Case Study of Hurricane Katrina

Introduction:

There are many effects of the crises or issues on any company or organization and also many of the persons have also been affected more than ever. (Wang, 2008). That is the reason that leaders should be well aware of thing problem and they also need to acquire special kind of skills so that they may prepare themselves for managing and finding the possible solutions which can become a big threat for the existence of the organization. (Houlihan (2007). These skills include the ability for anticipating possible outcomes and reaction of the employees and way of discussing with them about the development of the strategy which would be effective in solving any specific problem. The most thing a leader should do is to understand the emotions and feeling of his staff and also it’s the major responsibility of the leader to make the road map clear for its employees that where the company wants to go and how they can achieve this. Further, by giving more autonomy for the staff and consider them as the part of the organization will boost up their level of confidence and level of work as well. (Collins 2007). All of the employees should be treated as responsible adults and leaders are required to trust them for expressing their opinions and thoughts and makes them to open their school of thoughts as this will enable them to be more creative and innovative. The crises or problems in any organization should be taken as natural phase in the development of the company. (Seeger 2001). This thing shows that the crises needs to be treated as part of the development but not considered as a situation which is like a harm. Crises can also leads to new opportunities and makes better way in the development and in addition to this, it also gives new ways and new strategies which may result in more effective development of the organizations. (H. E. Willoughby, 1984).

Theoretical background for crisis management

It has been defined by Skolund in the year of 2002 that the crises in any organization is actually an event that is making threats directly against the persons working there including the materials and resources utilizing in that organization. It also threaten the intangible resources which is actually knowledge or trade mark value. Crises may happen when there is much differentiation in the stakeholder’s expectations and actual performance of the company as expectations are build according to the history of the company and stakeholders the same or better for the future. (Christensen, S. L. & Kohls, J. (2003).

Crises can be subdivided into 7 different categories as economical, physical, HR, informational, natural, reputational and psychopathic. Some of the details of these crises are describe in the following table.

Sr. No.

Categories

Examples

1

Economic

Strikes of the labor or some decline in the stock market and major earnings as well.

2

Physical

Loss in the key equipment or disruptions in the plant.

3

HR

Loss of many personnel and increase in the absentees, violence in the workplace, Bad attitude of the managers

4

Informational

Leakage of the important or confidential information

5

Natural

Hurricanes, earthquake, floods

6

Reputational

Rumors about the organization, tampering with the corporate

7

Psychopathic

Manipulation in the services or products, terrorism or kidnapping.

There are two types of crises management, Proactive and reactive which are describes as follows:

Management of the crises in the way of proactive means planning in advance which can be basically used for handling some unforeseen events or risks which may come in future. Today’s world, There is need in the organizations that advance planning should be done so that they may not fall into some serious crises which could become threat to their survival in future as well. The proactive managing enables the organizations for gearing up for the events which may occur in future in advance and makes it possible for the organization to face those problems without much loss. (Mark DeMaria and John Kaplan, 1994). Proactive management is very much important to do for all types of organizations but it is more important to those ones which are working in much risky and uncertain environment under much risky and uncertain conditions and they are also expected to face crises every now and then. Proactive crises management is basically like forecasting of the potential risks and crises and planning that how these crises can be eliminated or at least can be minimized.

On the other hand, reactive management deals with the problems or crises when they comes up. It is also one of the style of the management which is much considered due to its ability for quickly getting of the resources back in to the production, does not matter those resources are people or materials or equipment’s. (Collins, C. L. (2007). To be good in the reactive management one should have the following skills:

1.     Decisive and able to act quickly.

2.     Ability for finding the root cause of the problem.

3.     Innovative and creative

4.     To be able to remain calm at the time of problem.

5.     Ability for always finding the plan B.

The one who is very good in reactive managing or planning is definably able to remain calm and he is also able for quickly analyzing the problems and its cause instead of getting lost in the symptoms and that leader is able to think many of the possible solutions in which some are proven and some are new according to his thoughts and nature of the problems. Those leaders are equally implementing the solutions for resolving the problems. (Braverman, M. (2003). This way of managing the problems is mostly desirable skill for the managers to have. People can be tracked back to the work quickly if managers are able to solve the problem quickly without wasting time. But reactive managing is not considered as the best solution and managers are need to improve their abilities more in proactive management as well.

