2. rally at Zuccotti Park on July 31, 2013, recalling
two previous disasters that the audience knew
well: the World Trade Center attack of September
11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina’s flooding of
New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Yet by “devas-
tating effects,” he was not just referring to the
terrorist attack or breached levees. As he went on
to say: “the recovery efforts were the disaster
inside the disaster.”1 His first example was close
at hand: the Lower Manhattan Development
Corporation (LMDC), the public–private con-
duit through which $20 billion in post-9/11
recovery funds flowed, housed in the recon-
structed Deutsche Bank building now rising on
Zuccotti’s northern edge. Shaking a fist at the
tower, the speaker listed the major corporations
and Wall Street firms that were primary recipi-
ents of New York’s aid. He drew a parallel to the
“recovery” following Katrina, where despite $32
billion in aid, the city, state, and federal govern-
ments were unable to rebuild the neighborhoods
or fund the return of New Orleans’ poorest and
most vulnerable communities. After Katrina, he
said, “We vowed never to have that same situa-
tion arise on our soil.”
The speech was one of many, along the route
of a “Turning the Tide” march led by a new
labor-community coalition, Alliance for a Just
Rebuilding (AJR). Beginning at the Staten
Island Ferry terminal and culminating at City
Hall, speakers represented the diversity of
Sandy-impacted individuals and organizations
from across the five boroughs, including public
housing residents and renters still displaced or
3. living with mold, day laborers who worked as
first responders under abysmal conditions for
little pay, and trade unions and community orga-
nizations whose members continue to face eco-
nomic, health, and emotional hardship.2 Their
immediate goal, as AJR director Nathalie Alegre
put it, was to remind the many New Yorkers—
including the then-New York City mayoral can-
didates—for whom Sandy was already a “distant
memory” that thousands were still affected and
in need of aid. Yet AJR had a longer term goal:
to “turn the tide” on the top-down approaches to
recovery and redevelopment that were estab-
lished in the wake of 9/11 and Katrina. They
unveiled a “people’s agenda” for post-Sandy
rebuilding with four demands: good jobs,
affordable housing, sustainable energy, and
community involvement. What is striking is
how radical this basic platform appeared up
against the “new normal” of twenty-first cen-
tury post-disaster redevelopment.
Witnessing these and other grassroots efforts
in the months following Sandy has been
extremely moving for me.3 Together with my
co-author Kevin Fox Gotham, I have spent the
past six years writing a book on post-crisis
redevelopment in New York and New Orleans
following 9/11 and Katrina.4 We were moti-
vated to undertake this project after witnessing,
in two very different cities facing two very dif-
ferent disasters, the same inequitable rebuilding
513239NLFXXX10.1177/1095796013513239New Labor
ForumGreenberg
research-article2013
4. 1University of California–Santa Cruz, USA
Corresponding Author:
Miriam Greenberg, [email protected]
The Disaster inside the Disaster:
Hurricane Sandy and Post-crisis
Redevelopment
Miriam Greenberg1
Keywords
disaster, crisis, urbanization, redevelopment, coalitions
46 New Labor Forum 23(1)
process that marchers now sought to prevent.
We found this inequity in the short-term recov-
ery phase (funded by FEMA) and the long-term
redevelopment phase—funded by the
Department of Housing and Urban Development
through community development block grants
(CDBGs) and the Liberty Zone and Gulf
Opportunity Zone private activity bond (PAB)
programs. Similar public–private agencies were
established to govern the process: the LMDC
for New York and the Louisiana Recovery
Agency (LRA) for New Orleans. In both cases,
the federal programs governed by the agencies
were deregulated to eliminate “public benefit,”
“low-income,” and “accountability” require-
ments. At each stage, low-income, dispropor-
tionately non-white communities, workers, and
small businesses, the primary victims of disas-
5. ter, were further disadvantaged in receiving aid,
while wealthy, disproportionately white neigh-
borhoods and high-end industries were privi-
leged. In a process we termed “crisis-driven
urbanization,” we traced how this uneven rede-
velopment transformed the post-disaster city:
fortifying affluent neighborhoods, catalyzing
gentrification and displacement in low-income
areas, and realizing the long-held development
dreams of powerful growth coalitions.
The fate of the $51 billion in post-
Sandy recovery aid is undecided.
At the same time, we saw how these dynam-
ics inspired new scales of solidarity and strate-
gies of organizing, as long-standing groups and
newly formed coalitions strove to challenge and
change the course of this redevelopment. As of
this writing, the fate of the $51 billion in post-
Sandy recovery aid is undecided. If we really
are to turn the tide, and ensure 9/11 and Katrina
do not become the model for how to disburse
this aid, the involvement of energized citizens
and movements could not be more vital.
Following are a few historic lessons that I hope
might inform and aid their efforts.
