Tuesday Hurricane Katrina

Amanda presented our class with scenarios that public information officers (PIOs) could possibly face.  My team's scenario was answering questions about being a PIO in response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  Many of the questions involved how saftey messages concerning all stages of the flood were communicated with local people.  As a team we decided to only focus on the before stage of the storm for two reasons.  We felt that the before stage had plenty to discuss, and also the fact that the Hurricane gave plenty of warning raised many questions on how people received news of the oncoming storm.  A few aspects of the before stage occurred before the actual forming of the Hurricane in the gulf.  New Orleans was a city built below sea-level, The city's protecting wetlands were destroyed, and the levees were not meant to hold back large storms.  The question here is if the people of New Orleans were truly informed of all these warnings?  Many local citizens knew of a storm coming, but to what extent did they fully understand the repercussions of evacuating, relocating, and other life-changing events.  Our team took on the mentality of PIOs and thought of how to reach the people of New Orleans about precautionary hurricane warnings.  One example we came up with dealt with the city's culture.  New Orleans is a tight-knit community where the people are mostly friends of each other.  Word of mouth is a useful approach to spreading important information because even those without means of accessing media you can still get the message.  This is important because both the elderly community and poorer neighborhoods can still receive information on the hurricane and be just as equally prepared as their counter-parts.  I believe this example was relevant to the study because many of the questions we faced were dealing with an underlying theme of; through what methods (means of accessing media) can you reach everybody. Our group assumed that majority of New Orleans is well connected to news outlets through radio, television, and the internet.  However, we thought word of mouth was helpful for a situation such as a hurricane were you are at risk for simply living in the state, so once you move in your neighbor might as well tell you what to do in case of an emergency.