Disaster Preparedness

We're starting to hear alot of noise about the level of readiness and the lack of speed from a federal response. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the disaster in New Orleans was never contemplated in terms of national import. This is exactly the kind of thing that the federal government should be gearing up for.

I want to lay out the facts as clearly as possible before we get in to what needs to be done.

Prior to the hurricane hitting Florida it appeared that it would probably only be a Tropical Storm or maybe a very weak Category 1 Hurricane. It also appeared that it would go through the Lake Okechobee region of the state which would force it to travel some 200 miles over land. In the past, this has been enough to pretty much kill a hurricane or storm.

However, just prior to making landfall the storm slowed down and took a severe dip south. It went over Miami and the keys and was never over significant amounts of land. Having gotten past Florida, the storm began to strengthen in the warm Gulf waters and curl to the North. Initial predictions showed it hitting near pensacola. The storm then took a westerly bent putting it on a collision course with New Orleans. The first time that the storm was shown to be zeroing in on New Orleans was about 60 hours prior to its eventual landfall. Mandatory evacuation orders were issued at that time but, because of the geography, there was a HUGE area to be evacuated (approximatley 500 miles of coastline). In addition to the logistical problems of evacuating that heavily populated an area there was also the demographic factors influencing things. Many people in the region are poor and without transportation. This was a particularly bad problem in New Orleans.

With approximately 24 left before landfall the storm took a slight bent east so that the NE quadrant would miss New Orleans. Citizens in New Orleans breathed a collective sigh of relief and this last minute swing probably induced alot of people to stay put instead of making an emergency evacuation. Monday seemed to pass without much incident in New Orleans. Coverage of the city was spotty but didn't seem to be significantly different then other past hurricanes. Suddenly news of the levees breaking streamed in. How or why the levees went unmonitored and unreinforced appears to be a bit of a muddle right now. What we do know is that sometime in a 12 hour span 3 levees broke and the city began to flood. The water level was already higher in the region and the city flooded worse then the height you would expect based on the lake's water level.

Weather and logistics prevented a quick and decisive response by the army corp of engineers. The technical details are best left up to qualified engineers but my understanding is that by the time they were able to start dropping things into the levee the rushing water was already so strong that 15,000 lb cement blocks were getting slammed out of the way. At some point, desperation induced the corp to look at the possibilty of using container trucks or even a barge to plug the gap. Time worked against them and the city and lake reached an equilibrium point, however.

What is fascinating to me is that there doesn't appear to have been any kind of response plan. There was, originally, quite a bit of press coverage of the budget being cut for the reinforcement of the levees. That indicates to me that at least someone, somewhere was thinking that this was a possibility. Why was their no response plan in place? This is THE disaster for New Orleans. Why was their not a thorough plan of action already mapped out? Why couldn't the mayor open a book and start educating himself as to the logistical problems. Hurricane evacuations have been occuring for years. The parameters are pretty well set (this many people will stay, this many people will leave, this is what traffic will be like, etc.). The New Orleans area is home to 3 of the country's 10 biggest ports, including the number 1 port (3rd in the world). Why were the logistical issues not thoroughly mapped out? This region is absolutely critical to this country's production of gasoline and yet noone thought about a hurricane and its affects on distribution?

This makes me wonder what other scenarios haven't been planned on.
A northern hurricane hitting DC or New York?
An earthquake in San Francisco?
A nuclear bomb going off at the NYSE?
Are there plans in place to deal quickly and decisively with the chaos that might insue? Is there some thought about the New Orleans's out there? The cities that are critical to a very important niche (in this case gasoline). I hope that these issues are addressed soon. Otherwise, the next event might be as a result of unexpected human planning rather than forseeable natural causes.