Public Administrators and Cross‐Sector Governance in Response to and Recovery From Disasters

Abstract

In “Looking for the FEMA Guy” Part 2, Ian Birdsall recalls some of his own experiences as well as those of other people that reflect on some of the major issues faced by public administrators as they tried to respond to the storm and its aftermath. Birdsall mentions that “harsh criticisms have been leveled at each level of government concerning almost every aspect of their performance before, during and after Katrina made landfall.” In his account he focused more on Mississippi’s experience with the impact of Katrina for three reasons. First, recovery from a catastrophic disaster takes a long time and attention shifted to other current issues. Second, research and news reports focused on New Orleans but gave less attention to Mississippi. Finally, he used a balanced perspective in his analysis of response and recovery activities. I agree with him concerning the lack of focus on Mississippi. I would note that my coauthors and I have tried to counter that trend in our efforts to compare Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s responses to Katrina (Kapucu, Augustin, & Garayev, 2009). Birdsall used emergency management cycles (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) in his analysis and highlights implications for public administration. I would like to comment on the role of public leadership in managing disasters by partnering with other sectors, levels, and jurisdictions of government. Catastrophic disasters are characterized by unexpected or unusual size, disruptions to the decision-making capabilities, and an initial breakdown in coordination and communication. High performance in dealing with disasters requires an ability to assess and adapt capacity rapidly, restore or enhance disrupted or inadequate communications, use uncharacteristically flexible