Summary Sequence Actions & Policies & Ethical Violations Hurricane Katrina Discussion There is a three pictures about the reading of this case and write 2
Summary Sequence Actions & Policies & Ethical Violations Hurricane Katrina Discussion There is a three pictures about the reading of this case and write 2 pages with 1.5 spacing providing :A brief summary of the sequence (a bullet-point summary in your written response is acceptable but more time can be take in the presentation).What were the actions or policies in place that led to or exacerbated the disaster?Identify (with as much specificity as possible) the specific ethical violations that occurred, if any.What could have been done differently to prevent the tragedy if a more sound or ethical choicehad been made by those in responsible charge?You are expected to have multiple sources beyond those available in the textbook. Be sure to cite your sources. CASE 16
Hurricane Katrina
The ASCE report documents engineering failures,
organizational and policy failures, and lessons learned
for the future. Chapter 7 of the report (“Direct Causes
of the Catastrophe”) begins as follows:44
What is unique about the devastation that befell the
New Orleans area from Hurricane Katrinacompared
to other natural disastersis that much of the destruc-
tion was the result of engineering and engineering-
related policy failures.
From an engineering standpoint, the panel asserts,
there was an underestimation of soil strength that ren-
dered the levees more vulnerable than they should
have been, a failure to satisfy standard factors of safety
in the original designs of the levees and pumps, and a
failure to determine and communicate clearly to the
public the level of hurricane risk to which the city
and its residents were exposed. The panel concludes,45
As we have noted in the text, until approximately
1970 nearly all engineering codes of ethics held
that the engineer’s first duty is fidelity to his or her
employer and clients. However, soon after 1970,
most codes insisted that Engineers shall hold para-
mount the safety, health, and welfare of the
public. Whatever may have precipitated this
change in the early 1970s, recent eventsranging
from the collapse of Manhattan’s Twin Towers on
September 11, 2001, to the collapse of a major
bridge in Minneapolis/St. Paul on August 1, 2007
make apparent the vital importance of this principle.
The devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina along
the Gulf of Mexico coastline states of Louisiana, Mis-
sissippi, and Alabama in late August 2005 is also a
dramatic case in point.
Hardest hit was Louisiana, which endured the
loss of more than 1,000 lives, thousands of homes,
damage to residential and nonresidential property of
more than $20 billion, and damage to public infra-
structure estimated at nearly $7 billion. Most severely
damaged was the city of New Orleans, much of
which had to be evacuated and which suffered the
loss of more than 100,000 jobs. The city is still reel-
ing, apparently having permanently lost much of its
population and only slowly recovering previously
habitable areas.
At the request of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers
(USACE), the ASCE formed the Hurricane Katrina Ex-
ternal Review Panel to review the comprehensive
work of USACE’s Interagency Performance Evaluation
Task Force. The resulting ASCE report, The New
Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went
Wrong and Why, is a detailed and eloquent statement
of the ethical responsibilities of engineers to protect
public safety, health, and welfare. 43
With the benefit of hindsight, we now see that
questionable engineering decisions and management
choices, and inadequate interfaces within and between
organizations, all contributed to the problem.
This might suggest that blame-responsibility is in
order. However, the panel chose not to pursue this
line, pointing out instead the difficulty of assigning
blame:46
No one person or decision is to blame. The engineer-
ing failures were complex, and involved numerous deci-
sions by many people within many organizations over a
long period of time.
Rather than attempt to assign blame, the panel
used the hindsight it acquired to make recommenda-
tions about the future. The report identifies a set of crit-
ical actions the panel regards as necessary.
These
CASE 16 Hurricane Katrina
251
actions fall under one of four needed shifts in thought
and approach:47
Improve the understanding of risk and firmly
commit to safety.
Repair the hurricane protection system.
Reorganize the management of the hurricane
protection system.
Insist on engineering quality.
that “ASCE has a long-standing policy that recommends
independent external peer review of public works proj-
ects where performance is critical to public safety,
health, and welfare.” 51 This is especially so where re-
liability under emergency conditions is critical, as it
clearly was when Hurricane Katrina struck. The effec-
tive operation of such an external review process, the
panel concludes, could have resulted in a significant re-
duction in the amount of (but by no means all) destruc-
tion in the case of Hurricane Katrina.
The panel’s final recommendation is essentially a
reminder of our limitations and a consequent ethical
imperative to “place safety first”:52
The first recommended action is that safety be
kept at the forefront of public priorities, preparing for
the possibility of future hurricanes rather than allowing
experts and citizens alike to fall into a complacency
that can come from the relative unlikelihood of a
repeat performance in the near future.
