HLS 501 DF6 DUE

Communication in Disaster Name: Institution: Course: Date: Communication in Disaster Natural disasters and in this case hurricanes, tend to have devastating impacts on the infrastructure, from the wind force and the water that they bring. With reference to the aspects of the infrastructure that are affected when a hurricane hits, communication is one of the most vulnerable of all (Vigdor, 2008). Interrupting the communication infrastructure also tends to disrupt the rest of the services that are being offered during the entire operations (Piotrowski, 2013). During the hurricane Katrina that took place on 29th of August of 2005, one of the major disruptions that took place at the time was communication breakdown. As such, much of the efforts were either delayed or compromised entirely. For most of the messages that were relayed between parties in the rescue operations, the intended parties did not get them in good time (Leaning &Guha-Sapir, 2013). This did not only compromise the rescue operations but also led to loss of life and destruction to property. It is important to point out that communication in this case refers to the ability to send and receive information and further incorporates transportation on the larger scale (Eisenman, Cordasco, Asch, Golden, &Glik, 2007). Ideally, people did not have the means to leave the affected areas relative to the destruction that was on the roads, with debris and washed away bridges along with roads. With reference to the ability to send and receive information, disasters like hurricanes are associated with wind speeds that sometimes exceed 200 km/h. this are wind speeds that have very powerful impacts. In the case of the hurricane Katrina that was rated as a category 3, which meant that the winds in the storm had enough force to impact major damage on the homes such as removing roofing decks (Currance, 2006). The winds at this speeds also have enough speed to uproot trees and bring down communication masts. Communication channels, water and electricity are also affected along with roads that are blocked by all the infrastructure (Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, 2007). One of the ways that also leads to breakdown in communication is the congestion that results from all the people trying to call (Moynihan, 2016). The communication networks are based on bandwidth, which had a limited capacity to carry all the calls that are placed. Ideally, during the emergencies, there is an element of people trying to call their loved ones while others are calling the emergency services (Guidotti, 2006). With high number of people calling on a network, there is an overload that causes congestion. As the communication services are broken down, there is also break down in the rescue operations. This means that ...