Joys of Geography
I live in the USA and I rather like it here. The USA is a country of natrual disasters. The cold truth is they happen all the time in this country. There are big ones like what we are currently seeing and there are little ones that never make the international news like the wildfires out west. I've mostly lived in the east and south of the country with a nice stint of a decade or so in the Southwest which I have learned to love. I've seen my share of natural disasters. Ask anyone from the US and they can tell you a story or two about Mother Nature showing some muscle.
I was talking to shock_greenleaf on msn the other day about the situation down in New Orleans and since she lives in Northern Europe and she brought home to me how little we think of the usual dangers of living here. Europe has the blessings of an extremely fortunate location on the planet's surface. The region is stable, there is very little geologic activity, and there are relatively few harsh weather phenomina that they have to worry about. It is no wonder the region has had human habitation for several million years.
To explain the US as a whole would be extremely difficult, but for some perspective I'm going to give it a shot. It will help explain my and several other American's views on the situation in New Orleans a little better. We think it is a national disgrace for a large number of reasons.
Out west we have wildfires whenever the dry season hits and the scrub and dead wood in the vast wilderness dries out. All it takes is a bit of lightning or a careless human and the fires are started again. We have a dedicated force of fire fighters that goes to work controling these blazes so that people are not hurt by them. Now, they can't always control the fires no matter their efforts and people do occasionally die in them, usually starting with the firefighters, and property is frequently lost. Some would say, well you shouldn't go live on the mountains in the forest so it is your own fault you lost your house. Well, that is what we have insurance for, the house can always be rebuilt. The fires are nature's way of cleaning up after herself. The scrub can prevent wildlife from flourishing just as well as it can protect it. For all that we fault people from living a bit far away from town, we also crave it. It is a fault many of us our jealous of others for having. Most of the time, for up to a couple centuries at a time it is very much a Western Ideal of where to live and how.
On the west coast, we have mountain ranges. Those mountain ranges dwarf those found in the eastern part of the country. These mountain ranges are a bit of a sign post about seismic activity. They aren't there for no reason. California has earthquakes. Do we know that, are we well aware of it? Yes, and it is also one of the highly fertile growing regions for farm produce in this country. We get the products of California farms all the way over here where I live on the east coast. (I'm not talking about canned and dried stuff either, I'm talking about fresh produce.) Californians, both native and not, learn to take the small earthquakes in stride. They design their homes and offices to withstand some pretty hefty forces. Much like Japan, California puts a great deal of thought, effort and money into making their buildings a safe place to be in a fierce earthquake. The people who live there know exactly what to do and where to go should an earthquake hit. It is one of the big reasons why we have relatively few deaths from earthquakes in the region. Washington and Oregon get the occasional quake too as well as the wildfires.
The southwest contends with droughts. Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado are all arid regions. The deserts are pretty vast and not the easiest places to eek out a living. Now, I've learned to love New Mexico and I would happily move back, but you notice something when you live there. People live near water, always. The water is not necessarily to be found on the surface of the ground, however. In fact, much of the water that is used comes from underground sources.
As a high school student in Albuquerque in the late 90s when the city was facing huge growth, I remember the arguements about wether or not people should be allowed to have grass lawns. It took a bit of debate, but it was decided that no, people should not be permitted to have more then a small patch of grass because of water conservation issues. Fines were instituted for watering out of turn and durring the heat of the day. Yes, people complained about grandfathering, with reason, but even those who were grandfathered away from the xeroscaping (rock and stone gardening with native drought resistant plants) restrictions often went ahead and did a xeroscape anyway because of the cost issues with watering and in support of the law. It has helped with the growth in the region. There are still droughts, but people adapt to the environment.
They also learn to deal with flash floods. Flash floods kill far more people then droughts do. Many of those people are fooling around in the arroyos, drainage ditches on steroids, and didn't expect the water. The floods occur because the ground is often too dry to absorb as much water as has come with the rains or run off from the mountains.