Tracing the Roots of Disaster
It is by now well known that disasters and their
outcomes are never “natural.” Regardless of the
immediate trigger, catastrophic events need not
lead to large-scale, long-term crises for cities
and their populations. In places where risk and
6. inequality are minimal, disasters can be con-
tained; where they are great, crises ensue—and
at an extreme become endemic. The broader
socio-spatial, political-economic, and historic
context is key to understanding their origin and
impact—as well as to devising strategies for
recovering from them.
In the case of New York and New Orleans,
and a great many crisis cities like them today,
this broader context can be traced to the market-
oriented approach to urbanization that began in
the late 1970s as elites responded to urban
unrest and fiscal crisis by creating new public–
private partnerships to push through more mar-
ket-friendly reforms and growth strategies,
from political and economic restructuring to
urban rebranding. While always a site of capital
accumulation, cities since this time have
increasingly operated as “for-profit” enter-
prises. Typical urban policy platforms have
rested on some combination of privatization,
deregulation, fiscal austerity, business incen-
tives, and attacks on organized labor, all in an
attempt to attract new levels of investment, con-
sumption, and private development.5 Investment
in urban development, meanwhile, became a
“spatial fix” to fiscal and accumulation crises.
In New York City, this entailed the “financial-
ization” of Lower Manhattan, despite local efforts
to maintain a more mixed economic base; in New
Orleans, it entailed the urbanization of the wet-
lands, despite efforts to preserve this essential
storm buffer and eco-system.6 Both were highly
contradictory interventions: exacerbating uneven
7. development and spawning new forms of eco-
nomic, environmental, and social risk.
Thus, by the time of the 2001 and 2005
disasters, New York and New Orleans had been
suffering from decades of inequitable and
unsustainable policy and planning, driven by
the interest of local growth coalitions. In New
York, the city’s dependence on the volatile
finance, insurance, and real estate sector for tax
revenue increased its vulnerability to economic
downturns. In New Orleans, flood risks were
intensified by wetland destruction driven by oil
and shipping interests, and uneven levee
Greenberg 47
building by the Army Corps of Engineers to
accommodate the development schemes of
local parishes.7 In both cities, the bulk of risk
devolved to low-income people, who typically
lacked adequate insurance, an imbalance that
was exacerbated by post-crisis policies of fiscal
austerity and uneven redevelopment. All of this
created the uneven landscape of risk and resil-
ience upon which 9/11 and Katrina fell, and
produced the conditions for transforming a sud-
den disaster into a long-term crisis.
Radical Rupture and the
Politics of the Crisis Moment
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
cites Milton Friedman’s famous saying that
8. “only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces
real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions
that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying
around.” The role of political leaders, then, is to
“develop alternatives to existing policies, to
keep them alive and available until the politi-
cally impossible becomes the politically inevi-
table.”8 Yet what might these alternatives be?
While Klein emphasizes the tendency for
increasingly conservative ideas to gain sway, it
should be remembered that, by creating a pro-
found break in “business as usual,” crises also
present a potentially radical rupture, that is, his-
toric opportunities for new forms of political
intervention.9 By laying bare pre-existing social
and environmental injustices—as those who are
most vulnerable suffer most—disasters can cre-
ate historical opportunities for galvanizing pro-
gressive forces around redressing long-standing
injustices, changing the dominant course of
urban development, and pursuing “high-road”
rebuilding that emphasizes good jobs, afford-
able housing, and environmental sustainability.
This can be spurred on by imaginative, inclu-
sive planning, and the radical energies of what
Rachel Luft has called “crisis organizing.”10
In both cities, crisis organizers formed
broad-based coalitions,11 and forged new local
and national networks—not least the U.S. Right
to the City Alliance formed following Katrina.
Also novel were redevelopment watchdog
groups: Reconstruction Watch in New York
City post-9/11 and Gulf Coast Reconstruction
Watch in New Orleans. These groups struggled
9. for years for a more inclusive, equitable, and
transparent post-disaster planning process.
Yet the challenges they faced were real. The
post-crisis period is one of mourning and mutual
aid, when engaging in politics as a grassroots
group can feel unseemly. This concern, how-
ever, is not shared by powerful public–private
coalitions making early decisions, often behind
the scenes, on how to appeal for and target aid.
This dilemma is captured in an urgent letter
written two weeks following Katrina from lead-
ing New York civic groups that had been active
following 9/11:
The early design of relief and recovery
programs will have a lasting impact on the
fairness of the rebuilding effort. Structures
and systems will get “cast in stone” very
soon that can either promote broad civic
participation in the rebuilding process or
make the process very undemocratic. To
the extent local groups are able, it is
critical to be cohesive, to be vocal, and to
get involved now, in the early stages of
program design, so that groups
representing local communities, people of
color, low- and middle-income people,
and small businesses can be an active part
of the process . . . In New York, many of
us hesitated to criticize program design
because we didn’t want to seem ungrateful
or (in the post-9/11 world) divisive. As it
turned out, however, when we got into
debates later on, the early design of the
programs limited our ability to influence
10. the decision-making process.12
Unfortunately, the same process unfolded
following Katrina—indeed, as I explore below,
post-9/11 redevelopment was rapidly embraced
as a model for the Gulf. Nonetheless, the mes-
sage still resonates. In fact, in the weeks and
months after Sandy, those involved in post-9/11
organizing saw even greater challenges. Just
weeks after the storm, there were suddenly a
plethora of agencies with different mandates,
many even more inaccessible than the LMDC.
