Responding to Catastrophe
 

Looking at Japan right now, I'm wondering how America would respond to a similar disaster. We came together after 9/11 but a lot of us believe that coming together was hijacked for a different agenda. We had a serious financial crisis which, arguably, was not dealt with seriously and now a government debt crisis is turning into another left / right opposition to reality festival. Would we have the stones to survive a natural disaster of the scale that Japan is dealing with? We're probably better at dealing with immediate disasters, but I'm having my doubts about America's vision.

At the risk of sounding highly cynical...
We would provided there was money to be made by doing it. I'm sure Bechtel and Halliburton, et al would be all too happy tp pitch in if the price were right. Otherwise it's gonna be school bake sales and church rummage sales.

I am remembering hurricane Katrina. So nope, I don't think we have the stones.

We had another disaster on a Katrina scale. The upper Mississippi floods were massive. And since government bureaucrats were technical people - not political friends - then massive floods across many states is hardly remembered. Remember when the river in St Louis rose 50 feet? Most don't because management was competent. How many forget events that were not news because top management did their job?

Katrina is an example of "management of the most incompetent type".

That was a magnitude 9 earthquake. Virtually all buildings survived due to planning like an engineer. We know a serious earthquake is overdue in the Arkansas, Memphis, Missouri region where buildings are not constructed to withstand earthquakes. Planning by bean counters. Where drills and region wide disaster organizations do not exist. And where someone was so stupid as to put disaster solution organizations into Fatherland security.

Wacko extremist fears are far more important than disaster prep. We have yet to know what that reorganization did. See how bad it can be when one actually prepares? Then only thousands die.

Imagine millions waiting like victims in the Convention center and Superdome for almost a week because the powers said everything was under control. As also happened for almost a week in FL after Andrew. When the powers that be even turned back numerous WalMart trucks carrying drinking water outside of New Orleans because it was not necessary.

That New Madrid region is a disaster just waiting to happen. No problem. We spent the money to save the world from a Saddam who threatened no one. And another $1.4(?) billion annually in military aid to Israel.

The rivers rose for other states too.I remember.

I remember a philosophy seminar a-wayy back, where folks were arguing that the degree of cooperation during a disaster was a good measure of the social health of a community. There are many, many factors, though.

Japan has many advantages in this respect. They have a culture that has grown up with regular disasters, and have a tradition to live up to. They have a strong sense of belonging to their community. They are also influenced by their geography to make small communities in whatever little patches can be built upon. Even in the cities, it was traditionally organised by more-or-less self-contained neighbourhoods.

In Australia, there is usually a *little* looting after a disater, but much more community helping. In the US, I'll hazard the guess that there would be a bit more looting, but still quite a lot of helping. I guess the larger population and greater emphasis on individualism are factors.

I'll shut up now before I provoke too many of you trigger happy gun-totin' Yanks. :D

Just had some small financial good news last week. Marci and I talked last night and plan to give a piece of it ($100) to the International Red Cross.

Of course this means my Cellar.org check will be late this year.:D

All along the entire west coast emergency preparedness measures were evident. Towns were evacuated and people were taken care of.

It didn't come to anything catastrophic but I was glad the authorities weren't taking any chances.

Johnstown's Flood in 1889 was one of America's greatest disasters. Japan has had about 100 Johnstown's all at once.

And then multiple Three Mile Islands - simultaneously. Already, Japan has had two reactors fail worse than anything in Three Mile Island. And maybe a third is now going down.

11 September is trivial compared to this. Did anyone remember a potential massacre that may soon happen in Libya? A few hundred thousand here. A few hundred thousand there. After a while, its just numbers. No wonder so many are so interested in Charlie Sheen.

You want to read this...

Maybe even worse to come.

News reports said that Charlie Sheen was watching what was unfolding in Japan on television when the police showed up at his home the other day to search for weapons. Maybe people were empathizing through Charlie until the cops interfered.

Don't the people living near reactors have their own hazmat protective gear?

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." - Stalin

The US is too polarized to come together in the face of tragedy. The people who lived a safe way from the disaster would just argue with each other while the people at the epi-center died. Gunmaster's quote is right on, unfortunately.

Running shoes.

That's a shame in a country with the world's third largest economy. Even Israeli civil defense provided protective equipment (e.g. gas masks, something like 4 million of them) to it's civilians as far back as '91 just in case anyone lobbed missiles with NBC warheads at them. You'd think a country like Japan, with its geological situation, would have done something similar to keep civilians from having to breath radioactive contamination in the event of a disaster. I haven't seen any reports of civilians in the affected areas using privately purchased hazmat protective gear either.

While the US government doesn't provide us with that level of protection here via taxpayer dollars, we can at least buy our own protective equipment through industrial supply channels should we choose to do so. Serviceable surplus protective equipment from international militaries is also available in the commercial market here. One can even buy a current state of the art US military gas mask (a.k.a. respirator) as I have done; however, vendors may restrict sales to those who have been trained on the equipment due to liability concerns (my military training sufficed). One would also be required to sign an ITAR* acknowledgement which the vendor keeps on file.

* International Traffic and Arms Regulation Acknowledgement

These Gas Masks are defined as "Significant Military Equipment" under the rules of the International Traffic and Arms Regulations. Their export to other countries or non-US citizens is NOT authorized by the US Government. They may not be resold, diverted, transferred, transshipped, or otherwise be disposed of in any other country, either in their original form or after being incorporated through an intermediate process into other end-terms, without prior written approval of the US Department of State.

I understand and will comply with this United States Federal Regulation:
Signature: _____________________________________________________

Printed Name: ___________________________________________________

Date: __________________

I think we have the stones to come together and do it. But our country is vast when compared to Japan, the UK, and most of the other countries in the world. We did come together for Katrina. The federal government generally failed but the people came together. Thousands of people gave up weeks of work and headed south to volunteer, supplies poured in from every church and community around the country, the Red Cross was spot on. The military was slow to become involved, due to the failure of Bush to act, but when they did they quickly got things under control (we could and most likely had a whole discussion as to why the Federal gov was slow to intervene, States Rights, failure of the State leadership, etc., but that is water under the 9th Ward).

The response to the major Earthquakes in LA and SF was quite successful.

The response to Mount St. Helens was spot on.

The response to 9/11 would be envied by most nations with less resources hands down.

As Griff eluded to in the first post, it is the long term solutions that we continually fail at and are destine to repeat in the future because of our bureaucracy and failure of federal government.