The midwest is the breadbasket of the US. We raise a lot of grain there. One reason for that is, you don't really have to irrigate over much of it. Another reason is the soil is remarkably fertile. Some of that fertility in the soil comes from the fact that large areas are really a flood plain. Just like the Nile could flood Egypt and deposit nice silt from which they could grow their crops the midwest has the same sort of situation. Now, the Nile has been dammed and now provides power for much of Egypt at the Aswan Dam. It can't really flood cities the way it used to and deposit the silt everywhere. The rough equivalent to the Nile in the US is the Mississippi river. Flooding along the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers isn't that common, but it is a fully known hazard of living there. Not that long ago, we did have a large portion of the midwest underwater. My uncle's farm was just high enough not to be completely trashed along with the town they lived in. Any area prone to flooding, the locals do know where the high ground is, you also won't find anyone but the less able bodied and the children with their minders there in a flood. Everyone who can lift a shovel and a sandbag does what they can to build up the levees so the water stays in the banks and goes down stream from them. No one particularly worries about hiring some one else to do it, you just go do it yourself because you are an able body. The entire community contributes to getting through the disaster so they can get on with their daily lives. No, most people in the area don't think that is a bad way to live. If the levees break, everyone tries to get everyone to saftey as quickly as possible, wether it be with a rowboat or a rescue helicopter. We clean up the mess when the water lowers, but getting out alive has always been more important.
Tornado alley is less of a regional designation in the sense of the others, but it is something to bare thinking about on its own. It would be neglectful to leave it out of a discussion of US natural disasters. Tornado alley is a lovely area where tornados are a relatively commonplace and well known hazard. North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska make up "Tornado Alley", but they aren't the only places tornados happen. We had them right here in Virginia last year, one took out bits of the next town over from me, Chantilly. Tornados are very simillar to hurricanes based on appearences. They are high winds moving in a circular patern that form a cone. Hurricanes are generally much stronger and form out over water. Tornados form when hot and cold air meet and don't mix well and are most dangerous when they grow down to the ground. You can look up and see them forming. Our meterologists can often tell when conditions are right for them.
Unless the storms are really bad or in a strange place, they don't make the international news. If you live in tornado alley, you know to what to do when you hear the sirens or the storm. It sounds a bit like a train really. You go into the most interior room in your home, usually a bathroom, and hang out until it passes. if you are outside and have the time to get somewhere safe you do. Cars are not safe, nor are mobile homes, ever, in a tornado. You learn this stuff as a kid in the area and they repeat the saftey stuff on the news for all the people who aren't native, including every radio station in the area.
The north, both the Northwest and the Northeast have to contend with blizzards. Being snowed in is far from an unknown phenomina. It doesn't happen every year, and you can bet it will always be inconvient, but it does happen. If you live in the north of the country, you are one of the best people to ride in the car with when it snows. People who are used to the snow know to bundle up and make do. Sure, you stock a few extra canned goods in the pantry just in case. You may never need them, but they are canned goods, they won't go bad. Gas is also a popular heating choice because the gas lines won't go out as easily as the electricity. They also know when to close the roads and how to drive on slippery surfaces.
Of special note, the Great Lakes have extra lake effect snow from the preciptation off of the Great Lakes. That area gets even more snow then the rest of the northern US. (The Great Lakes and Salt Lake in Utah are really inland seas like the Black Sea in Eastern Europe.) I'm told I was born the same year as a lovely blizzard. I made a point having once lived in the North to learn how to drive in bad weather including snow as a teen. Believe me, that has paid off dividends.
The Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast both have to contend with hurricanes. I'm sure everyone has heard more then enough about hurricanes recently, but there are some basic things to remember about them. Hurricanes cause damage because of the high winds, storm surge and the rainfall. The storm surge is enough to back up rivers which is a major flooding hazard. The winds are at least 74 mph for a weak hurricane. Hurricanes, like tornados, are catagorised by their wind speeds. Unlike tornados, we know when one is in the works and going to hit somewhere. The only question is where will it land.
