{"id":188,"date":"2005-09-01T18:54:09","date_gmt":"2005-09-01T22:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/09\/01\/katrina-chaos\/"},"modified":"2005-09-01T18:54:09","modified_gmt":"2005-09-01T22:54:09","slug":"katrina-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/09\/01\/katrina-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Katrina Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Find lost friends and loved ones<\/font><\/a>
\n<\/span><\/div>\n

FEMA <\/span>was unprepared.  The engineers <\/span>in New Orleans, despite insisting at some point this wasn’t as bad as their worst fears, were unprepared.  Even Fats Domino<\/a> was unprepared.  The governors <\/span>of
\nLouisiana and Mississippi were unprepared even to fight for order, and
\nhave already thrown up their hands and claimed salvage impossible,
\nrepair “in the hands of a higher power.”  <\/p>\n

But this wasn’t unexpected<\/span>. 
\nIt has been talked about and thought about, for decades, by people at
\nevery level from city district planners to various branches of the
\nfederal government and the military.  Louisiana isn’t the only
\nregion of the US that talks about “The Big One<\/span>”
\nand when it will come, but they have one of the better reasons to
\nexpect it to happen soon; everyone knew the chances a disaster were
\nonly increasing year by year.  We have advanced hurricane tracking
\nsystems that allowed us to start worrying about Katrina <\/span>long
\nbefore landfall.   But what was the response?  Is there
\nsome way to see how forces, experts, and materials were mobilized in
\nthe run up to the past week?<\/p>\n

I know more about catastrophes in Texas than in Louisiana, so a few
\ncomments from across the border:  the extensive flooding <\/span>in
\nSoutheast Texas a few summers back was no wake-up call, either; and
\nimprovement plans made then have yet to be implemented in Houston (to
\npick a nearby and wealthier city).  Anything readily survived can
\nbe readily forgotten.<\/p>\n

Why are good contingency plans so scarce?  Why are people so
\nshy <\/span>about demanding them?  In Houston, I remember, people had
\nknown for ten years before the last flood that measures promised after
\nthe preceding flood hadn’t been implemented… but there was only
\noccasional grumbling.  <\/p>\n

And most importantly, why are there so few community-based disaster
\ngroups who know what to do and how in such situations?  This
\ndisaster proved again that waiting for national or global organizations
\nto come and help often takes too long.  The health  and
\nlooting problems have worsened rapidly (currently, active Marines have
\nbeen called in and the governor’s orders include “shoot looters on
\nsight”).  People let in the area feel stranded, don’t know what to
\ndo, and are in many regions making the situation worse.  <\/p>\n

This was a MINOR natural disaster, for all the destruction it caused —  it was trackable, predictable, and came in a familiar form<\/span>.
\nYet hundreds of communities proved themselves incapable of coping with
\nit.   Just imagine the results of a real cataclysm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Find lost friends and loved ones FEMA was unprepared.  The engineers in New Orleans, despite insisting at some point this wasn’t as bad as their worst fears, were unprepared.  Even Fats Domino was unprepared.  The governors of Louisiana and Mississippi were unprepared even to fight for order, and have already thrown up their hands and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-too-weird-for-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}