Risk can come internally and externally in which external risks are considered as those risk which are not direct under the control of the management like political issues and rates of the exchange and on the other hand, internal risk include breaching of the information. Management of the risk in any organization as without risk management, an organization is unable to clearly define its goals and objectives for the future. If company makes its objectives without taking in to consideration about the risk then there are much chances that the company will lose its goals and objectives. In past few years, many companies have added the management of the risk in their team and responsibility of this team is the identification of the risks and making the appropriate strategies for safe guarding the company from those risks. Big organizations mostly face more and big risks which could have very bad effects on them so the risk should be encountered timely and risk management should be more and more precise and sophisticated.

Case Study (Hurricane Katrina):

The case study which is under taken in this study is Hurricane Katrina which is considered as the costliest natural disaster in whole of the history of the US. Hurricane Katrina had made the landfill at the grand Isle which is almost 90 km south of the New Orleans at the time of 10 AM on 29th August 2005. (Hoffman SM, Oliver-Smith A, 2008).

It is ranked as the 6th strongest hurricanes in Atlantic what makes it most deadly is where it got hit and how much lose there was with respect to human and material as well. It crosses the Southern Florida and there it hits almost 100,000 homes without any power and then it got strengthen more before veering inland in the direction of the Louisiana which makes it almost 90 KM south of the New Orleans at the time of 10 AM on the date of 29th August.

Then the Katrina sustained speed of the wind which was almost 200 km/h and then this storm passes by the New Orleans which damages the many of the buildings over there which causes huge disaster to others as well. Force of the wind of this Hurricane was recorded along the 200 km stretch of the line of the coast along with some of the scenes of the damage and flooding in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi as this huge storm surges from deep of the sea which makes the flood expanded too many kilometers inland in many places. The region of New Orleans was dependably been defenseless against surges and it sits alongside the Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi waterway. There are numerous wetlands in the Mississippi delta which are utilized for the assurance of the new Orleans which have been expelled in size as they have been depleted and furthermore as they are famished of a considerable lot of the dregs since waterway of the Mississippi is particularly set out against the surges. New Orleans is additionally sinking and the depleted delicate silt which is based upon likewise have been compacted because of the heaviness of the structures and the depleting water which has upheld the structure of the dirt additionally has its effect on it.

                                                                                                    

Indicator

Values (2014 estimated)

GDP per capita PPP

$52800

People Living in Poverty (less than $2 per day)

15% of the population

Access to Clean Water

99.4% of the population

Life Expectancy

79.56 years

Literacy Rate

99%

People Per Doctor

2.42 doctors per 1000 people

The temperature of the sea was over 27 degree Celsius and it was rotating winds over the surface of the ocean. The Hurricane starts from the Bahamas on 23rd of August with the interaction between the tropical waves along with the remnants of the tropical depression ten. In the next day, there was a new depression which was intensified more into a big storm named Katrina and this cyclone moves towards the western in the direction of Florida and it got more strength into a Hurricane after just 2 hours and makes the landfill Hallandale Beach on 25th Of August. After every one week, it starts in the gulf of the Mexico on the 26th August and starts becoming deeper and it got the category of 5 but then it comes to the category of 3 before making its 2nd landfill in 29th August in the south of Louisiana. (Mark DeMaria and John Kaplan, 1994).

