Running Head: HURRICANE KATRINA VERSUS JARED DIAMOND 1

Hurricane Katrina Versus Jarrod Diamond

Bronson Bass
Portland State University










HURRICANE KATRINA VERSUS JARED DIAMOND 2

Abstract
This essay will focus on Hurricane Katrina that struck New Orleans in 2005 and how this
disaster coincides with two of Jared Diamonds books Guns Germs and Steel, and Collapse. As
well as going over the issues that struck horrendous in the film When the levees broke. The thesis
is this hurricane brought on the worst collapse the United States has yet to have and that we, as a
country, should learn from these mistakes and to examine this one in great detail.
Keywords: hurricane katrina, guns germs and steel, collapse, examine, mistakes.
















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Introduction:
Hurricane Katrina, where to go from there This disaster will be remembered for a long
time to come. The fault of the American government, the resources that failed to assist quickly,
the dehumanization of the victims, the lack of transportation, and so many more factors are why
this disaster is title the worst in American history. The topic of overseeing the entire disaster
would be in-depth as there are so many situations that occurred during and after the time of this
disaster such as politics, health, and insurance and so on. When hurricane Katrina hit it was the
start of a slowly collapsing society. New Orleans was in no shape prepared for the disaster that
would come and knockout the entire city which put them six feet under water. Jared Diamond
had examples in his work from history that were tremendous collapses. New Orleans may just be
the next in line to be examined in such detail.
New Orleans before the storm:
Post Katrina New Orleans was not in good standing compared to the rest of the nation.
With situations such as high crime rates, the worst education system, lack of medical attention,
etc. were just some of the reasons why it was a collapsing city post Katrina. In the movie, When
the levees broke, one of the victims of Hurricane Katrina stated, Maybe the storm was good for
the city. The city had little funding, and when the funding was used it was poorly distributed,
the mayor of the city stated in the film. The city was in need of a good cleaning, but it would
come with a price of its own. When the evacuation was mandated some of the civilians were
unable to leave due to lack of funding, medical situations, lack of transportation, or other similar
aspects. With no funding the city had no way to transport the people out leaving the civilians that
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needed the most assistants. These citizens felt abandoned by their own government and like they
had no option but to stay during the storm which would destroy their lives.
For the citizens that were able to leave the city they were either forced to go to relatives
homes, motels and hotels, or live in their vehicles. Although they were able to leave, the city
mandated them to go, with no funding and all within their own expenses. The question that I
have been noticing from sources is whether or not they should be paying for the transportation
fees or if the government should handle that situation as well. When you reside within a city you
are living under the citys jurisdiction. When you are summoned to court, for example, you dont
get reimbursed for your time and traveling cost. Therefore the people who left with their own
vehicles should not ask for a reimbursement. Now what they should have done with the traveling
cost is allow an option to take yourself, or take public transportation out of the city. Also the
struggling people who were left behind were the civilians that needed the most assistants.
Jared Diamond with Guns Germs and Steel and Collapse:
Jared Diamond has many great points within the book of Guns germs and Steel that resort
to the disaster of Katrina. This book is about how civilization came to be and how individual
things that big businesses can exert powerful pressure on their suppliers that might ignore public
or government pressure. Collapse talked about the following issue, along with some others. We
are accustomed to thinking of military success as determined by quality of weaponry, rather than
by food supply. But a clear example of how improvements in food supply may decisively
increase military success comes from the history of Maori New Zealand. Those wars were
limited by the modest productivity of their agriculture. The potato's productivity relieved
previous limitations on Maori warfare, similar to the limitations that low-productivity corn

