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The Importance Of Communication In New Orleans

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During a disaster, communication is extremely important in order to protect property and as many lives as possible. Katrina was able to cause a tremendous amount of damage to the city of New Orleans. The situation was made much worse by the failure in communications. The failure was not limited to just the state government, multiple entities were affected by the unsuccessful communications. The communication failures that contributed to the overall disaster occurred during and after the storm. As the storm subsided the levee system had to be repaired and improved upon. When the storm struck New Orleans a tremendous of communication buildings were damaged.

Communication Buildings

Natural disasters have a tendency to disrupt communications. Being a category five hurricane, Katrina was able to damage many of the structures within New Orleans that were responsible for facilitating communications. One of the most effective ways people communicated in New Orleans was with a cell phone. Cell phones are …show more content…
Numerous communication facilities were severely damaged. The combination of communication facilities being damaged and the damage being done to the city caused a tremendous amount of calls being made to emergency services. The damaged caused by Katrina made the emergency services unable to communicate and the few that were still operating could not handle the tremendous amount of calls that were being made by residents requesting help Landline services were also unable to work because they were flooded out. Wireless capabilities were not working because the storm was able to able to damage most of the cell towers. The loss of wireless capabilities caused many televisions, cell phones, and radios unable to work. As a result, the destruction of communication buildings made it very difficult for the police and fire departments to coordinate with each other and rescue individuals, more help was needed. (Wohlstetter,

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