Before the next Katrina
Let's review the three essential
categories of non-achievement that contributed to the disaster during and
following Hurricane Katrina.
It's wonderful, finally, to see aid rolling in and the whole panoply of disaster response coming to bear. I'm just going to note a couple of significant areas for future discussion -- as much to remind myself further down the road as anything else. It's time to focus on supporting what's happening, regardless of how late.
1. Evacuation. I wonder if Homeland Insincerity has reliable evacuation plans in place for any major city? They certainly didn't for New Orleans.
As a contrast, there is a typhoon hitting the South Coast of China right about now. In a day or two, they evacuated 600,000 people from the region. They got them out before the storm. And, if you don't know anything about the commerce and industry there, this is one of the boomtown areas of Chinese business. It's like moving Cleveland.
Latest reports say 10 died.
2. The question of moving how much relief, how soon, will remain. The Pentagon has their entire head buried up their wazoo into thinking like General Motors. Bigger is better! No thought of efficiencies of time and reaction.
Four careers ago, I spent considerable time in traffic management. Moving great quantities is almost always cost effective. It doesn't do a damn for response time. You have to spend days staging material before you can move it. That's why they're still loading out the hospital ship in Baltimore instead of getting on the way to the Gulf Coast.
People like Rumsfeld prate on about "rapid response". He hasn't a clue. He should ask the Marine Corps for advice.
3. The Army Corps of Engineers has been handicapped for 20-30 years by administrations that won't consider anything more than band-aid approaches to anything cursed as "environmental" by American corporate wealth. Every core approach to levees, revitalizing the alluvial fan in bayou country -- has been halted by lobbyists, the OMB and just plain idiots with short-term attention spans.
Compounding this was the fairly recent decision by the ACE to replace the Freeboard concept of levee construction with risk management. What a delightful term. "Risk Management". They do the managing. The people of New Orleans get all the risk.
The Netherlands has responded to the same problem, e.g., diminishing returns from larger levees sinking under their own weight, by condemning land adjacent to danger areas -- removing all business and habitation -- dredging and digging enormous dry reservoirs [suitably planted with native grasses to prevent erosion, etc.] so these will accumulate storm waters rather than relying on levees alone. As storm waters rise, instead of trying to halt them with levees, the water is diverted into canals leading to the new reservoirs.
This hasn't been tested by anything as severe as Katrina, yet; but, it still looks better than anything a levee system alone has to offer.
Update: I spent several hours online, today, researching flood diversion. Turns out the whole world now talks about Risk Management; so, I guess I shouldn't dump on the ACE as much for that one. I've also discovered the complexity of systems required to analyze and begin to solve basic problems with flood diversion and management -- only expands into more and more complexity.
The leading nations in the world involved in serious study and solution includes the Netherlands [as I expected] and China [as I thought it might]. One should-have-been-expected aspect of the Chinese situation is not that they're experiencing greater flooding problems [they're not]; but, that they perceive the need for environmentally-friendly solutions. The value, the price, of flooding in China, however, has increased exponentially because of the value of real estate, infrastructure, homes of the folks living there -- as real income continues at a rapid rise.
The single additional problem rooted in practices of the Army Corp of Engineers for probably a century is their commitment to channeling, straightening out the flow of navigable rivers to assist commerce. Turns out it also increases the speed and impetus of storm surge traveling along the river's nice new course.
Posted: Sat - September 3, 2005 at 06:55 AM