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agriculture imposed on Maya warfare.
Those food supply considerations may contribute to explaining why Maya society
remained politically divided among small kingdoms that were perpetually at war with each other,
and that never become unified into large empires like the Aztec Empire which was fed with the
help of their chinampa agriculture and other forms of intensification or the Inca Empire which
was fed by more diverse crops carried by Llamas over well-built roads.
During the storm:
The civilians that were unable to leave were stuck in their homes or moved to the
superdome, which was reserved for after the storm had hit for supplies and material needs. With
nowhere left to go they were able to ride out the storm there in the superdome. Supposedly able
to withstand a hurricane civilians felt safe. Although there were harsh noises coming from
outside they knew that they would be alright. Little did they know that the little things would
make the superdome not as nice as it once was. There were leaks in the roof, causing the main
sleeping areas to be drenched, the plumbing was backed up, little to no hospital care, and the
heat. With everything that was going on, the victims of the hurricane kept their morals high by
singing and just keeping that Louisiana hospitality and heritage alive even though there was so
much going on around them. To me that was truly inspiring that their heritage meant so much to
them to where they put aside their troubles and could inspire one another to where they could
forget what was happening for an instant.
As for the civilians stuck in their houses life was a little more mortifying. Theses citizens
first having to deface their own home by boarding up the windows and bolting the door shut so
something wouldnt burst through and destroy the home even more than it would have. With the
flood waters going up and up the people in the home would either droned, or go up with the
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water. Some getting into the addict for the highest elevation in the home, they were able to ride
out the storm. But it was hot hot hot as many of the people stated in the film. After huddling at
the ceiling vents or creating holes in the ceiling for fresh air; the civilians were awaiting a
rescue.
Much of the media controversy to emerge in the aftermath of Katrina focused on issues
of language. Most notably, debate raged regarding the language used to describe the displaced
survivors (Prince, 2005). Indeed, in the first days after the storm, the most common description
for these individuals was refugees a word infrequently used to describe American citizens still
within the borders of the United States. Within a week, President Bush decried use of the term,
and many news organizations made formal announcements of a shift to the more traditional
evacuees, survivors, or victims. (Prince, 2005)
Was the unique language used to describe victims of Katrina influenced, at least in part,
by race? Service articles in the first week after Katrina found that those using evacuee (56%)
outnumbered those using refugee (44%). Articles in which either evacuee or refugee
appeared within 10 words of poor or Black, refugee was the more popular term by a
statistically significant margin of 68% to 32%. This result cannot be accounted for by the race-
neutral explanations identified above. Rather, these data support the conclusion that race played
some role in the use of refugee in the coverage of Katrina. (Deathman, 2005)
The refugee debate was not the only language controversy to emerge. Two photographs
received more attention than normal. Two people in front of a flooded grocery store received an
extra amount of attention from the internet and media in general. In one of the photos, a black
male was shown in waist-high water, carrying a carton of drinks and a full garbage bag. The
other photo showed a white couple carrying food and drinks through the same floodwaters.
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Although nearly identical in composition, the photos were released with markedly
different captions. The first caption began with, A young man walks through chest deep flood
water after looting a grocery store ... The caption for the second photo read, Two residents
wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store. That
comparable photos could carry such different captions was attributed by some to the major
difference between the images: the race of the parties depicted. Although anecdotal in nature
and therefore not amenable to the type of analysis conducted above regarding the use of
refugeethese competing photo captions are certainly consistent with the conclusion that race
played some role in language use during coverage of Katrina.
Poor Planning:
With no previous example to work off of New Orleans was taking a leap off into the dark
by forcing the citizens to evacuate the city and go to safer places. With no route, not much, if
any, public transportation was involved; citizens were left to fend for themselves. This may be
viewed as poor planning on the government but they didnt anticipate the flooding that would
occur. The city could have had alternative routs for the families that could not just up and leave
or that couldnt afford to. (Carr, 2005)
Diamonds main points in his books are that the societies that collapsed did because of
lack of planning. This may not be a direct correlation, but food that was gathered would provide
for now, and harvesting food would take time, but it would last much longer than the immediate
food that needed to be sought for the day of.
False Media:
When the Bush administration finally came down to the site of the disaster they were
appalled at what they encountered. They flew over the disaster earlier in the beginning of the