As a Reconstruction Watch researcher told me
six months after Sandy, there was, ironically,
48 New Labor Forum 23(1)
some “nostalgia” for the LMDC: “at least they
had one address, and held public hearings, even
if our voices weren’t heard.”13
In addition to the problem of early engage-
ment, there is the problem of sustaining the strug-
gle over the long term. This was articulated by an
administrator at University Settlement, a Lower
East Side aid agency that did groundbreaking
post-9/11 crisis organizing: “We had zero
resources for all this advocacy work, and frankly,
[after two years] we had to turn our organizing
energies to more immediate issues, such as wel-
fare and minimum wage rate increases, and local
housing fights.”14 Thus, a lesson for organizers
would be to “get political” from the start, be
ready for strategic engagement with often nebu-
11. lous rebuilding agencies—or in spite of them,
and build the resources necessary to support
political work well beyond the crisis moment.
Uneven Redevelopment
It was precisely in the “beyond the crisis
moment” period, that of long-term redevelop-
ment, that we saw the most strikingly similar
dynamics unfold in New York and New Orleans.
In addition to the political exclusion of grass-
roots groups, this similarity emerged from the
fact that 9/11 was used as a legal precedent in
shaping federal, state, and local responses to
Hurricane Katrina.
First, New York City’s powerful Wall Street–
backed lobbying groups secured sweeping
changes at the federal level in how recovery
funds could be distributed and for what purpose.
These changes transformed historic mecha-
nisms for disbursing disaster aid: FEMA grants,
CDBGs, and PABs. Following 9/11, provisions
regarding “public benefits” and “means-test-
ing,” as well as “public oversight,” which once
governed these mechanisms, were stripped
from the legislation through a series of waiv-
ers.15 This was justified by the claim that funds
had to flow freely and flexibly to financial sec-
tor victims, and be used to incentivize develop-
ment in a restricted, wealthy area of Lower
Manhattan. This ignored the equally harmful
health impacts and arguably more devastating
economic impacts of the disaster on low-
income, largely uninsured residents, workers,
12. and small businesses in Chinatown and the
Lower East Side. Yet these waivers were used as
a precedent in the deregulation of aid for the
entire Gulf Coast region following Katrina,
with the “Gulf Opportunity Zone” modeled on
the “Liberty Zone,” and the LRA channeling
CDBGs just as the LMDC did before it. Few
questioned whether a business-friendly tax,
bond, and grant package designed for Lower
Manhattan’s elites could be retrofitted for this
vast, low-income region.
As a result, in New York and New Orleans,
“recovery” and “redevelopment” were used to
steer billions of public dollars to powerful
industries, real estate developers, corporations,
and already wealthy neighborhoods. Organizers
did win some important concessions, with a
small proportion of funds going to public goods
like parks, infrastructure, and affordable hous-
ing, thanks to their advocacy. Yet on the whole,
the “New Lower Manhattan” and “New Orleans
Miracle” were characterized by uneven redevel-
opment: increasing wealth, population, and
infrastructure for affluent neighborhoods like
New York’s Financial District and New Orleans’
Lakeview, alongside decline, gentrification,
and/or displacement in low-income neighbor-
hoods like the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and
the Lower 9th Ward. Thus seemingly tempo-
rary, localized emergency responses can power-
fully alter future urban trajectories.
Crisis-Driven Urbanization
and Hurricane Sandy
13. With “Superstorm Sandy” in 2012, a massive
catastrophe once again exposed uneven land-
scapes of risk and resilience. It did so every-
where it touched down, from Atlantic City to
Port-au-Prince, where inequalities were the most
extreme and health impacts by far the most
severe.16 Yet it was in its impact on the New
York City area that Sandy brought the two cases
I studied together in the most unsettling way.
Following on the heels of Hurricane Irene in
2011, Sandy blew away any doubt that New
York is now as vulnerable to extreme weather as
New Orleans has long been. This is due, in large
part, to the effects of global warming and sea
level rise for the coastal cities in which the bulk
Greenberg 49
of the world’s population now lives. Yet the les-
sons of Sandy extend beyond this; in its ongoing
effects on vulnerable communities and ecosys-
tems, Sandy is also a reminder of the legacies of
crisis-driven urbanization.
The devastation Sandy caused
in Lower Manhattan was partly
a result of shortsighted, market-
oriented, post-9/11 redevelopment.
