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The 2005 Hurricane Katrina Response Failure The 2005 Hurricane Katrina response failure The 2005 Hurricane The 2005 Hurricane Katrina response failure Seeing preparedness for foreseeable complex problems Katrina response failure through a neo-institutional lens History is rife with cases where governments fail to manage complex foreseeable problems to the satisfaction of stakeholders. While it might be easy to understand why they struggle to deal with the novel or unforeseen, it is much more puzzling where governments fail to meet widely recognized and deeply understood threats. This study, Seeing preparedness for foreseeable complex which examines the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s, FEMA’s, capacity to manage the very foreseeable hurricane threat using an institutional perspective on problems through a neo-institutional lens preparedness, aims to explain why this is so often the case. This study shows that complex systems of government create deep interdependen- cies that pose major challenges to multi-level interagency coordination in dealing with problems, even those that are foreseeable. When viewed through a neo-institutional lens, the case reveals the role that norms, rules, routines, values, and individual interests played in determining how FEMA responded to major change in the institutional Christer Brown environment and what implications this had for the agency’s preparedness for hurri- canes. We also see that the apparent deterioration of FEMA’s preparedness ahead of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was as much a result of elite over-attentiveness to terrorism as it was FEMA’s own resistance to change. This served to weaken the agency’s ability to garner political support and its readiness to partner with other stakeholders. More generally, this study provides insights concerning how and for what organizations prepare, but also how we might go about more accurately gauging organizational preparedness in future. Christer Brown is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Christer holds an MA in political science from Uppsala University in Sweden. Before joining the Swedish civil service in 2011, Christer worked for several years at the Center for Crisis Management Research and Training (CRISMART) at the Swedish Defence University and as part of the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia. Christer Brown 43 Volume 43 The 2005 Hurricane Katrina response failure Seeing preparedness for foreseeable complex problems through a neo-institutional lens The 2005 Hurricane Katrina response failure Seeing preparedness for foreseeable complex problems through a neo-institutional lens Author: Christer Brown Title: The 2005 Hurricane Katrina response failure: Seeing preparedness for foreseeable complex problems through a neo-institutional lens Author: Christer Brown ISBN: 978-90-824210-0-2 ISSN: 1650-3856 Printed by: Arkitektkopia AB, Bromma 2015 Cover photo courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2005. Beleidsfalen ten tijde van Orkaan Katrina in 2005 Een neo-institutionalistisch perspectief op de omgang met te voorziene complexe problemen Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. Th.L.M. Engelen, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 2 december 2015 om 12.30 uur precies door Christer Brown Promotor: Prof. dr. Bertjan Verbeek, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen Copromotor: Dr. Fredrik Bynander, Försvarshögskolan, Stockholm, Zweden Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. dr. Ira Helsloot, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen Prof. dr. Bengt Sundelius, Försvarshögskolan, Stockholm, Zweden Dr. Kerstin Eriksson, SP Sveriges Tekniska Forskningsinstitut, Borås, Zweden The 2005 Hurricane Katrina response failure Seeing preparedness for foreseeable complex problems through a neo-institutional lens Doctoral thesis to obtain the degree of doctor from Radboud University Nijmegen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus prof. dr. Th.L.M. Engelen, according to the decision of the Council of Deans to be defended in public on Wednesday, 2 December 2015 at 12.30 hours by Christer Brown Supervisor: Prof. dr. Bertjan Verbeek, Radboud University Nijmegen Co-supervisor: Dr. Fredrik Bynander, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden Members of the Doctoral Thesis Committee: Prof. dr. Ira Helsloot, Radboud University Nijmegen Prof. dr. Bengt Sundelius, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden Dr. Kerstin Eriksson, SP Technical Research Institute, Borås, Sweden Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 13 1.1 Central question 18 1.2 Research method and relevance 19 1.3 Thesis structure 21 Chapter 2: An institutional perspective on preparedness 23 2.1 Introduction 23 2.2 Foreseeable complex problems 23 2.2.1 Defining foreseeable complex problems 24 2.2.2 Preparing for foreseeable complex problems 27 2.3 Preparedness in a federal setting 28 2.3.1 The shared governance model of preparedness in federal systems 28 Identifying, assessing and prioritizing threats 