Hurricane Katrina Was a Very Costly Disaster - Free Essay Example

This hurricane was the most destructive in the United States. It was extremely tragic with the loss of homes, valuables, and even family. I know that I personally am thankful for the lives that were saved, but with forever remember the lives that were lost. Hurricane is a was a category 3 storm that hit ground near Grand Isle Louisiana. The category of the storm is based on the wind speed. A category 3 storm is considered extremely dangerous because it is a storm that is capable of taking lives. This category 3 storm was the most destructive hurricane that hit the U.S. It was 127 miles per hour with severe flooding that damaged cities along the Gulf Coast, New Orleans to Biloxi, and Mississippi. The water and the wind made homes in extremely bad conditions. Because of the damage, there was a need for emergency evacuation. The flooding caused half of the damage that occured. Because of the flooding, 134,000 units and 300,000 homes were destroyed. The worst flooding had taken place in the New Orleans 9th Ward. That part of New Orleans was mostly insured. Hurricane Rita was a storm that joined with Katrina. This happens when there are two atoms around 140 miles per hour and close by to join together. There can also be an incident when a small hurricane comes around a big storm, it will just rotate around it. When there is a medium hurricane and a big hurricane, they will rotate around together. Hurricane Katrina and Rita were two big storms together. Hurricane Rita was a category 5 storm. That means that a category 5 and 3 storm when they were together. The two storms damaged 457 oil and gas pipelines. Katrina also destroyed 113 offshore oil and gas pipelines when it was combined with hurricane Rita, which continued shortly after. (The Balance 1) This caused over 8 billion gallons of oil to spill. This event almost spilled as most oil as the Exxon Valdez disaster. Because of the loss of oil and gas, there was a three dollar increase on each barrel. That means that each gallon of gas increased by 5 dollars. Katrina force 75 percent of 819 manned oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. This hurricane damaged 19 percent of the U.S. oil production. That reduced oil production by a third. This hurricane did more damage than any other natural disaster in the U.S. history. The storm was massive before it even made contact with the land. The people that were involved in the storm lost so much. For example, the Lee family, who were victims of hurricane Katrina, had to go to a new city to get out of the disaster that was made. They decided to travel to Houston to get out of the storm. They lost so much and they were treated like dirt there. I dont know why they were treated like this, but I do know this is a terrible way to live. They had to hide every little thing about their culture. They couldnt speak with their accent because one of the incident was that they were getting shot at for being from the New Orleans. They had to leave their homes and come to a city that treaded you terrible. They lost their valuables, their loved ones, and their homes. Forty percent of the deaths were caused by drowning, 25 percent wer from injury or trauma, and 11 percent were caused by heart conditions. (CNN 1) There was 1,836 deaths altogether. (The Balance 2) 71 percent of the people that died were 60 and older. Half of the 71 percen t were 75 and older. In fact, 68 were in nursing homes and possibly were abandoned by their caretakers. This is extra sad because many of them most likely couldnt walk so how are they expected to swim. I personally think that the caretakers were just thinking about themselves. Fortunately, the government Accountability Office released a report that includes one million dollars that was used for sheltering 270,000 people. There was also 114,000 families that were raised in FEMA trailers. FEMA is the abbreviation of Federal Emergency Management Agency. For 10 years after the storm, FEMA owed more than 15 billion dollars to the Gulf states for public work projects, including the repair and rebuilding of roads, schools, and buildings. So many people had pasted on or moved away because of this event. The populationas the New Orleans went from 484,674 to a dereastic 230,172 in 2006. When 2017 came around it increased to 393,292. Of more importance was the impact on people and animals. Katrina displaced 770,000 residents. Thats more than the Dust Bowl migration during the Great Depression. Seventy-five thousand returned only to find their homes destroyed. (The Balance 3) The animals and pets were either killed or ended up homeless. There still are some pets that were able to find a new home with their families. Because it was so hard to get people out of there it was even harder to add getting animals out o f the mess. Over 600,000 pets were left homeless of died. For the flooding alone it was 250 billion dollars. Because the oil platforms were destroyed it costed a staggering 108 billion dollars. Oil platforms are offshore drilling structures. Insurance covered 80 billion dollars of the losses. The U.S. economy grew by 3.8 percent in the quarter before Katrina hit. After the storm had made landfall, it went down to 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter was October through December. There was so much money put to this natural disaster. This was the worst disaster to have hit the States so far. It has been cleaned up and people are back to their normal lives. I know the lives of all the victims will be honored forever to come.

