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Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security

Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security
By Christopher Cooper, Robert Block

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Product Description

"[A] tightly crafted, very readable book . . . the best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get."
--Stephen Flynn, The Washington Post
 
When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring. In this searing indictment of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block take readers inside FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during the crisis--the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, and the individuals who saw that the system was broken but did nothing to fix it.

In this award-winning and critically acclaimed book, Cooper and Block reconstruct the crucial days before and after the storm hit, laying bare the government's inability to respond to the most elemental needs. They also demonstrate how the Bush administration's obsessive focus on terrorist threats fatally undermined the government's ability to respond to natural disasters. The incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #81762 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-05-29
  • Released on: 2007-05-29
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 1.00" h x 6.00" w x 9.00" l, 1.15 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 352 pages

Features

  • ISBN13: 9780805086508
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The fatal inundation of New Orleans was no natural disaster, argues this hard-hitting investigative report. Wall Street Journal reporters Cooper and Block finger two very man-made causes of the tragedy. The first was the decades-long failure of local officials and the Army Corps of Engineers to fix New Orleans' poorly designed and constructed levees and floodwalls, which collapsed under moderate hurricane conditions. The second and more spectacular was the breakdown of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after its incorporation into the Department of Homeland Security, which cut FEMA's funding and authority and reoriented it toward the national obsession with terrorism. The result, when the flood came, was a bumbling federal response hobbled by complacent planning, miscommunication, red tape (even recovery of the dead was delayed by paperwork) and an inability to deliver promised supplies and transportation. The authors' exhaustively researched account slogs through the intricacies of this bureaucratic nightmare and goes beyond the usual pillorying of FEMA head Michael Brown to criticize higher officials in the White House and, especially, DHS. Cooper and Block manage to thread a readable, coherent story through the morass of detail and acronyms, with disquieting implications about the government's ability to cope with catastrophe. Photos. (Aug. 8)Note: Publication of Hamid Karzai's Letter from Kabul (Reviews, July 10) has been postponed.
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Review

"Tightly crafted, very readable . . . the best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get . . . Given that future catastrophes are inevitable, this book is a call to arms to demand a far more competent federal emergency response than Washington has been willing to provide."
--Stephen Flynn, The Washington Post

From the Back Cover
"Tightly crafted, very readable . . . the best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get . . . Given that future catastrophes are inevitable, this book is a call to arms to demand a far more competent federal emergency response than Washington has been willing to provide."

--Stephen Flynn, The Washington Post