We never know for certain where the eye will pass until it gets there. Our evacuation warnings only really come about two days before landfall. Depending on where you are and the level of local, city, or state planning, this can be enough warning to get to saftey. So long as traffic is moving on the roads everyone will get out just fine. You may lose everything, but so long as you have your life its all just stuff that can be replaced. The infrastructure is key to effective evacuations. The local building codes also make an extreme amount of difference in the level of damage sustained. On the coast, nearly everywhere actively discourages people from building wooden homes. Concrete, cinderblock and other materials that can withstand both the heavy winds and the storm surge.
Now, in New Orleans there are several factors at work that made things far far worse. Any one of these things would complicate the situation. Since all of these are present the city was a systems engineering nightmare when it comes to a disaster like this.
One of those factors is the fact that the coasts in the South have had quite a lot of explosive growth in population. It has been happening all over the country in part because the population is getting older and wants to retire to the beaches where it is warm and they can enjoy the water. The cold in the north is hard on people as they get older, it makes their joints ache worse among other things. The growth has outstripped the infrastructure in several areas. It is a known problem and the cities and towns are floating bonds to expand the sewers, schools, and other resources. Roads are build not by the cities, but by the states and the state level is slower to respond to things like that. Road building and maintence is a constant task that the states work on. It is never done because there is always something that needs doing. New Orleans didn't really have enough roads to easily evacuate the entire city to safer ground. It wasn't really a surprise, but most people were able to get out and for that we should be grateful.
A second factor is that the city itself lies at the mouth of a huge river delta. The mighty Mississippi flows into the sea right there. It is actually why the city was built there in the first place. Historically, the river allowed the transport of goods from the middle of the country out to the rest of the world via the sea trade. Then and now, the city is an exemely important port. Yet it is a river delta, it floods when the river gets to full. The French Quarter is one of the oldest parts of New Orleans and it is notable that it is on some of the highest ground in the area which explains why it has faired so well. With greater technology, we have been able to control most of the flooding that you would ordinarily be expected. In this case, we have more then just rainfall up river and on the city itself to account for the flooding. We have storm surge to account for. As I mentioned above, storm surge is powerful enough to make rivers flow backward.
The city has a series of levees to help keep the river in its banks and away from homes. A river delta is effectively a swamp. All things built on swamps wind up sinking to some degree with time because of the water content of the soil. It is a completely known phenomina. New Orleans has had to build up the levees over time to make up for the sinkage. Federal funds have gone to help pay for this, although usually it would be considered a local problem and left to the municiple authorities to raise. I guess the port is so strategically important to us that they decided it was worth spending the federal monies on. Unfortnately, it appears that quite a bit of the federal funds in the last couple years were diverted. Pumping stations also have been built to pump any water that makes it to the wrong side of the levee back to where it belongs.
A third major factor is simply poor planning. Every city has emergency plans worked out in the US. Some are better done then others. This one was pretty poor. They did not make appropriate plans to get the poor and the ill out of the city. Most of the people who are there right now did not stay out of arrogance or ignorance, although ignorance could be a factor for many. They stayed because there wasn't any real way for them to get out. Tourists were stuck there and that should say something. Usually tourists can pay well enough to git while the gittin's good. Where were the free busses to take people out of the inner city, or the trains? Of course not everyone is going to be able to afford a lift, it is something that should have been planned for in the emergency plans.
Emergency shelters would still be necessary because even with free evacuation buses there is no way they would have gotten everyone out, but the sheer number of people could have been drastically reduced. Potable water suplies should have been planned for as well. Sure, if gallon jugs had been stored somewhere they would likely need to be rationed, but that could have been done. The same can be said of canned foods. So they would need a small staff to handle the rationing and the cooking. The point is, it could be done and it was not.
Stupid as this one may sound, no one planned for what to do if their emergency management center was under water when they knew full well it was located in the flood zone. They screwed up. A secondary base of operations was necessary should the city ever flood and they never made one. They need a base of operations to coordinate the relief efforts from so that they would know where to direct both local and outside help.
