I couldn't believe my ears this morning when I heard a comment from Bush about Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing mayhem - "I don't believe anyone thought the levees would be breached", he said. Er, hello Mr President, were you just not keeping up with current events before the hurricane struck? I think that the risk of levees being breached was the one thing almost everyone heard about before Katrina struck. Except of course those who famously and by self confession pay little or no attention to the news. In fact here it is in black and white (and red for the benefit of Mr Bush), in a report from the National Weather Service a day before the hurricane struck:
COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 18 TO 22 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE LEVELS...LOCALLY AS HIGH AS 28 FEET...ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES...CAN BE EXPECTED NEAR AND TO THE EAST OF WHERE THE CENTER MAKES LANDFALL. SOME LEVEES IN THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA COULD BE OVERTOPPED.
One of the most telling video clips from New Orleans I've seen since Monday was a woman being dropped off at the Superdome after being rescued. The reporter asked her how she felt after being rescued and she said, "I just feel so dumb!". The surprised reporter retorted, as if puzzled, "Dumb? Why is that?", to which she replied, "Because I stayed at home when we were told to leave and I put my and my kids lives at risk and almost died". I think this whole episode highlights the generational kind of memory society has. No one seemed to remember how bad the last major hurricane in New Orleans was, if they were alive then at all. They've survived a few lesser ones, so they just assume with all our technology and such they can safely ignore warnings and stay at home, and when it sucks as badly as predicted, well someone will be right around to rescue them right? All I can say is just thank goodness it wasn't actually a category 5 storm when it hit land.
And I'm pleased to see that while some people are raising the "global warming" card (and still others are raising the "fist of God" card) as the reason for Katrina, some are focusing on the failure of systems to protect the city which full well knew this event could happen any day. Alternet's story Why the Levee Broke" cites:
The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Hardly surprisingly the Democrats and opponents of the "war on terror" will find this an excellent opportunity to point out that Homeland Security begins, well, at home. If you have over extended yourself to the point where you can't even fund basic protections of your people at home from known, predictable threats what hope do you have of protecting them from intangible unpredictable threats? Events like Katrina highlight in sharp relief a core role of government - spend money on systems to protect the people that no corporation would spend money on because there's no profit to be made on prevention (on the contrary, disasters are usually accounted for as positive economic events), and maintain law and order at all times.
In this case I think the government should have provided free evacuation of everyone since economic reasons were frequently cited as reason not to leave. Furthermore because of what happened afterwards the evacuation should have been mandatory - by force if necessary. The government should have fully funded projects to protect the city which you can bet your life will suddenly find full funding afterwards. And after the event it should have immediately provided a rapid and massive response to ensure that law and order is maintained. What a shock it is, that just like in Iraq, after a major catastrophe (in their case invasion) suddenly the general populace is going crazy in the streets, looting everything that isn't tied down, and the government is dumb struck taking days to react and realize its all going out of control fast.
Lest you think I'm being somewhat cold hearted about this event, well I guess that I confess I am. To me it seems that to a great extent the loss of life, and perhaps even of property could have been a significantly less. Furthermore there are times when people are just, as the woman so eloquently put it "so dumb". At those times it is really unfortunate that people then have to put their lives at risk to rescue their dumb and stubborn asses when they suddenly no longer want to live with the consequences of saying "I'll die before I leave my property for a little old storm!". One can only hope they will learn from the mistake and never make it again. And if not? To those I say, "Fist of God? Pah! 'Tis the Fist of Darwin! Back to the oceans with you unbelievers!"*
* Yes that was intentionally inflamatory
No comments:
Post a Comment