Quote:
|
Originally Posted by WSUCougar
In a lot of ways I think it simply boils down to a general disdain for doing what is really necessary, as opposed to doing what is affordable when it comes to such things. It's a "pay me now or pay me later" thing, with Mother Nature Incorporated on the invoice. Too often the price-tag on appropriate safety measures (or whatever) is prohibitive; people see the price tag and shrink away. Only the tragic bite of reality makes people realize the error of their ways.
|
Yup. For example, we don't have a large contingent of snow plows on hand here, because snow and ice only hit a couple of days out of the year. It's cheaper to shut everything down for a few days. But we got hammered this past winter, when a "surprise" storm (one of those "surprises that happens every other year where the meteorologists say we'll get a 1/4" of precip and it turns into 18" of snow) plastered ice on the streets during the afternoon, and parents could not get their kids out of school. We had gridlock, with 20 minute drives home taking 12+ hours on some of the major thoroughfares. Hundreds (thousands?) of kids spent the night in their schools, which fortunately were set up to deal with it.
Of course, we also have an area that only has a handful of major arteries. Fortunately, my wife and I don't have to take one to get home, so it took us about 25 minutes instead of 15 to get home, mostly because we went slow in case we hit an icy patch.
People were screeching about what could have been done differently. Well, for starters, we could eliminate sprawl, but since that isn't happening all you can do is go home before any snow or ice fall. Not much else to do when ice comes-a-knockin'. Only real valid criticism was as the snow and ice started, they let the schools out, and sent a whole bunch of young 16-year-old drivers out into it. Would have been better off just keeping ALL the kids at school unless parents came for them.
But I digress. People need to keep in mind that this storm was only a threat to New Orleans for about 24 hours before it hit, and after it went through it looked like New Orleans came through okay. Everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief, started lining things up, and the next day the levees broke. It's been just over 48 hours since the flooding really started in earnest, 24 hours since the looting began, and something like 12 hours since the shooting got seriously rolling. Groups like the Red Cross were lined up and prepared (note all the reports of supply convoys being attacked; everyone is focusing on "attack" and not "there was a supply convoy"), but no one expected this level of violence. So they've had to switch gears twice in a little over 2 days on what exactly was needed to respond to this crisis, as the precise crisis has changed twice.
Monday night praise was being heaped upon Homeland Security for how quickly they were able to organize things and get them in place to repair from the hurricane. Within 2 days the situation COMPLETELY changed on everybody, and now people are yelling at how ineffective the response has been. How about a little dose of realism, folks?