31 2.3.2 Organizations, bureaucracies and EPMAs 35 2.3.3 Technical and political-administrative dimensions of preparedness 38 2.4 Primary indicators of preparedness 39 2.4.1 Inter-organizational relations 40 2.4.2 Threat identification/prioritization 40 2.4.3 Routines and protocols 41 2.5 A neo-institutional view on preparedness in federal systems 41 2.5.1 Three streams of neo-institutionalism 43 2.5.2 The actor-centric institutional environment 48 2.6 Research hypotheses 50 2.6.1 Hypothesis I 51 2.6.2 Hypothesis II 51 2.6.3 Hypothesis IIIa 51 2.6.4 Hypothesis IIIb 52 2.7 Conclusion 53 Chapter 3: Research design and method 55 3.1 Introduction 55 3.2 A single-case case study methodology 55 3.2.1 Case selection 56 3.2.2 The independent and dependent variables 58 3.2.3 Objects of study 59 9 3.2.4 Process tracing 62 3.2.5 Sources 63 3.3 Hypothesis confirmation or rejection 65 3.3.1 Hypothesis I 65 3.3.2 Hypothesis II 66 3.3.3 Hypothesis IIIa 67 3.3.4 Hypothesis IIIb 68 3.4 Limitations 69 3.5 Generalizability 70 3.6 Conclusion 71 Chapter 4: Hurricane preparedness at FEMA from 1979 to 2005 73 4.1 Introduction 73 4.2 Preparedness for hurricanes prior to 1979 74 4.3 From the Carter Administration to Hurricane Andrew 79 4.4 From Hurricane Andrew to 9/11 85 4.5 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina 90 4.6 Preparing New Orleans for ‘The Big One’ 102 4.7 Conclusion 105 Chapter 5: Analysis 107 5.1 Introduction 107 5.2 Major institutional change in the wake of the 9/11 attacks 107 5.3 Hurricane preparedness at FEMA prior to 9/11 108 5.3.1 Inter-organizational relations 109 5.3.2 Threat identification/prioritization 112 5.3.3 Routines and protocols 113 5.3.4 Assessing FEMA’s hurricane preparedness prior to 9/11 115 5.4 Hurricane preparedness at FEMA after the 9/11 attacks 116 5.4.1 Inter-organizational relations 116 5.4.2 Threat identification/prioritization 119 5.4.3 Routines and protocols 120 5.4.4 Assessing FEMA’s hurricane preparedness after 9/11 120 5.5 Evaluating the research hypotheses 122 5.5.1 Hypothesis I 122 5.5.2 Hypothesis II 123 5.5.3 Hypothesis IIIa 125 5.5.4 Hypothesis IIIb 126 5.6 Conclusion 127 10 Chapter 6: Findings 129 6.1 Introduction 129 6.2 Answering the research question 130 6.3 Methodological issues 131 6.4 Neo-institutionalism 132 6.4.1 Introduction 132 6.4.2 Normative institutionalism 132 6.4.3 Historical institutionalism 134 6.4.4 Rational choice institutionalism 134 6.4.5 The actor-centric institutional environment 136 6.4.6 Conclusion 136 6.5 Foreseeable complex problems 137 6.6 Preparedness 138 6.6.1 Defining preparedness 138 6.6.2 Primary indicators of preparedness 138 6.6.3 The political-administrative and technical dimensions of preparedness 140 6.7 EPMAs 140 6.8 A programme for further research 142 6.9 Practical recommendations to policymakers and senior administrators 144 6.10 Toward a diagnostic model for gauging organizational preparedness 146 Executive summary 151 Samenvatting in het Nederlands 161 Abbreviations 173 Bibliography 175 Curriculum vitae 206 List of figures and table Figures Figure 1 The actor-centric institutional environment 50 Figure 2 The independent and dependent variables 58 Table Table 1 A diagnostic model for gauging organizational preparedness 148 11 Chapter 1: Introduction Hurricane Katrina struck south-eastern Louisiana early on the morning of Monday, 29 August 2005.1 While a majority of the city’s population had fled the city before landfall, as many as 100,000 local residents still remained, huddled in private homes or the few local shelters that were open. Over the coming hours storm surge would overwhelm several key levees that had protected the city from flooding for decades. Over 80 per cent of central New Orleans was flooded by a toxic mix of water, fuel, sewage and debris as a result. The situation was only marginally better in affected communities elsewhere along the Gulf Coast from Texas in the west to Florida in the east. All told, at least 1,800 individuals would perish as a result of the storm. Some bodies have yet to be recovered. According to Richard T. Sylves, ‘Hurricanes are perhaps the type of disaster most familiar to Americans’.2 Indeed, Waugh suggests that ‘for many Americans, great hurricane disasters have helped shape the public perception of what disasters […] are’ and how they should be managed.3 However, what most Americans witnessed after Katrina far exceeded the ‘usual’ destruction that they had grown accustomed to seeing in their local communities or on television. The question on the minds of journalists, elected officials and citizens alike was how this could have been allowed to happen?4 How was it possible that so many people could lose their lives? Where was the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) immediately after landfall? And what was one to make of the seemingly anaemic response that the agency orchestrated once staff in FEMA shirts finally began appearing on the scene? The Katrina disaster was all the more puzzling given the sweeping reforms to the nation’s emergency management system in the wake 1 Knabb, et al., 2006.
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