Kansas Tornado Aftermath Reveals Another Problem From Katrina

It has been a deadly and devastating week in much of the Great Plains region of the United States. An area known as Tornado Alley, the Plains states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas received the brunt of severe storms during the weekend of May 5-6, 2007. According to the latest report from NOAA, there have been as many as 136 reports of tornadoes as well as 109 reports of high winds, and 429 reports of large hail. One of the hardest hit areas was Southwestern Kansas including the town of Greensburg, which experienced an EF5 twister with winds of at least 205 mph according to the newly created Enhanced Fujita Scale.

But the problems didn’t stop there. With 90 percent of the town devastated by a tornado that was 1.7 miles wide, traveled some 22 miles, and moved very slowly, the task of rebuilding got off on the wrong foot. In a twist of irony from the days following Hurricane Katrina, the Governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sibelius, revealed earlier this week that the recovery effort had been slowed by a shortage of equipment used by the Kansas National Guard because much of it is in Iraq to help with the war effort there. Sibelius, a Democrat in a state where Republicans outnumber members of her party by a 2 to 1 margin, and recently selected by Time as one of the top five governors in the nation, stated in a New York Times article, “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”

With many troops from the National Guard fighting over in Iraq, there aren’t enough men and equipment stationed back home to help assist residents recovering from natural disasters. The same thing happened in the wake of Katrina, where the recovery effort was hampered by not only the lack of manpower and equipment from the Gaurd, but also a slow response from FEMA, which actually improved this time around. However, this latest problem has many like Kansas State Senator, Donald Betts Jr. concerned. In the same NY Times report, he states, “The response time was too slow, and it’s becoming a trend. We saw this after Katrina, and it’s like history repeating itself.”

In light of the latest rounds of severe weather throughout the country since April, there are still many major problems with government relief efforts since Katrina. Couple that with the facts that FEMA delayed its release of a new federal government plan to respond to emergencies, the budget crisis at the National Hurricane Center, and the lack of funding for necessary projects to either fortify existing barriers to rivers, creeks, and lakes, or strengthen those already in place, the feeling one gets from all of this is that we are in deep trouble. We can’t just rely on having a quiet hurricane season again like last year. Perhaps, we’ll get lucky again, but eventually, the luck will run out.