DaleWisely wrote:I'm not blaming anybody. I don't think there's anyone to blame. I said something to a friend of mine this morning about the apparent absence of an crisis management plan and he pointed out that they had a crisis plan, that being to get people out, and that 80% of the population did get out. That's something.
I don't want to raise the issue of blame but just the question of whether this really counts as a plan, at least the way it was implemented. When this was posted I was puzzled but even more so after hearing an interview tonight on radio with someone from a New Orleans media group. They intended to stay and report but got out before things got really bad when their premises were inundated. They are now in Baton Rouge. (I can't give you their name; I was driving when I caught the interview.)
The interviewee was asked at one point what predictions they had to go by in planning for this kind of event. He said that he himself had asked an expert who had predicted a death toll of 100,000 in the aftermath of a serious hurricane. Apart from the fact that New Orleans is like a half full bathtub floating in the ocean, the main reason for the high estimate was that New Orleans has a lot of poor people living hand-to-mouth who don't own cars and would have no means of escape and nowhere to escape to. But why was it just taken for granted (by this pundit and the authorities) that an evacuation plan would be a do-it-yourself thing? I know that America is big on laissez-faire but surely it would have been a lot cheaper, if nothing else, to mount an assisted evacuation before the storm than it is after.
So that's my puzzle. To my way of thinking, an evacuation plan would consist in a destination to go to and the infrastructure to get people there and look after them when they get there. (I know that's a big undertaking but it could be a standing contingency plan.) Yet the implementation of the plan seems to have consisted in just urging people to leave which is darned near impossible for those with no car and no money to support themselves when they get to .... where exactly?
I realise that it's easy to be wise after the event. But this media group had this prediction before the event and they can't have been the only ones.
Of course, all most of us can do now other than give practical relief is just hope that a few long overdue pieces of good luck fall the way of these poor people.
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
