurity. It is particularly difficult to estimate the size of populations when there is extensive movement between population centers.
-- The need for an adequate number of staff accompanying groups of displaced people.

Do you believe that the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans had prepared adequate contingency plans providing relief to people relocated settlement and/or evacuation sites?

Note the writer based on the materail presented and the above question in at least 200 words.