Most immediately, the devastation Sandy
caused in Lower Manhattan was partly a result of
shortsighted, market-oriented, post-9/11 rede-
velopment. Billions in federal rebuilding dol-
14. lars fueled the meteoric construction of luxury
residential and commercial towers on the south-
ern tip of Lower Manhattan—with proximity to
low-lying waterfronts actually boosting real
estate values. In addition to ignoring the eco-
nomic and environmental needs of neighboring
low-income populations, this construction
placed new, wealthy residents and their tax-
financed buildings at enormous risk. Advance
warning was provided by Hurricane Irene’s
“wake-up call” in 2011. The Bloomberg
administration was commended for creating
emergency evacuation zones for low-lying
areas—including Lower Manhattan—and actu-
ally evacuating more than three hundred thou-
sand people in those areas. Yet this known risk
in no way inspired a change in course for down-
town real estate development. Indeed, just one
week after Irene, at the official unveiling of the
“new Lower Manhattan” for the ten-year anni-
versary of 9/11, the only official allusion to the
storm was Mayor Bloomberg’s assurance that it
would have “no impact” on rebuilding.
Speaking at a Wall Street breakfast sponsored
by the real estate–backed Association for a
Better New York, the mayor proudly promised
the continued construction of waterfront towers
“come hell or high water.”17
Additional relationships between the events
were revealed in the coming days, weeks, and
months, as the pre-existing uneven landscape of
risk versus resiliency—worsened by redevelop-
ment following 9/11, as well as by the 2008
financial meltdown—enabled the storm to have
such devastating and starkly uneven economic,
15. human, and environmental impacts. The “new”
Lower Manhattan—wealthier, more heavily
insured, with superior infrastructure, and more
politically connected than ever—was able to
withstand the storm’s initial impact better than
most, and then repair and rebuild in what seemed
like lightning speed. Some fared better than oth-
ers, illustrated famously when the only building
on the Lower Manhattan skyline to stay lit on
the night of the storm was the new Goldman
Sachs tower (a leading recipient of Liberty
Bonds and CDBGs). Nonetheless, with some
notable exceptions, the downtown area was to
get essential services like electricity, heat and
hot water back within days, and 99 percent of its
commercial, residential, hotel, and retail inven-
tory “back to business” within weeks.18
This stood in stark contrast with equally
inundated parts of the Lower East Side and
Chinatown, as well as Red Hook, Coney Island,
Far Rockaway, parts of the South Bronx and
Queens, and the north shore of Staten Island.19
For these low- and middle-income, racially
diverse neighborhoods, with high concentra-
tions of industry and public housing and far less
by way of private resources or political clout,
the response by FEMA and city agencies was
woefully inadequate. Thus, neighborhoods
remained flooded; schools and clinics stayed
closed; apartments and businesses were without
light, heat, or working plumbing; and people
remained in buildings with serious structural
damage and mold contamination, for weeks and
often months. The overwhelming race, class,
16. and geographic disparities created profound
shock that defied local comparison, even to
9/11. As Red Hook public housing resident
Toni Khadijah James put it, “This is our
Katrina.”20
For neighborhoods with high
concentrations of industry and
public housing, the response by
FEMA and city agencies was
woefully inadequate.
This comparison begs the question of whether
longer term uneven redevelopment will, here,
too, follow on the heels of unequal recovery.
Troubling evidence was provided on June 11,
50 New Labor Forum 23(1)
when Mayor Bloomberg announced, “A Stronger,
More Resilient New York,” his administration’s
$20 billion plan to increase the resilience of
infrastructure and buildings citywide in the face
of climate change and sea level rise.21 The plan is
fundamentally a technology- and real estate-
driven intervention. One concern it raises, echoed
by sustainable planning experts, is that New York
City could now end up looking like New Orleans
due to the heavy involvement of the Army Corps
of Engineers in the plan’s design.22 As we have
seen with decades of uneven levee construction
and wetland urbanization in New Orleans and the
Gulf, development interests largely dictated their
17. terms to the Corps, to disastrous effect. If this
occurs in New York, whatever flood control systems
created may make areas like the “New Lower
Manhattan” appear safe for investment and habi-
tation, yet simultaneously mask the considerable
risks produced by waterfront development and
market-oriented urbanization themselves. This
leads to a deeper concern with the plan: however
state of the art, a technological fix will not build
real resilience, as it will not address the broader
social and environmental inequalities that
increase vulnerability and lay the ground for
future crisis.
A technological fix will not build
real resilience, as it will not
address the broader social and
environmental inequalities that
increase vulnerability and lay the
ground for future crisis.
New Solidarity
Yet there is another history repeating itself after
Sandy: that of new solidarity among first
responders, residents, community-based organi-
zations, aid organizations, local governments,
and, notably, labor unions (ranging from nurses
to transit workers, firefighters to construction
unions). A week following the tenth anniversary
of 9/11, Occupy Wall Street formed in reaction to
the fallout from the 2008 economic crises set off
by many of the Wall Street firms that benefited so
disproportionately from 9/11 redevelopment aid.
18. These movements, in turn, created fertile ground
for the formation of Occupy Sandy, the efforts of
which proved more effective than FEMA in
bringing aid to the most distressed communities
in the outer reaches of the boroughs.23
After Sandy [there is] new solidarity
among first responders, residents,
community-based organizations, aid
organizations, local governments,
and labor unions.