In-house Creative Teams How to Get More Output in Half the Time (Part 2)

This post is adapted from our webinar presented by Scott Talbot in collaboration with HOW Design. If you'd like to follow along, you can watch the full webinar here. In the first part of this three-part series, we talked about how to keep your designers' tanks full of creative fuel. This part is about how to get the most mileage from that creative fuel. The second practice: Streamline your process All the creative fuel in the world isn't going to help your team if you have a lot of inefficient drag that's slowing them down. Drag isn't unique; our research on design team processes shows that designers spend a significant amount of time doing mundane requests and revisions. We've also found that for virtually half of the organizations we studied, the turnaround time needed to complete a request was at least one week, with 19% saying it would take 3 to 4 weeks or even longer. That's crazy-in this design race, we have to move faster and be nimbler than that. So, what can we do? Tip #1: Clear goals As a creative director, your job is to make sure your designers don't start working on a project without clear goals that are well-defined. But clear goals can be surprisingly hard to narrow down. It takes having one vision and one voice. Give your designers a single, clear objective to work towards. You can't expect them to read your mind, or the mind of anyone else in the company. Be very explicit in what you are trying to accomplish. Without clear goals on a project, the creative work will suffer. One of the most common errors marketers make is trying to pack too much information into a single piece of collateral or ad. It's tempting to try hitting every selling point, feature and competitive advantage, but all the messages cannibalize each other-ultimately making the piece less effective. If you don't have a clear goal, your design will be full of dense text boxes competing with each other for space on the page. Even worse than cluttered design, without clear goals, there will be arguing and disagreements about the point of the project. And as you know, in this situation, designers will bear the brunt of endless revision cycles. Clear goals prevent this waste of time and talent. To sum up, the best goals are short, punchy and narrowly focused. Tip #2: Clear ownership Any given project probably has a number of interested parties, and they're usually more than happy to offer their input and thoughts. Some of these parties can be pretty demanding. It's up to you as the creative director to cut out all the different voices and determine the person who will have final approval, then focus on them. Others may have good ideas and valuable insights, but if they try to influence the decision-making process, they will only be in the way. If clear approvals and ownership are not established, the design process can get bogged down-or worse, become a proxy power battle among different egos in the company. You'll probably find some individuals pulling you aside or emailing you directly to make requests. Push back at those attempts. For the benefit of the creative team, and the company, there can only be one person who has final say. Demand to know who that is before any work begins. Tip #3: Clear creative brief The creative brief is the next step after clear goals and clear ownership are established. We all know that creative briefs are essential, but often, they're not implemented or are implemented poorly. The best creative brief is just that: brief. The worst is long and hastily thrown together, and no one considers it binding. Distilling all of the available information, competing goals and differing opinions into a succinct document is the magic that makes creative briefs powerful. The distillation process forces everyone involved to really think through the project, to voice their opinions and make hard decisions. Any disagreements about the direction of a project should come up at this stage, before any design work starts. At the end of the distillation process, the brief becomes a sort of contract. All parties involved should agree to the contents of the creative work, and all creative work should be compared to the brief. Is the creative work meeting the needs and goals outlined in the brief? If it is, great; if not, back to work. For you and your designers, the brief becomes especially important if and when disagreements arise. Then, you can point to the text and say, "We are completing what was agreed upon in the brief." It becomes a shield to protect your designers from being jerked around or wasting time. [Click to tweet ] So, if your account manager, sales team or marketing team gives you a bad creative brief, it's your job to talk to them about how to make it better. It can be an awkward discussion, but in the end, a strong brief saves headaches, revision time and frustration. Put the work in to make your briefs powerful. In the end, it's the only sure way to cover your ass. Key takeaway Your creatives can be fueled up and ready to make great work, but without a streamlined process, they will soon burn out with frustration. It's up to you to make sure they can work supported and unhindered. In my next post, I'll talk about why designers are a bottleneck and how you can open up the funnel. Don't miss it. Rev those engines: See how Lucidpress's cloud-based brand management software can streamline your creative process.