Pretty Much a Recipe for Disaster

It appears that many prayers were answered as hurricane Gustav hit New Orleans as a weakened category 2 storm rather than the category 4 or 5 that had been predicted.

Before the storm had even passed FEMA and other elected officials began patting themselves on their backs as to how great job they had done.

By all accounts the evacuation process was much better than three years ago but that is not saying much.

The preparation for and response (or lack thereof) to Katrina was so bad that anything would have been an improvement.

But the question needs to be asked; “How much better prepared were we and how would the response have been had this been a category 4 or 5 storm?”

Shortly after Katrina and Rita we recommended that the government get some input from some of the grass root agencies that were involved at the hands on level and were major players in the recovery of the Gulf Coast.

Three years later and I do not know of any that were contacted.

We also suggested that going forward anyone who lives in a known natural disaster related area be asked to register when they buy or rent a home.

The government would then know who the relief aid recipients would be in advance.

This is a very simple solution which would cut considerably the cases of fraud.

We can almost guarantee that had this been as bad a storm as had been expected that both FEMA and the local government would not have a clue as to whom the potential victims would be and it would be Katrina all over again.

Considering the fact that they are predicting a very bad hurricane season and the fact that the continued rise in temperature of the Gulf will lend itself to more powerful storms in the future one would think that the government would begin acting on these or similar types of recommendations.

We dodged a bullet this time but it is only a matter of time that our luck will change.

If things don’t change we are just playing Russian roulette with the lives of millions of Gulf Coast residents.

The Government has already proven it can’t be reactive, has shown that it doesn’t want to be proactive and unless we keep the pressure on will continue to be basically inactive.

Pretty much a recipe for disaster.