Over the longer term, through an ongoing
series of conferences, community meetings, and
mobilizations, coalitions like AJR and the Sandy
Regional Assembly have kept up the fight. These
community labor alliances have sought not only
to redress the wrongs of Hurricane Sandy but
also to transform existing models of post-disaster
rebuilding. Their vision builds on and exceeds
that of post-9/11 and post-Katrina coalitions. It
reminds us that crises provide moments of radi-
cal rupture, and shows us that these moments can
be cumulative. Crucial here has been the learning
from and drawing connections between past pro-
cesses of crisis-driven urbanization, with their
unequal socio-economic and environmental
impacts, and unfinished political legacies. What
if these are the “ideas lying around” in the wake
of Sandy, and when the next disaster hits?
Perhaps, then, this moment can help to turn the
tide, ushering in a new era of post-crisis redevel-
opment in which resources and organizing are
19. directed toward rebuilding a city that is more just
and sustainable—and so more truly resilient.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter-
est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. The speaker was Bobby Tolbert of VOCAL-NY.
The author recorded his speech at the rally.
2. For images and a description of the rally, as well
as a list of the more than thirty groups involved,
Greenberg 51
see Somala Diby, “Groups March to City Hall
for Fairness in Rebuilding,” City Atlas, August
8, 2013, available at http://newyork.thecityat-
las.org/lifestyle/turning-tide.
3. Other important coalitions include the Sandy
Regional Assembly, created by the New York
City Environmental Justice Alliance, and
Occupy Sandy. Also significant are new neigh-
borhood-based groups, like Restore Red Hook
20. and Staten Island Recovers.
4. Kevin Fox Gotham and Miriam Greenberg,
Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in
New York and New Orleans (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, forthcoming).
5. Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse, Margit Mayer,
Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban
Theory and the Right to the City (New York:
Routledge, 2011). For more on neoliberal urban-
ization, see, for example, Jason Hackworth, The
Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology and
Development in American Urbanism (Ithaca,
NY, and London: Cornell University Press,
2006); and David Harvey, A Brief History of
Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005). On New York City’s approach to
neoliberalism beginning in the late 1970s, see
Miriam Greenberg, Branding New York: How a
City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (New York:
Routledge, 2008), chapter 8.
6. Both were facilitated by larger scale forces; in
New York by the state government in Albany, and
in New Orleans by the Army Corps of Engineers.
7. For this history, see, for example, Greenberg,
Branding New York and Craig Colten, An
Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans
from Nature (New Orleans: Louisiana State
University Press, 2006).
8. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2007), 7.
21. 9. On crises as moments of “simultaneous rupture
and intervention,” see Colin Hay, “Narrating
Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the
‘Winter of Discontent,’” Sociology 30, no. 2
(May 1996): 253-77.
10. Rachel Luft, “Beyond Disaster Exceptionalism:
Social Movement Developments in New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” American
Quarterly 61, no. 3 (September 2009): 499-527.
11. In New York City, this included the Labor
Community Advocacy Network (LCAN),
Rebuild with a Spotlight on the Poor, and
Beyond Ground Zero. In New Orleans, this
included the Neighborhoods Partnership
Network, the Greater New Orleans Disaster
Recovery Partnership, the Citizens’ Road Home
Action Team, the Lower 9th Ward Center for
Sustainable Engagement and Development, and
Levees.org.
12. Labor Community Advocacy Network to
Rebuild New York, “An Open Letter from Civic
Groups in New York on 9/11 and Katrina” (from
the archives of the Pratt Center for Community
Development, courtesy of Brad Lander), Spark
Action, September 15, 2005.
13. Interview with author, May 15, 2013.
14. Email correspondence with the author, August
9, 2013.
15. For details of these waivers, see Miriam
22. Greenberg and Kevin Fox Gotham, “From 9/11
to 8/29: Post-Disaster Recovery and Rebuilding
in New York and New Orleans,” Social Forces
87, no. 2 (December 2008):1039-62.
16. Jonathan Watts, “Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy
Leaves Haiti Facing New Disaster,” Guardian,
November 2, 2012, available at http://
www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/02/
aftermath-hurricane-sandy-haiti-disaster.
17. Kate Taylor, “Bloomberg Hails Lower
Manhattan’s Revival since 9/11,” New York
Times, September 6, 2011, available at http://cit-
yroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/bloom-
berg-hails-lower-manhattans-revival-since-911.