Again on the suply end, they forgot to stock enough batteries for when the power would go out. (Pardon me while I cringe at that notion.) It is pretty basic that the power goes out when there is a bad storm of any type let alone a hurricane. Communications systems of course, run on electricity. With the power out and the batteries running out of juice most of the communications systems in the city are down, not only for the unfortunate residents left there, but for the emergency crews. It is extremely hard to tell what is going on where and who needs what if you don't have some means of communicating it.
The last big factor is the one much of my friends list is complaining about, the piss poor federal response. First thing to remember there is that the state is in charge of telling the federal authorites where to apply the resources because frankly they are the ones who know where and how to use things better. Exactly who has dropped the ball in this mess, I really can't say for sure. The National Guard is always called out to help keep order when something like this happens and they should have been there within hours of the eye of the hurricane passing. The Army Corps of Engineers should have been working fixing the levee breach from the minute it happened using any and all resources availible to them. The delay on that is purely unacceptable, I don't give a damn if they were being shot at, they could have taken other routes to get there away from the shooters. Hazmat teams from everywhere should have been on site to deal with potential chemical spills. Hospitals and emergency medical helicopters should have been prepped and ready to go with an organized response for all of the hospitals to evacuate their most critically ill patients. Boats of all types should be in the hands of emergency crews to get people to saftey with first aid kits on them.
We Americans have lots of natural disasters. We give a lot of money, goods, and time to charities too. One reason why we are so generous is because it really isn't hard for us to see how one day we may be the one in need. We expect people to be at their best in a disaster because that is what we hope we would be in their place. Outside of New Orleans, we are completely outraged that anyone would fire upon relief efforts. To most of us that is shocking and completely mind boggling. nepenthene actually put a fairly insightful perspective on it in her post that actually explains quite a bit. It doesn't make the behaviour any better, but any insight is helpful for figuring out how to calm things.
We know that that could have been us. We are by and large more then happy to help out in this kind of situation, we just need to know when, where and how. There has been an outflow of public support from all over from people opening up their homes to school districts reopening closed schools to stream lined college admissions to people simply carting hot meals to refugee centers. With something as huge as this, private effort alone won't do enough. The governmental authorities need to take charge and do what needs to be done without further snipping at each other.
This is a national disgrace because it is simply such a mess and it should not be. We know how to organize a rescue, relief and rebuilding effort. I have no idea why we are doing such a poor job of it, but like everyone else, I'm not happy about it.
I was talking to shock_greenleaf on msn the other day about the situation down in New Orleans and since she lives in Northern Europe and she brought home to me how little we think of the usual dangers of living here. Europe has the blessings of an extremely fortunate location on the planet's surface. The region is stable, there is very little geologic activity, and there are relatively few harsh weather phenomina that they have to worry about. It is no wonder the region has had human habitation for several million years.
To explain the US as a whole would be extremely difficult, but for some perspective I'm going to give it a shot. It will help explain my and several other American's views on the situation in New Orleans a little better. We think it is a national disgrace for a large number of reasons.
Out west we have wildfires whenever the dry season hits and the scrub and dead wood in the vast wilderness dries out. All it takes is a bit of lightning or a careless human and the fires are started again. We have a dedicated force of fire fighters that goes to work controling these blazes so that people are not hurt by them. Now, they can't always control the fires no matter their efforts and people do occasionally die in them, usually starting with the firefighters, and property is frequently lost. Some would say, well you shouldn't go live on the mountains in the forest so it is your own fault you lost your house. Well, that is what we have insurance for, the house can always be rebuilt. The fires are nature's way of cleaning up after herself. The scrub can prevent wildlife from flourishing just as well as it can protect it. For all that we fault people from living a bit far away from town, we also crave it. It is a fault many of us our jealous of others for having. Most of the time, for up to a couple centuries at a time it is very much a Western Ideal of where to live and how.
