More hurricane commentary

I have a great deal to say about Hurricane Katrina, especially as I take in its aftermath and read countless news and opinion pieces on the constantly developing situation. Hindsight is actually not 20/20, but it certainly is much better than foresight. Nonetheless, the existence of severe planning shortfalls both on how to prepare for such a disaster and how to respond to it once it has happened should have been self-evident to anyone remotely responsible for the welfare of the city of New Orleans and the greater area. But kicking these various civic leaders while they're down doesn't do much good except to fill oneself with some lordly sense of know-it-all-ism. And as much I enjoy that, it still doesn't do any good.

I won't pretend to be familiar with the particulars of the New Orleans water management system or the state of Louisiana's hurricane response plans or the chain of command that exists in the various levels of government for responding to an emergency such as this one. Thus, I may be way off with some of my comments, but I think they stand on their own pretty well.

Local planning, starting with Mayor Nagin of New Orleans and whatever cadre of city commissioners he surrounds himself with was terrible. This is your city. Therefore, this is your responsibility. Yes, only to a point, but a great deal of planning is best done at the local level where the local needs are best understood so don't expect someone to hold your hand when the going gets tough. Why aren't the supplies to repair damaged levees kept nearby in parts of the city the lie above the prevailing water level? Why aren't helicopters on a stand-by type of lease ready to be mobilized? Why isn't the total loss of landline communications foreseen when everything could potentially be underwater? Where are you satellite phones, your back-up generators, your fuel reserves to power pumping stations in a crisis? Where is the planning for evacuating and/or rescuing those who refused to leave because this isn't the first time people have stayed either by choice or by lack of means to leave? By the way, Mr. Mayor, those buses you want so badly appear to be where you left them. And it didn't have to be a hurricane that broke the levees. If we're going to be so homeland security-centric, it could have been terrorists wanting to submerge a half million person city. Is this all only obvious in hindsight? No.

Much of that loss of local level planning capability stems from a false expectation that it will be taken care of by the federal government. The federal government's weakness in this whole matter has not been so much in the response, but in giving the appearance that people should expect a capable response. (Any capable response by FEMA is severely dampened when it is folded under triplicate layers of bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security.) This isn't about appearances given a week ago before the storm hit. It's about a culture of dependency and misplaced expectations in what the government should be doing for people. A lot of that starts several decades ago with flood insurance and it being offered by the federal government. By having an entity with no vested interest in making money through the sale of insurance, there is no market-induced premium for living in a high-risk area, especially one that can suffer so severely if flooded due its topologically-challenged nature. Ultimately, imbalanced assessment of risk due to the government's non-market presence warps the perception of how costly and dangerous living in a particular area is. In the end, entire portions of the gulf southeastern coasts get underwritten at ultimately my expense. Thus, a city like New Orleans can exist in 10-day ago condition waiting for the event that will force the rest of us to underwrite the cost of it's shaky foundations.

I'd like to save a potentially long spiel on the free market and its power at preparing for and responding to a crisis for some other day, perhaps as soon as tomorrow while it's still topically relevant. For now, I'll say that while I do like much that the free market has to offer, it has its own shortcomings in how to value animate assets.

Now it's time for the rant of the day. Have you sent your thoughts and prayers to the victims of Hurricane Katrina yet? Well, you better hurry, because the longer you wait, the longer you delay that sense of self-satisfaction of pretending to help without actually helping. I'm sure the token afterthought you're paying them is helping them a whole lot down on the ground there. At least it lets you sleep better at night. Isn't it incredibly egotistical to think your thoughts and prayers will help anyone? As if a higher being (God, supposedly) is going to hear you prayers and then decide that he really ought to spare a few more lives. Are you so powerful that you deign to think you control your god and who lives and who dies? Really now, stop sending your thoughts and prayers and start thinking about how to either really help or really learn from this.

Same goes for the President's presence on the ground. How does that help anyone except divert resources and energy away from people who really need it? Oh, it shows he cares? That still doesn't help anyone who really needs the help. And I hope the President isn't concerned with whether or not people think he cares or not. He should be concerned with the most efficient resolution (whatever it ends up being) of the situation.