18. Downtown Alliance, Back to Business: The State of
Lower Manhattan Four Months after Hurricane
Sandy (New York: Downtown Alliance, 2013),
available at www.downtownny.com/sandy#sth
ash.UXVsfdNT.dpuf. Some important excep-
tions go unmentioned in this report. South
Street Seaport, particularly the shops on Pier 17,
remained shuttered for months, with many ten-
ants evicted. In addition to damage caused by
seven-foot tidal surges, this may be attributed
to the priorities of the landlord. The Howard
Hughes Corporation had submitted plans to
redevelop the pier for higher end retail and a
hotel soon after purchasing the property in 2010,
and, according to press accounts, appears to
have used the post-Sandy moment as an oppor-
tunity to implement this plan. In addition, the
recovery of a few high-rise office buildings on
23. lower Broadway (including DC 37 offices) was
delayed due to a lack of phone and Internet ser-
vice. On the whole, however, the rebound of the
financial district stood in dramatic contrast to
other storm-affected neighborhoods.
19. The same was true across the Hudson River,
in Jersey City and Hoboken, where poorer
neighborhoods that were seriously impacted
remained without electricity for weeks.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/02/aftermath-
hurricane-sandy-haiti-disaster
www.downtownny.com/sandy#sthash.UXVsfdNT.dpuf
52 New Labor Forum 23(1)
20. Nick Pinto, “Hurricane Sandy Is New York’s
Katrina,” Village Voice, November 21, 2012,
available at www.villagevoice.com/2012-11-21/
news/hurricane-sandy-is-new-york-s-katrina.
21. To view the report, go to www.nyc.gov/html/
sirr/html/report/report.shtml. While dubbed a
“plan,” there is nothing binding about this report,
nor has it passed through City Planning. Rather,
it is a “vision plan,” and, I would argue, a form
of marketing and PR intended to build internal
political consensus and attract investment. Of
course, given its issuance in the final months of
the administration, there is no assurance it will
become policy. Nonetheless, it represents advo-
cacy for a Bloomberg model of “resilience” that
bolsters his administration’s real estate–focused
redevelopment agenda. Important for this is the
24. plan for a “Seaport City,” which would create
new land for high-end development in Lower
Manhattan via a new neighborhood jutting into
the East River. Interestingly, even the real estate
world was confused by this costly and danger-
ous plan, though appreciative of the effort to
support their needs. See Josh Dawsey, “Storm
Plan’s ‘Clunker,’” Wall Street Journal, June 17,
2013, available at http://online.wsj.com/news/
articles/SB10001424127887323734304578546
002468792318.
22. Mark Fischetti, “New York City Could Look
Like New Orleans, Due to Flood Protection,”
Scientific American, June 12, 2013, available
at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observa-
tions/2013/06/12/new-york-city-could-look-
like-new-orleans-due-to-flood-protection/.
23. See, for example, Benjamin Kallos, “New York
City Union Workers Respond to Hurricane
Sandy: Preparing, Protecting, and Rebuilding,”
Huffington Post, December 12, 2012, available
at www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-kallos/hur
rican-sandy-union-workers_b_2288688.html.
Author Biography
Miriam Greenberg is an associate professor of soci-
ology at the University of California–Santa Cruz. She
is the author of Branding New York: How a City in
Crisis Was Sold to the World (Routledge, 2008), and
co-author of the forthcoming Crisis Cities: Disaster
and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans
(Oxford University Press).
26. problems were
not simply the failure of particular places or leaders to be ready
for disas-
ter but rather an indication of more fundamental issues. These
must be
addressed if the country is to be ready for serious challenges
that may lie
ahead, whether severe natural disasters, outbreaks of emergent
infectious
disease, or renewed terrorist attacks.
Not all emergencies pose this magnitude of challenge. In the
United
States, the initial—and usually major—responsibility for
disaster response
rests with local authorities. This “bottom-up” system of
emergency man-
agement has a long history and continues to make sense in most
circum-
stances. Because local governments are proximate to disaster
sites and have
at least some emergency capacity, they can respond quickly to
initial alerts.
They have detailed knowledge of local conditions, and in many
cases have
agreements for mutual aid to secure additional help rapidly from
nearby
jurisdictions.
Aid from state or national sources is provided mainly when
local
Arnold M. Howitt is Executive Director of the Taubman Center
for State and Local
Government at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University. Herman B.
27. “Dutch” Leonard is the George F. Baker Professor of Public
Management at the
Kennedy School and Professor of Management at Harvard
Business School. This article
is based on remarks they delivered at a “teach-in” on Hurricane
Katrina organized by
the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative on September 30, 2005.
215
Arnold Howitt
Text Box
The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 30:1 Winter 2006
capability is inadequate or has been exhausted. State
government may have
important specialized resources and capabilities, but—farther
away—it is
usually less able to respond immediately. Its resources may
have to travel
considerable distance to get to a disaster site. Federal
government respon-
ders are likely to be even more distant—hence much slower to
arrive on a
significant scale—and lack both local knowledge and
integration with local
and state responders. The Federal Emergency Management
Agency
(FEMA), with relatively few deployable staff, has historically
played a much
larger role in pre-event planning and post-event recovery than
in the man-
agement of a disaster in progress. Other federal agencies have
28. more opera-
tional resources but are generally deployed as backup.
Notwithstanding the
reorganization of emergency response at the federal level as a
consequence
of the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security,
the
“bottom-up” system remains the “normal” model of disaster
response.
