National Response Plan - Essay Example

However, in the same year it was formed, 2005, Hurricane Katrina exposed a number of problems with the National Response Plan including two issues with the Catastrophic Incident Annex. The annex was purposely established to quicken the government’s upbeat response to tragic incidents, and set protocols of pre-identifying and urgently deploying essential resources in case such an incident occurs. There are two issues that significantly contributed to the political decision to overlook the implementation of the entire National Response Plan, especially the Catastrophic Incident Annex.

The first one was contravened on the role of Catastrophic Incident Annex. For instance, there were questions on whether the annex had the capability of handling catastrophic incidences of higher magnitudes like hurricane strengthening. The second one was the power and authority assigned to the Catastrophic Incident Annex. The National Response Plan did not clearly draw to what extent the Catastrophic Incident Annex was to be involved in response acceleration. For example, it was not clear whether the Annex was in a position to authorize any legal activities in case of a catastrophic event.

These arguments led the public to criticize the credibility of the Annex in responding to terrorist attacks (Jenkins, 2009). In conclusion, this paper gives a clear description of the issues that led to the National Response Plan not to be implemented regardless of its comprehensiveness. In this case, the main focus is on the two issues that contributed to a decision not to execute the Catastrophic Incident Annex according to Hurricane Katrina.