Politics of Disaster Katrina, Big Government, And a New Strategy for Future Crises

I N T R O D U C T I O N ; We act as if we're immune.We build below sea level, or on barrier islands, ; or on hillsides with brush that annually burns, or over earthquake ; faults-and we're shocked, shocked when disasters occur.We use levee repair ; funds to build parkways or spruce up gambling casinos, and we're shocked ;when old levees give way. ; We think that if we have well-built houses we're immune. British colonials ; had grand homes in Calcutta, but their roofs came off and many of ; their walls fell in when a cyclone struck the port on October 5, 1864. The ; cyclone also blew away rickety native huts as if they were twigs: eighty thousand ;died from the wind and the forty-foot-high wall of water it created. ; We think that if we build big, strong buildings we're immune. In the 1988 ; Armenian earthquake, the 1995 Japanese earthquake, and the 1999 Turkish ; earthquake, new multistoried buildings-including ones that conformed to ; California's Uniform Building Code-collapsed. Japan's calamity left fiftyfive ; hundred dead and was, according to a subsequent risk management ; report, "a terribly striking example of what earthquakes can do to a modern ;industrialized society." ; We think that with enough warning we're immune. However, San ; Franciscans knew that an earthquake was coming, and New Orleans residents ; knew that a hurricane was coming. Many people over the years have ; had volcanoes as neighbors. Mount Krakatoa in Indonesia began erupting ; in May 1883, three months before its enormous explosion killed thirty-six ; thousand, but undisturbed residents even climbed to the volcano's peak to ; peer inside. Six years later in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, residents had a running ; joke that "the dam has burst; take to the hills."When it did break, there ;was little time to run, so twenty-five hundred died. ; Some people in New Orleans who thought, or hoped, that the city was ; immune behind its levees should have read about the city's 1927 flood or ; about how the Yangtze River flood in 1954 killed forty thousand and left ; one million people homeless. The United States had planned to build the ; world's largest dam on the Yangtze River, for both power and flood control, ; but China's new Communist government used clay soil to build levees that ;collapsed, submerging an area twice the size of Texas. ; Disasters happen, but the number of fatalities increases when short-term ; goals take precedence over long-term safety. Before Mount Pelee erupted on ; the French island of Martinique in the West Indies on May 8, 1902, residents ; of the nearby city of St. Pierre smelled sulfur fumes for weeks. Compared to ; Martinique officials, Louisiana's recent leaders seem like geniuses. The governor ; in St. Pierre did not want anything to get in the way of his May 10 ; reelection, so he set up roadblocks to keep constituents from leaving before ; they could cast ballots. The local newspaper mocked those who worried. Its ;editor, along with forty thousand other residents, died during the eruption. ; Building houses below sea level or along a hurricane-hit shore makes as ; much sense as the southern European practice, during the eighteenth and ; nineteenth centuries, of using church vaults to store gunpowder. Churches ; had steeples or bell towers susceptible to lightning strikes: a lightning strike, ; fire, and subsequent gunpowder explosion in Brescia, Italy, in 1769 killed ; three thousand people. A similar lightning strike and explosion on the island ;of Rhodes in 1856 killed four thousand. ; Unanticipated problems are inevitable, but politics and pride caOlasky, Marvin is the author of 'Politics of Disaster Katrina, Big Government, And a New Strategy for Future Crises', published 2006 under ISBN 9780849901720 and ISBN 0849901723.