Quite clearly, however, the normal model was inadequate to
handle
the results of Katrina—and showed weakness in managing the
fierce but
less demanding challenges of Rita and Wilma. Commentators
have cited
many reasons for this problematic performance. Some criticisms
relate to
actions in the moment of crisis: unqualified crisis managers in
charge, weak
leadership by elected executives, and poor or late decision
making. Others
involve the quality of advance preparation: inadequate
emergency plans,
poor follow-up to shortcomings revealed by tabletop exercises,
and failure
to make investments in needed infrastructure. Still others relate
to the larger
context of national preparedness: overemphasis on terrorism
rather than an
all-hazards emergency management approach, as well as
organizational sub-
ordination of FEMA inside the new Department of Homeland
Security.
Although each of these explanations has some merit, we see an
29. over-
arching failure to recognize and prepare for the imperatives of a
major dis-
aster. If the United States doesn’t specify the strategic problems
properly,
efforts to reform the emergency response system are likely to
fall short in
the next situation that strains the normal model.
FOUR CORE CHALLENGES
Recognizing Novelty and Effectively Improvising Necessary
Responses
Katrina was not just “another” hurricane. Emergency responders
ready
themselves for a wide range of urgent circumstances, including
hurricanes,
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216
which involve high stakes, danger, and outcomes that are
critically contingent
on their own effective action. Though quite demanding, many of
these situa-
tions can be regarded as “routine” emergencies—not because
they are in some
sense “easy” but because the predictability of the general type
of situation per-
mits agencies to prepare in advance and take advantage of
30. lessons from prior
experience. Thus, response organizations develop contingency
plans, train per-
sonnel, practice their skills, ready or stockpile necessary
resources, and can—
in the event—appropriately customize their response at the
margins of the
plan. When forecasters predict that hurricane winds will make
land fall, emer-
gency organizations trigger a range of pro-
grammed actions to protect property,
provide temporary shelter and supplies,
make rescues as needed, and provide emer-
gency medical care and other assistance.
Such anticipatable events are “routine”
emergencies for the agencies concerned.
“Crisis” emergencies like Katrina
are distinguished from these more
common (though possibly very severe)
routine emergencies by significant ele-
ments of novelty. These novel features
may result from threats never before encountered (e.g., an
earthquake in an
area that has not experienced one in recent memory or an
emergent infec-
tious disease like SARS or avian flu); from a more familiar
event occurring
at an unprecedented scale, outstripping available resources; or
from a con-
fluence of forces, which, though not new, in combination pose
unique chal-
lenges. Katrina was a crisis primarily because of its scale and
the mixture of
challenges that it posed, not least the failure of the levees in
New Orleans.
31. Because of the novelty of a crisis, predetermined emergency
plans and
response behavior that function quite well in dealing with
“routine” emer-
gencies are frequently grossly inadequate or even
counterproductive.
“Crises” therefore require quite different capabilities from
“routine”
emergencies. In crises, responders must first quickly diagnose
the elements
of novelty (e.g., in New Orleans, the need for assisted
evacuation, the likely
consequences when the levees failed, and the unexpected use of
the con-
vention center for sheltering immobile refugees). Then they
need to impro-
vise response measures adequate to cope with the unanticipated
dimensions
of the emergency (e.g., quickly procuring vehicles for
evacuation, rescuing
KATRINA AND THE CORE CHALLENGES OF DISASTER
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217
“Crisis” emergencies like
Katrina are distinguished
from these more common
(though possibly very
severe) routine emergencies
by significant elements
of novelty.
32. stranded residents and restoring water and power, and providing
food and
law and order in an unprepared shelter). These measures, born
of necessity,
may be quite different from anything responders have done
before.
Equipping organizations to recognize the novelty in a crisis and
improvise
skillfully is a far different (and far more difficult) matter from
preparing
mainly to implement preset emergency plans.
Scalability and Surge Capacity
In many disasters, as Katrina well illustrated, responders must
cope
with far greater numbers of endangered people or more
extensive damage
than typical of a routine emergency. Crisis impacts may occur
intensively
in a delimited area or be spread across a wide geographic
region. To scale
up operations to handle this surge of demand, emergency
agencies require
access to resources in larger quantities than normal and
frequently to spe-
cialized equipment or personnel. If an emergency lasts for days
or weeks,
there must be enough people and resources to cope with
exhaustion.
No local jurisdiction—or even state—could bear the expense of
keeping these assets in reserve for a large-scale disaster that
33. might never
occur there. When such an event strikes, therefore, it is
virtually inevitable
that the jurisdictions affected will have to import and
effectively absorb
support from surrounding areas or—in very severe
circumstances such as
Katrina—from around the nation. While plans can be put in
place to pro-
vide surge capacity for transport, food and water, medical
facilities, and
personnel, crises may throw up unexpected demands for
resources (or pre-
dictable demands for which inadequate supply is available) for
which
improvised scale-up is essential. The sudden need for many
buses to evac-
uate auto-less, elderly, or handicapped people from New
Orleans indicates
the critical need for the right kind of resources, in sufficient
amount, to be
available in timely fashion whether or not the emergency plans
of local,
state, or federal response agencies are adequate.
