From Flower to Garden: Katrina Electricity and Emergency Management

Hurricane Katrina taught federal, state, and local public managers extensive lessons about the criticality of electricity reliability in a disaster. In the report, The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, the White House conceded that, Hurricane Katrina had a significant impact on many sectors of the regions critical infrastructure, especially the energy sector. However, the first lines of this concession focused on the shutdown and disruption of crude oil and natural gas recovery in the Gulf of Mexico and the shutdown of 11 petroleum refineries, or one-sixth of the nations refining capacity, in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.