Avoiding disaster

During his two-year visit to London in 1724, Benjamin Franklin was impressed upon by one of the most efficient and sophisticated firefighting systems in the world. This system arose because the greatest natural disaster of the preceding generation -- the fire of 1666 -- made painfully clear the inadequacy of existing structures to deal with fires.

Upon his return to Philadelphia, he set up a similar fire crew that was mimicked by his fellow citizens many times over. Each company was made up of the residents of some group of houses and would be solely charged with protecting the houses within the company. The model was replicated over and over throughout Philadelphia until virtually every home and shop in the city was protected by a fire company.

There are limits on this kind of individual initiative today. Certainly fire crews of this sort would be self-defeating. Not only would they be less effective than highly-trained firefighters, but they would distract people from their regular jobs for which they have been specialized. In areas such as the U-District, it where most tenancies last a year or less, it would be impossible.

What this example does illustrate is that where governmental initiative failed, disaster preparedness can be initiated by individual initiative.

The thousands of impoverished Americans who died because of negligence prove beyond question that the preparation needed in New Orleans was vastly lacking; Houston was spared only by a long warning and the lucky turn north of the storm. Politicians and bureaucrats, eager to show their appreciation of the lessons of Katrina, evacuated Houston in time to escape the wrath of Rita.

That evacuation was clumsy, however, and hindered by the 2 million citizens each taking their cars onto jam-packed freeways. Had Rita not been immediately preceded by Katrina, the evacuation would likely have been ordered too late by a politically-conscious mayor and the results catastrophic.

Nothing prevents individuals from making the preparations necessary to ease future mass evacuations and prepare for disasters. SDART (Seattle Disaster Aid & Response Teams) is a perfect example of a contemporary program where individual empowerment can ease the crucial transition immediately following an earthquake when city and state resources are spread thin and national resources not yet brought to bear.

Thousands of lives could have been saved in New Orleans had similar preventive measures been taken. Assigning blame serves little purpose except to clean house of the incompetent, but more important is developing the means to avert future calamity. Community leaders should arrange with owners of buses and large vans to ferry the poor out of major cities. All bus chartering companies should offer to cancel any and all existing contracts to aid in this.

Far more can be gained by the rudimentary organization on the community level more than any other. Negligence to this organization in New Orleans resulted in mass death. Let us learn from that mistake.