(no subject)

[heidi]

Cenk Uyger, one of my dorm-mates from my freshman year at Penn, is one of the bloggers at the Huffington Post, and this weekend, he posted an interesting exploration of some of the theorizing about government that people like Grover Norquest and Rush Limbaugh have been harping on these last two weeks - the question I have, especially for those of you who are, or have been, conservatives or more libertarian (the latter as I myself have been at times) - what are your thoughts? Anon commenting is allowed and although I'm still keeping IP logging on, I promise to not use it for anything that isn't an actual LJ ToU violation. I've seen a lot of discussion from the right recently that emergency response is entirely the responsibility of the local and state government, but if that's the case, when did it change? Can anyone deny that last fall when the hurricanes hit Florida, the government stepped in to help throughout the recovery process, and the national guard was there hours after the eye had passed? 4000 soldiers & airmen, my statels national guard site says, were activated to aid in disaster relief. In contrast, only 7,500 troops were activated to help in three states as of September 1, with a storm that was much more severe, regardless of the flooding aftermath. how does this make sense?

Also, those who've been passing around and reposing Larry Bradshaw's story, it's now in the New York Times, along with a confirmation by Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna, La., Police Department, "that his officers, along with those from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Police, sealed the bridge." He had not, as of yesterday, asked his officers about whether any of them threatened people with guns or fired weapons over people's heads.

Comments

[selinakyle47.livejournal.com]

My problem with relegating rescue, recovery and aid to private enterprise comes down to 2 things. One, if the disaster area encompasses several states (like Katrina did) or a fairly large metropolitan city (like NOLA), then local and community resources are quickly overwhelmed financially and logistically. Also, as in the case with NOLA, the local infrastructure was damaged, which hampered their ability to respond.

Secondly, if cities were to contract out rescue and relief services, I would worry that the poorer communities would have a difficult time getting equitable allocation of services compared to more wealthy cities who could afford better and more numerous sources of aid.

While private offers of aid have been more than helpful, the federal government is still needed to coordinate and allocate the resources needed to deal with the crisis, regardless of the economic status of the citizens needing help. Of course, it has performed poorly these past 2 weeks, but I don't think it's an indication of all it could possibly do.

[nostrademons.livejournal.com]

But all those problems seemingly apply to federal relief efforts too. The damaged infrastructure in New Orleans is hampering FEMA and the National Guard as much as it is private SAR groups. Possibly more so, if the SAR teams are local, because they then know the ins-and-out of the area instead of being completely at a loss because the interstate is underwater.

And they haven't exactly been doing a good job at coordinating things. So far, coordination seems to mean basically "If you're not FEMA or the military, get out of the area." That's ignoring resources, not allocating them. I almost think that Google should've come out with a G!Maps extension that overlaid Craigslist requests for rescues and GPS data from rescuer and showed everyone a map of where all the rescuers were and all the people needing rescue. Heck, the technology exists already. Hook that into Walmart's inventory system and you'd know exactly what food & water was available too. Then you call for everyone on the gulf coast who has an airboat/jetski/zodiac/rowboat, hand them a portable radio, GPS receiver, and cheap laptop, and have them ferry supplies in and people out by water. Get 1000 people, with maybe $2000 of equipment each, and you're looking at $2 million. And I bet it would've been far more effective than what we actually did.

Ultimately, disaster relief comes down to people. The federal approach is to have someone at the top who coordinates everything and then gives orders (through several layers) to the troops on the ground. But disasters are too big for any one person to handle: it's just too easy to get overwhelmed and not do anything. Instead, I'm proposing that disasters ought to be handled by giving the relevant information and resources to the folks on the ground and letting them make the decisions.

As for the poor not getting help: that's an issue, but it's an issue even with federal disaster aid. As someone mentioned above, the biggest factor determining whether someone will get help is whether it's an election year. That and whether they live in a swing state and are likely to vote for the incumbent. Government just replaces money with votes as a currency.

[nostrademons.livejournal.com]

Also, the one thing that concerns me about leaving disaster preparation to private and local organizations is that corporations have notoriously short time horizons. Note that all the successes I mentioned earlier - Baltimore, San Francisco - had strong rebuilding efforts. But they might not have needed rebuilding had they not been so flammable to begin with.

Unfortunately, an inability to plan ahead seems uniquely human, and not just uniquely corporate. Look at the $500 million or so levee strengthening plans that were scrapped by the federal government before the storm hit. So I'm not sure the federal government would do any better.