On the west coast, we have mountain ranges. Those mountain ranges dwarf those found in the eastern part of the country. These mountain ranges are a bit of a sign post about seismic activity. They aren't there for no reason. California has earthquakes. Do we know that, are we well aware of it? Yes, and it is also one of the highly fertile growing regions for farm produce in this country. We get the products of California farms all the way over here where I live on the east coast. (I'm not talking about canned and dried stuff either, I'm talking about fresh produce.) Californians, both native and not, learn to take the small earthquakes in stride. They design their homes and offices to withstand some pretty hefty forces. Much like Japan, California puts a great deal of thought, effort and money into making their buildings a safe place to be in a fierce earthquake. The people who live there know exactly what to do and where to go should an earthquake hit. It is one of the big reasons why we have relatively few deaths from earthquakes in the region. Washington and Oregon get the occasional quake too as well as the wildfires.
The southwest contends with droughts. Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado are all arid regions. The deserts are pretty vast and not the easiest places to eek out a living. Now, I've learned to love New Mexico and I would happily move back, but you notice something when you live there. People live near water, always. The water is not necessarily to be found on the surface of the ground, however. In fact, much of the water that is used comes from underground sources.
As a high school student in Albuquerque in the late 90s when the city was facing huge growth, I remember the arguements about wether or not people should be allowed to have grass lawns. It took a bit of debate, but it was decided that no, people should not be permitted to have more then a small patch of grass because of water conservation issues. Fines were instituted for watering out of turn and durring the heat of the day. Yes, people complained about grandfathering, with reason, but even those who were grandfathered away from the xeroscaping (rock and stone gardening with native drought resistant plants) restrictions often went ahead and did a xeroscape anyway because of the cost issues with watering and in support of the law. It has helped with the growth in the region. There are still droughts, but people adapt to the environment.
They also learn to deal with flash floods. Flash floods kill far more people then droughts do. Many of those people are fooling around in the arroyos, drainage ditches on steroids, and didn't expect the water. The floods occur because the ground is often too dry to absorb as much water as has come with the rains or run off from the mountains.
The midwest is the breadbasket of the US. We raise a lot of grain there. One reason for that is, you don't really have to irrigate over much of it. Another reason is the soil is remarkably fertile. Some of that fertility in the soil comes from the fact that large areas are really a flood plain. Just like the Nile could flood Egypt and deposit nice silt from which they could grow their crops the midwest has the same sort of situation. Now, the Nile has been dammed and now provides power for much of Egypt at the Aswan Dam. It can't really flood cities the way it used to and deposit the silt everywhere. The rough equivalent to the Nile in the US is the Mississippi river. Flooding along the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers isn't that common, but it is a fully known hazard of living there. Not that long ago, we did have a large portion of the midwest underwater. My uncle's farm was just high enough not to be completely trashed along with the town they lived in. Any area prone to flooding, the locals do know where the high ground is, you also won't find anyone but the less able bodied and the children with their minders there in a flood. Everyone who can lift a shovel and a sandbag does what they can to build up the levees so the water stays in the banks and goes down stream from them. No one particularly worries about hiring some one else to do it, you just go do it yourself because you are an able body. The entire community contributes to getting through the disaster so they can get on with their daily lives. No, most people in the area don't think that is a bad way to live. If the levees break, everyone tries to get everyone to saftey as quickly as possible, wether it be with a rowboat or a rescue helicopter. We clean up the mess when the water lowers, but getting out alive has always been more important.
Tornado alley is less of a regional designation in the sense of the others, but it is something to bare thinking about on its own. It would be neglectful to leave it out of a discussion of US natural disasters. Tornado alley is a lovely area where tornados are a relatively commonplace and well known hazard. North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska make up "Tornado Alley", but they aren't the only places tornados happen. We had them right here in Virginia last year, one took out bits of the next town over from me, Chantilly. Tornados are very simillar to hurricanes based on appearences. They are high winds moving in a circular patern that form a cone. Hurricanes are generally much stronger and form out over water. Tornados form when hot and cold air meet and don't mix well and are most dangerous when they grow down to the ground. You can look up and see them forming. Our meterologists can often tell when conditions are right for them.
Unless the storms are really bad or in a strange place, they don't make the international news. If you live in tornado alley, you know to what to do when you hear the sirens or the storm. It sounds a bit like a train really. You go into the most interior room in your home, usually a bathroom, and hang out until it passes. if you are outside and have the time to get somewhere safe you do. Cars are not safe, nor are mobile homes, ever, in a tornado. You learn this stuff as a kid in the area and they repeat the saftey stuff on the news for all the people who aren't native, including every radio station in the area.