The second and third recommendations concern
making clear and quantifiable risk estimates and com-
municating them to the public in ways that enable
nonexperts to have a real voice in determining the ac-
ceptability or unacceptability of those risks.
The next set of recommendations concern replac-
ing the haphazard, uncoordinated hurricane protection
“system” with a truly organized, coherent system. This,
the panel believes, calls for “good leadership, manage-
ment, and someone in charge.’48 It is the panel’s rec-
ommendation that a high-level licensed engineer, or a
panel of highly qualified, licensed engineers, be
appointed with full authority to oversee the system:49
Although the conditions leading up to the New Or-
leans catastrophe are unique, the fundamental con-
straints placed on engineers for any project are not.
Every project has funding and/or schedule limitations.
Every project must integrate into the natural and man-
made environment. Every major project has political
ramifications.
In the face of pressure to save money or to make up
time, engineers must remain strong and hold true to the
requirements of the profession’s canon of ethics, never
compromising the safety of the public.
The authority’s overarching responsibility will be to
keep hurricane-related safety at the forefront of public
priorities. The authority will provide leadership, strate-
gic vision, definition of roles and responsibilities, for-
malized avenues of communication, prioritization of
funding, and coordination of critical construction, main-
tenance, and operations.
The panel concludes with an appeal to a broader
application of the first Fundamental Canon of ASCE’s
Code of Ethics. Not only must the commitment to pro-
tect public safety, health, and welfare be the guiding
principle for New Orleans’ hurricane protection
system but also “it must be applied with equal rigor
to every aspect of an engineer’s workin New
Orleans, in America, and throughout the world.”53
Reading the panel’s report in its entirety would be
a valuable exercise in thinking through what ASCE’s
first Fundamental Canon requires not only regarding
the Hurricane Katrina disaster but also regarding
other basic responsibilities to the public that are inher-
ent in engineering practice.
A related reading is “Leadership, Service Learn-
ing, and Executive Management in Engineering: The
Rowan University Hurricane Katrina Recovery
Team,” by a team of engineering students and faculty
advisors at Rowan University. 54 In their abstract, the
authors identify three objectives for the Hurricane
Katrina Recovery Team Project:
The panel’s seventh recommendation is to im-
prove interagency coordination. The historical record
thus far, the panel maintains, is disorganization and
poor mechanisms for interagency communication:50
Those responsible for maintenance of the hurricane
protection system must collaborate with system design-
ers and constructors to upgrade their inspection,
repair, and operations to ensure that the system is
hurricane-ready and flood-ready.
Recommendations 8 and 9 relate to the upgrading
and review of design procedures. The panel points out
The main objective is to help distressed communities
in the Gulf Coast Region. Second, this project seeks to
252
CASES
the Asian tsunami disaster. Hafner and Deutsch
56
comment,
not only address broader social issues but also leave a
tangible contribution or impact in the area while
asking the following questions: What do we as profes-
sional engineers have as a responsibility to the commun-
ities we serve, and what do we leave in the community
to make it a better, more equitable place to live? The last
objective is the management team’s successful assess-
ment of the experience, including several logistical chal-
lenges. To this end, this article seeks to help other
student-led projects by relaying our service learning ex-
perience in a coherent, user-friendly manner that serves
as a model experience.
With two disasters behind them, some companies
are applying lessons they have learned to their
hurricane-related philanthropy. GE is a case in point.
During the tsunami, the company put together a
team of 50 project engineersexperts in portable
water purification, energy, health care, and medical
equipment.
After Hurricane Katrina, GE executives took their
cues from Jeffrey R. Immelt, GE’s chief executive, and
reactivated the same tsunami team for New Orleans.
“Jeff told us, ‘Don’t let anything stand in the way of get-
ting aid where it’s needed,'”‘ said Robert Corcoran, vice
president for corporate citizenship.
CORPORATE RESPONSES
Supportive corporate responses to the Katrina hurri-
cane were swift. By mid-September 2005, more than
$312 million worth of aid had been donated by
major corporations, much of it by those with no
plants or businesses in the afflicted areas.
55
Engineers
have played a prominent role in these relief efforts,
as they did after the 9/11 Twin Towers attack and
Discuss how, with corporate backing, engineers
who subscribe to Fred Cuny’s ideas about effective di-
saster relief in his Disasters and Development (Oxford
University Press, 1983) might approach the engineer-
ing challenges of Katrina.
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