Lessons Learned From Katrina

What was learned from the events occurring as a result of Hurricane Katrina? First of all, we can't win in a battle with nature. In our arrogance, we try to build walls to hold back water, we build structures to withstand wind, but sooner or later there will be something that will happen to make it all fall down. With that in mind, our leaders of today must be able to prepare themselves for the inevitable. As I recall, the local and state leadership was aware of the strength of Hurricane Katrina and knew people would need to be evacuated. Many people did leave on their own and some were taken to shelter in the Superdome. What about those who got left behind? Amazingly, many of them wanted to stay to ride out the storm and then the ones who survived had to be rescued from rooftops when their homes were under water. Probably some of the residents of New Orleans didn't have the resources to leave due to a lack of transportation or physical disability.

So what was the responsibility of the local and state government to get those people out? Should they have declared marshal law and forced people to leave? The problem with this storm that made it so much different than any other storm, was not the fact that people didn't leave when they were told it was not safe to stay, it was that there was a man-made wall that couldn't hold the water the storm dumped on New Orleans. Yes, there was devastation that took place all around Louisiana and her neighboring states. The storm was an awesomely powerful one, the likes of which hadn't been seen in years. And some people did die in homes that were destroyed by storm surge and wind. But most of the devastation and subsequent outcry was created by a situation that was more like awaking a sleeping giant than a direct causal factor of the storm. Of course, the sleeping giant was the levees that broke and allowed an entire section of the city to be completely flooded.

In every major incident there is a tendency to "Monday morning quarterback" the incident. It is easy to sit back and point out blame when all the facts are in and we find out things that may not have been possible to know for sure before the incident. However, if we don't look back and see what we missed before the event took place, or critique the response to the event itself, the we will doom ourselves to repeat the mistakes and we fail the ones who follow us. Leaders can't hide their heads in the sand and hope the issues will fade away. In the case of Katrina, there was such chaos and mass looting that the local governments couldn't contain it. There was too long a wait before the Louisiana governor asked for federal assistance to bring in the military. I wonder if there shouldn't be a way for the president to declare a national emergency when multiple states are involved in a mass disaster like that. If so, maybe he could have mobilized the military more quickly. But, as I understand it, the federal government can't just step in on its own until requested by the states.

Another problem was that the citizens of New Orleans and surrounding townships and parishes weren't the only ones looting. Local government officials, including police and fire personnel (hopefully the minority) were stealing left and right. Some were even caught on video and broadcast nationwide! Now, if you were a law abiding citizen of Louisiana and saw the local police stealing from Walmart, how safe would you feel? Even though there was a nationwide mutual aid effort underway where police and fire personnel went to the Gulf coast states to help restore order, it took a long time to get them mobilized and in place. Even once they were there, the ability to communicate was limited over a long distance, cell phone service was hit and miss for quite some time and two way radio communication was generally limited to short distances because the local infrastructure wasn't compatible with out of state equipment.

I could go on and on with what I believe to be many of the problems that existed after Katrina. The one thing that stands out though as the biggest reason the situation was so bad, was that there was no one who stood up and was the point man, or leader people could look to for direction. Mayor Nagy was there but not very strong. The Governor was on TV, but didn't seem to stand out as the one giving direction. Louisiana and New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and numerous towns needed to have someone get up and say to the people, "We know you are devastated by what happened, all of us are. However, we are going to come through this and this is how we are going to help you." That leader needed to outline a specific strategy for rescuing the stranded, bringing order to chaos, securing life sustaining supplies, as well as how the dead would be recovered and how rebuilding would take place. In my opinion, people floundered because there was no plan and it didn't seem anyone was really taking charge.

People are sheep, and sheep need a shepherd. There was no shepherd and the ones who were supposed to be watching over them, the sheepdogs (police), were as bad as the wolves (bad guys). People will respond to strong leadership and a plan. Give them something to have hope in and they will follow as far as the plan works. We saw this on 9/11 when Mayor Guilliani stepped out and went out to the citizens of New York and assured them he was going to make sure they were ok. No one went to the people of New Orleans or anywhere else and told them they were going to be ok. There was no strong leader for people to look to for hope. In the future, if we haven't learned anything else, there has to be a leader to lead the sheep or they will scatter.

Why HR Has Credibility Problem

For me, when I think of the Human Resource manager, I think of someone who is so intent on filling vacancies, they don't have time to address the quality of life issues for employees. Unfortunately, as a government agency we have more bosses than just the department head so it is not necessarily the HR manager's fault for all of the issues we face. Since we are currently in a hiring crisis the HR manager and recruiters are looking for almost anyone they can get in. Competition is fierce among the area agencies to get applicants and we are all using almost the same applicant pool. Consequently, there seems to be an attempt to get applicants to accept a position with our agency before they can be hired by anyone else. This has been problematic in that there have been reports by new hires that they were hired with the understanding they would receive certain benefits that were later taken away due to budget issues. That left a bad taste in the mouths of some of the new employees who now, in many cases, are looking for employment elsewhere.

Another aspect of how the HR management impacts the rest of the organization is the quality of personnel being hired. The perception has been that recruitment is being done more at colleges and universities than at military bases or local job fairs. We actively recruit and test at locations hundreds of miles away, primarily to the North and Northwest. As a result, we are hiring more young people who have just graduated from college and have little to no life experience. The new employees are still living with their parents in many cases, and have had very little job experience where they have much interaction with customers. This has created a situation that forces the training to concentrate on teaching interpersonal skills in order to help prevent negative interactions and reduce complaints.

In our organization, the HR manager is a civilian with no experience as an active member of the public safety field. This does not lend itself to bolstering the credibility of that manager as one who knows what kind of person is needed for our business. In fact, in the past 15 years or so, we have had a civilian in that position and there has been an overwhelming lack of belief among the rank and file that the HR manager is qualified to lead in that role. While reality may not bear that out, at least anecdotally there is support for that feeling when we look at the quality of some of the recruits being hired and trained.

On the larger scale within the government, HR has lost it's credibility when we look at some of the benefits issues. Yearly pay increases are not uniformly applied and methods of calculating pay increases have been looked at as suspect at best. Without going into great detail, a pay increase that was supposed to have been approved for all employees, when implemented many employees received only a small portion of the amount they were told they would get. When it looks like upper management gets large bonuses and perks that line people don't get, and then benefits get cut or taken away, it is a difficult thing to accept.