Addressing the need for surge capacity requires careful advance
assessment of potential needs, allocation of sufficient budgetary
resources
notwithstanding competing demands for funds, detailed
logistical plan-
ning for transporting resources to disaster sites (or people away
from dis-
asters to shelter and care)—and, quite likely, skillful
improvisation in the
moment of actual crisis.
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218
Integrated Execution in Real Time
In a major disaster like Katrina, as local agencies confront
extraordi-
nary operational demands, emergency responders from adjoining
jurisdic-
tions, the state, and many far-flung locations are likely to
converge on the
scene. Not only must they perform their own tasks, they must
also collabo-
rate to ensure effectiveness and avoid interference, conflict, or
endangerment
of others. This demands skillful coordination of aid workers,
equipment,
and organizations across professions, agencies, jurisdictions,
levels of gov-
ernment, and the public and private sec-
tors—even though many of these people
and organizations have had little or no
prior experience working together.
This need has been recognized by
Congress in the 2002 statutory require-
ment for a National Incident
Management System (NIMS), a flexible
template for leading crisis operations
that enables organizations to frame and
rapidly implement response actions
35. under enormous pressure. The underly-
ing model for NIMS (called the
Incident Command or Incident Management System, ICS or
IMS) was
initially devised 35 years ago in California to fight wildland
fires and has
since spread to other states and emergency professions.
IMS has important strengths in organizing emergency response.
It
factors critical emergency tasks, establishing a clear division of
labor and
assignment of functional responsibility. It unambiguously
defines the
chain-of-command, provides a manageable span of control for
each func-
tion, and establishes a resource allocation decision-making
structure—
critically important to avoid dispute about “who’s in charge”
and to enable
rapid deployment and direction of personnel and equipment. It
systemat-
ically promotes information flows up, down, and across the
organiza-
tion—and to the public. As a result, IMS is highly flexible in
response to
incident type, scale, and location. It has been applied to
wildland and
urban fires, industrial explosions, earthquake response, hospital
emergency
room operations, and hostage scenarios.
However, as Katrina revealed, even basic diffusion of NIMS has
not
KATRINA AND THE CORE CHALLENGES OF DISASTER
36. RESPONSE
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219
In a crisis, as action scales
up and becomes more
complex, leadership or
certain responsibilities may
need to be transferred from
those initially in charge to
others with different skills
or more resources.
been completed to jurisdictions that have not previously used
the system
or to professional disciplines that have been unaware or
unenthusiastic.
Nor were the procedures for federal operations and
intergovernmental col-
laboration that were nominally in place effectively applied.
Handoffs Across Boundaries
In a crisis, as action scales up and becomes more complex,
leadership
or certain responsibilities may need to be transferred from those
initially in
charge to others with different skills or more resources. Yet
frequently this
evolution of crisis response produces substantial friction
between organiza-
tions or jurisdictions, even when emergency plans or statutes
37. theoretically
provide for such transitions. In the case of Katrina, these
frictions were
apparent as the city and mayor clashed with the state and
governor, as both
criticized the federal response, and as numerous voices
criticized FEMA’s
performance. The mere existence of laws, emergency plans, or
NIMS does
not ensure that responsible officials will know or play their
roles effectively
or that conflicts will not arise in interpreting the rules. Personal
prepared-
ness by key officials, as well as establishment of functional
relationships
among them, is essential. Preparedness requires anticipation of
the poten-
tial need for such handoffs and readiness to make (or accept)
transfers of
responsibility when the initial allocation is unworkable in the
face of a par-
ticular disaster.
CONCLUSION
Katrina has shown that the United States has not progressed as
far as
some believed in building better emergency response capacity in
the after-
math of September 11 and the establishment of the Department
of
Homeland Security. Focusing intensely on the core strategic
problems
identified above would be an important step forward.
In confronting these problems, however, the United States faces
38. seri-
ous obstacles. These include the division of authority in our
federal system
of government; different constellations of stakeholders at
different levels of
government and within jurisdictions; “feast or famine”
budgeting for
emergency preparedness; autonomy of, and lack of coordination
across,
different functional or policy domains; and insufficient
integration of the
private sector in the emergency response system.
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Approaches to improve response practices are more complex
than
can be discussed well in this space. These include accelerated
and more
intensive implementation of the National Incident Management
System,
careful examination of the legal arrangements that structure the
delegation
of authority between government levels and jurisdictions in
crisis events,
sustainable budgetary commitments to build emergency
response capabil-
ities at all government levels, more attention to integrating the
private
sector in the response system, and enhanced training and
39. exercise oppor-
tunities for emergency responders so that they develop not only
the capac-
ity to execute emergency plans but also the nimbleness needed
to
improvise effectively in crisis. �
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