I write this column late — laboring early on Labor Day — as Hurricane Gustav approaches the Louisiana coast. By the time you read this, Gustav will be a tropical storm and we’ll know whether it was just another hurricane or whether it was on the scale of Katrina.
With Commerce (and many, many friends) having just dealt with its mini-disaster, and with Katrina still fresh in the memory, I’ve a lot more interest in seeing how the Louisiana and federal governments would handle a second huge catastrophe on the Gulf Coast.
The response to Katrina was as big a disaster as the storm. FEMA and the Bush administration were caught napping. Gustav, on the other hand, stood to give both of those groups a chance to show what they’ve learned, how they’re better organized, better equipped — and that they care.
There is a political element too. Naturally. With Gustav arriving around New Orleans as Republicans were convening for their convention in Minneapolis, there was a lot of political ground to be gained, or possibly lost, depending upon how successful the Bush administration handled the crisis. A strong showing could have erased a lot of the ill will generated by the television images from a drowning New Orleans — and blunt Barack Obama’s criticism of the Bush administration on that point. That reason alone would give Washington every incentive for a massive response.
In advance of the storm and knowing nothing about how bad it might be, it seems impossible that the state and federal governments would not be prepared. The experience of the level of disaster of Katrina and the incompetence and confusion of the governments’ response gave us a textbook for improvement. Katrina and Rita exposed weaknesses at all levels of government.
Likewise, the strong government response here to the Aug. 26 tornado is owed, in part, to past experience. In the late 1980s, a similar tornado (some said “wind shear”), with most of the damage taking place along Scott Street and the Wilson Drive areas. That led to an extensive city right of way clearing program that resulted in fewer utility outages last week (and in other storms since). The emergency preparedness spawned by 9-11 brought local police and fire units into better coordination, not to mention city governments. Weaknesses exposed in New York City by the terrorist attacks were the grounds for better communications and organization nationwide, which paid off in a small way here last week.
There will be other storms, other disasters. Each should better prepare us for the next. And Hanna lurks, you know.