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storm the victims found that very disrespectful that he didnt visit them and help them in some
way. I believe that this was a wakeup call for America in that the government finally realized the
victims and whatnot want to be visited by the authorities. When Bush, in week 8 of the storm,
finally came to meet the victims he had a film interview outside the capitol building. That was
not the problem portrayed in this. People were upset because they were without power, but yet
when the president was there the building was lit, making a false assumption that everything was
back to normal when in reality it was not even close to start back up. (Britt, 2005)
Increase in violence:
With regard to Katrina, one story emphasis in the days after landfall was the outbreak of
violent crime throughout New Orleans. Looting comprised one aspect of this coverage, but
beyond property crimes, a great deal of attention was also paid to what was described as a
violent crime wave within the city of New Orleans, particularly among evacuees at the
Superdome and Convention Center (Loney, 2005). Reports described sniper fire aimed at
rescuers, rampant homicide, and gangs of youths. The police force chief commented in the video
that the looting was acceptable as people are starving with a lack of supplies. The unacceptable
aspect of the looters is that they were stealing the electronics that would add to some value to the
store owners. (Loney, 2005)
The long lasting cleanup:
With the storm clearing nearly the entire city there were piles of debris all around the city
and surrounding neighborhoods. With no regular trash dates there was nowhere for the piles to
go, so they just go bigger and bigger. In the video they mentioned that four months after the
storm they were just beginning to pick up the trash from the buildings and items that were
destroyed.
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Within the cleanup were the bodies that were found within the homes. FEMA was
supposedly going to each home and making sure there were no dead bodies, but the people
returning to their homes soon found this to be a false hope. Each team of the FEMA workers
went to each home and marked what they found on the door. On the marking you can see if they
entered the home, or if they didnt. Most of the homes that they did enter they in fact did not
enter. The folks in the video who went back to find love ones in their homes dead had this
traumatic event to live with for their entire lives. (Singer, 2005)
When they found the bodies they all were just that, bodies. With the street signs washed
away, and houses ripped off their foundations they had no certainty of where these bodies were
found and as of who they were. They would resort to dental records, finger prints, and DNA
testing that would all be billed to the living family members of the deceased member. Families
were traumatized, and this just added to the pain.( Singer, 2005)
Each of Diamonds books he explains in detail of the places that these civilizations would
leave. The buildings that would be found by other settlers and whatnot would amaze many as of
who put them there and what they were for. Most of the tribes that did travel, however, usually
had materials that could travel with them.
Dehumanization of citizens:
When the levees broke many thought it was the government trying to flood out the city
and clean it up. Many others thought it to be that the force of the water broke the wall. Either
way the wall shouldnt have been broken when it was. The Army Corps of Civil Engineers built
the wall long ago. They had the proper funding allocated, or at least they used the money. With
these walls just put into the ground basically, they had nothing holding them in place. The walls
were I walls because they connected at the top and bottom and were buried into the ground.
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They should have had cables, and other mechanisms to hold the walls into place. Apart from the
walls breaking down, when the victims of the hurricane were pushed out of the city they were
faced with guns demanding them to turn back.
Many of the civilizations in Diamonds books were forced onto the unbeaten path to find
new homes after they have been washed away of their resources. Most of them had no
government set up, but in general terms they had to move on. The Viking tribes in Greenland
were offered to move, but leaving everything they knew was too hard for them, and with so
many customs they knew that would be useless in other places, they eventually dwindled down
to a small population.
Destroying/using resources:
In both of Diamonds books he talks about how they used their resources well, or poorly.
The state of Louisiana could be look like that in the same way. The wet lands that are native to
that area that create natural resources, and animal habitats that have been dwindling down in this
point in time. At this time frame, rebuilding the wetlands is essential the success of the
rebuilding of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
Conclusion:
Hurricane Katrina was the worst modern disaster to hit America. There were many faults
within the situation of politics, media, planning, violence, the clean-up, destroying the remaining
citizens, and taking advantage of resources. Jared Diamond had many points that went along
with this disaster in his books about the rise and collapse of previous societies. Katrina fit in so
well within his topics with the faults, origins of problems, and so on that its a fit that this was a
collapse of a society. Ever so slowly New Orleans has become thriving once more with its
culture and with the knowledge that Hurricane Katrina gave to them.
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