The Hurricane Katrina was likewise anticipated by the National Hurricane Center and they additionally gave especially exact plot of the track of the tempest and furthermore the normal landfill which was not a long way from the New Orleans which prompts the clearing of the general population yet in rush large portions of the general population were deserted and many individuals additionally declined to move. The notice given by the National Hurricane Center additionally empowers a portion of the debacle recuperation reactions to the Katina begins from the tempest alongside the FEMA arrangements which run from the Logistical supply organizations to a funeral home group alongside the refrigerated trucks. The drift watch safeguarded more than even 33500 individuals in this tempest and right around 60,000 individuals were stranded in the New Orleans. There was additionally the military reaction on 28th August and very nearly 58,000 gatekeepers were chosen for managing the eventual outcomes of the tempests alongside troops which were originating from the greater part of the 50 unique states. A significant part of the AID against the harms of the tropical storm Katrina originates from the USA in which a large portion of the volunteers likewise gave their help to the neighborhood inhabitants and a hefty portion of the occupants rising up out of the New Orleans made landfill and a considerable lot of them were coordinated to not enter the region which was proceeded for more them right around six months. There was a fast reaction universally also and there was more than seventy nations which were promising financial gifts or other sort of help. (Bryson, J. M. (2004). From those nations, Kuwait made the biggest promise which was right around 500 million dollars while India sent many covers and units alongside the aviation based armed forces IL-76 which convey very nearly 25 tons of the alleviation supplies for the casualties of the sea tempest on thirteenth of September 2005. In this race, huge numbers of the NGO's likewise came in the race for giving their help.

Due to Hurricane Approximately 80 percent of the city was fully flooded and there were many business districts and main tourist center were fully destroyed. The extent of the damage varies from one part to other part and some of the areas also received one foot of water while others were submerged up to almost 10 feet. (Brockner, J, 2008). There were almost 986 deaths in this incident and main damages of the flood include 40 percent drownings and Trauma consist of the 25 percent of the deaths and 11 percent of the people died due to heart attack. There were almost 600,000 houses damaged and at the peak of the damages, the storm destroyed 273,000 people.

Due to this disaster, there was huge decrease in the population of the New Orleans which was before the incident 484,674 and after the incident the population decreases up to 230,172. Among one million houses which were destroyed by the hurricane, half of them belongs to the Louisiana and 70 percent of the units suffered damage from the incident and after flooding. The in total damage caused by the Hurricane Katrina was almost 150 billion dollars to 153 billion dollars. From this value almost 30 billion dollars were claimed by the private insurance sectors.   

Conclusion and Recommendation:

Many of the organizations are facing much critical crises which need to be focused on the priority of the two way style of the communication and need to make new strategies and the introduction of a transformational style of the leadership for establishing a new and better vision and direction of the future of the company.

By collecting all the information in this study, we have come up to the solution that the natural disasters gives some extra insight in to the society and culture as well and by telecasting the death are only fascinating for those who are in watching sitting comfortably. The disparities with respect to the social economic which have been contributed to this suffering are not always get under the consideration. The planning of the disaster should give more emphasize those areas which are at greater risk as many of the disasters are caused by the environmental hazards after years and even after century as well. The pattern in the rising of the risk for those who have been improver sized and have ethical monitories and in some other way they have been marginalized following the incident of hurricane Katrina. There is similarity of the high risk populations which is in between the day to day health disparities are striking and there is also well preparation of the disaster in the US which has been driven heavily by the high drama of the bioterrorism and also the video media potential of many of the mass causalities. There a person gets the responsibility of making a contingency planning he should consider some of the following analogies:

·        One should not go into the task of court without having any attorney from an expert.

·        He or she should not try to attempt do it yourself the surgery of the cancer after having consultation from the WebMD.

·        Whenever there is some kind of serious natural disaster is threating the company, there is need of having advice from some expert and need to have their consultation.

The problem of the natural disaster can be accomplished by having data from Weather Data which can assist with the planning and gives all the information for making some of the critical decisions for some kind of specific operations and some specific sites. Some of the natural Disasters like Hurricane Katrina will always be so much far away from us and so far science has not been able for finding some ways for the prevention of hurricanes but there is a solution given by leadership qualities for minimizing its effects and some solution has also given by the economics which is known as free market. Some of the subsidies of the government which encourages the people for living in the zones of the floods and also the regulations of the government which punish some of the private individuals for coming for the aid of the victims just make the matters more badly. All of the damages can also be minimized by allowing the private persons to be a volunteer and allow them for selling their services for aiding the victims of the disaster. The interference of the government makes this process worse rather making them better.