The north, both the Northwest and the Northeast have to contend with blizzards. Being snowed in is far from an unknown phenomina. It doesn't happen every year, and you can bet it will always be inconvient, but it does happen. If you live in the north of the country, you are one of the best people to ride in the car with when it snows. People who are used to the snow know to bundle up and make do. Sure, you stock a few extra canned goods in the pantry just in case. You may never need them, but they are canned goods, they won't go bad. Gas is also a popular heating choice because the gas lines won't go out as easily as the electricity. They also know when to close the roads and how to drive on slippery surfaces.
Of special note, the Great Lakes have extra lake effect snow from the preciptation off of the Great Lakes. That area gets even more snow then the rest of the northern US. (The Great Lakes and Salt Lake in Utah are really inland seas like the Black Sea in Eastern Europe.) I'm told I was born the same year as a lovely blizzard. I made a point having once lived in the North to learn how to drive in bad weather including snow as a teen. Believe me, that has paid off dividends.
The Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast both have to contend with hurricanes. I'm sure everyone has heard more then enough about hurricanes recently, but there are some basic things to remember about them. Hurricanes cause damage because of the high winds, storm surge and the rainfall. The storm surge is enough to back up rivers which is a major flooding hazard. The winds are at least 74 mph for a weak hurricane. Hurricanes, like tornados, are catagorised by their wind speeds. Unlike tornados, we know when one is in the works and going to hit somewhere. The only question is where will it land.
We never know for certain where the eye will pass until it gets there. Our evacuation warnings only really come about two days before landfall. Depending on where you are and the level of local, city, or state planning, this can be enough warning to get to saftey. So long as traffic is moving on the roads everyone will get out just fine. You may lose everything, but so long as you have your life its all just stuff that can be replaced. The infrastructure is key to effective evacuations. The local building codes also make an extreme amount of difference in the level of damage sustained. On the coast, nearly everywhere actively discourages people from building wooden homes. Concrete, cinderblock and other materials that can withstand both the heavy winds and the storm surge.
Now, in New Orleans there are several factors at work that made things far far worse. Any one of these things would complicate the situation. Since all of these are present the city was a systems engineering nightmare when it comes to a disaster like this.
One of those factors is the fact that the coasts in the South have had quite a lot of explosive growth in population. It has been happening all over the country in part because the population is getting older and wants to retire to the beaches where it is warm and they can enjoy the water. The cold in the north is hard on people as they get older, it makes their joints ache worse among other things. The growth has outstripped the infrastructure in several areas. It is a known problem and the cities and towns are floating bonds to expand the sewers, schools, and other resources. Roads are build not by the cities, but by the states and the state level is slower to respond to things like that. Road building and maintence is a constant task that the states work on. It is never done because there is always something that needs doing. New Orleans didn't really have enough roads to easily evacuate the entire city to safer ground. It wasn't really a surprise, but most people were able to get out and for that we should be grateful.
A second factor is that the city itself lies at the mouth of a huge river delta. The mighty Mississippi flows into the sea right there. It is actually why the city was built there in the first place. Historically, the river allowed the transport of goods from the middle of the country out to the rest of the world via the sea trade. Then and now, the city is an exemely important port. Yet it is a river delta, it floods when the river gets to full. The French Quarter is one of the oldest parts of New Orleans and it is notable that it is on some of the highest ground in the area which explains why it has faired so well. With greater technology, we have been able to control most of the flooding that you would ordinarily be expected. In this case, we have more then just rainfall up river and on the city itself to account for the flooding. We have storm surge to account for. As I mentioned above, storm surge is powerful enough to make rivers flow backward.
The city has a series of levees to help keep the river in its banks and away from homes. A river delta is effectively a swamp. All things built on swamps wind up sinking to some degree with time because of the water content of the soil. It is a completely known phenomina. New Orleans has had to build up the levees over time to make up for the sinkage. Federal funds have gone to help pay for this, although usually it would be considered a local problem and left to the municiple authorities to raise. I guess the port is so strategically important to us that they decided it was worth spending the federal monies on. Unfortnately, it appears that quite a bit of the federal funds in the last couple years were diverted. Pumping stations also have been built to pump any water that makes it to the wrong side of the levee back to where it belongs.
A third major factor is simply poor planning. Every city has emergency plans worked out in the US. Some are better done then others. This one was pretty poor. They did not make appropriate plans to get the poor and the ill out of the city. Most of the people who are there right now did not stay out of arrogance or ignorance, although ignorance could be a factor for many. They stayed because there wasn't any real way for them to get out. Tourists were stuck there and that should say something. Usually tourists can pay well enough to git while the gittin's good. Where were the free busses to take people out of the inner city, or the trains? Of course not everyone is going to be able to afford a lift, it is something that should have been planned for in the emergency plans.
Emergency shelters would still be necessary because even with free evacuation buses there is no way they would have gotten everyone out, but the sheer number of people could have been drastically reduced. Potable water suplies should have been planned for as well. Sure, if gallon jugs had been stored somewhere they would likely need to be rationed, but that could have been done. The same can be said of canned foods. So they would need a small staff to handle the rationing and the cooking. The point is, it could be done and it was not.
Stupid as this one may sound, no one planned for what to do if their emergency management center was under water when they knew full well it was located in the flood zone. They screwed up. A secondary base of operations was necessary should the city ever flood and they never made one. They need a base of operations to coordinate the relief efforts from so that they would know where to direct both local and outside help.
Again on the suply end, they forgot to stock enough batteries for when the power would go out. (Pardon me while I cringe at that notion.) It is pretty basic that the power goes out when there is a bad storm of any type let alone a hurricane. Communications systems of course, run on electricity. With the power out and the batteries running out of juice most of the communications systems in the city are down, not only for the unfortunate residents left there, but for the emergency crews. It is extremely hard to tell what is going on where and who needs what if you don't have some means of communicating it.
The last big factor is the one much of my friends list is complaining about, the piss poor federal response. First thing to remember there is that the state is in charge of telling the federal authorites where to apply the resources because frankly they are the ones who know where and how to use things better. Exactly who has dropped the ball in this mess, I really can't say for sure. The National Guard is always called out to help keep order when something like this happens and they should have been there within hours of the eye of the hurricane passing. The Army Corps of Engineers should have been working fixing the levee breach from the minute it happened using any and all resources availible to them. The delay on that is purely unacceptable, I don't give a damn if they were being shot at, they could have taken other routes to get there away from the shooters. Hazmat teams from everywhere should have been on site to deal with potential chemical spills. Hospitals and emergency medical helicopters should have been prepped and ready to go with an organized response for all of the hospitals to evacuate their most critically ill patients. Boats of all types should be in the hands of emergency crews to get people to saftey with first aid kits on them.
We Americans have lots of natural disasters. We give a lot of money, goods, and time to charities too. One reason why we are so generous is because it really isn't hard for us to see how one day we may be the one in need. We expect people to be at their best in a disaster because that is what we hope we would be in their place. Outside of New Orleans, we are completely outraged that anyone would fire upon relief efforts. To most of us that is shocking and completely mind boggling. nepenthene actually put a fairly insightful perspective on it in her post that actually explains quite a bit. It doesn't make the behaviour any better, but any insight is helpful for figuring out how to calm things.
We know that that could have been us. We are by and large more then happy to help out in this kind of situation, we just need to know when, where and how. There has been an outflow of public support from all over from people opening up their homes to school districts reopening closed schools to stream lined college admissions to people simply carting hot meals to refugee centers. With something as huge as this, private effort alone won't do enough. The governmental authorities need to take charge and do what needs to be done without further snipping at each other.
This is a national disgrace because it is simply such a mess and it should not be. We know how to organize a rescue, relief and rebuilding effort. I have no idea why we are doing such a poor job of it, but like everyone else, I'm not happy about it.