Later on in this post I will quote extensively from an e-mail I receive supposedly from a Denver emergency manager. As you may know, Colorado and the central/northern plains had two blizzards in a row in December, and snow was so high it covered roads, stranded people and in general caused havoc.
The e-mail makes a very important point: since when is it the government’s job to rescue people who don’t prepare for natural disasters?
Now, before you accuse me of not having charity for people who suffered in Katrina and other hurricanes, I would like to point out a few things. First, I live in Miami and have struggled through a half-dozen hurricanes (including the big one, Hurricane Andrew). I have volunteered to help people dig through the rubble after a hurricane several times. I’ve even posted about these experiences here and on Meridian Magazine. So, I am not making this post out of a lack of concern for the people who suffer through hurricanes.
I even went up to Mississippi to help people recover from Katrina, and believe me it was a mess. The entire town of Pascagoula was practically destroyed by Katrina. Members from our stake helped rebuild a half-dozen homes, and the owners were incredibly thankful. The Baptists in Pascagoula went from suspicious dislike of Mormons to appreciative love in the space of a week after we helped them rebuild several Baptist churches. I think the event helped demonstrate to many people that we really have the spirit of Christ and that we really do care for them.
My point is that the federal government does not need to be involved in these efforst except in the most general way. The governments that need to be involved in emergency response are the state and local governments. And in most cases the most effective groups responding are private groups like the Church and the Red Cross, who have less bureaucracy and less finger-pointing.
The criticism of the federal government that took place after Katrina was shameless, unnecessary and, frankly, un-American. Since when is the federal government principally responsible for disaster response? Yes, I know about FEMA. FEMA got involved after Hurricane Andrew, but anybody who lived through the hurricane will tell you that the most effective activities took place through the local and state governments and through private groups like the Church, which responded in a matter of hours after the hurricane.
For those of you who don’t know, the Church actually has trucks in Atlanta ready to roll to provide relief supplies wherever a hurricane hits. Those trucks are usually there a few hours after the storm passes.
State and local governments need to be trained to do the same thing. Disaster response should be a local activity, not a bureaucracy-laden federal activity.
It is worth pointing out that getting government too involved in relief efforts is harmful in several ways.
1)It decreases the possibility for volunteer activities because people begin to feel “the government will do it.” This damages our ability to build up a service culture, which I think is important.
2)There is an inevitable response on the part of some people to such efforts, which is, “if I live in North Dakota, why should I have to pay for some idiot who lives on a barrier reef in Florida that has been hit every few years by a hurricane? Shouldn’t we be encouraging the guy to leave, rather than paying him to rebuild his house every few years?”
3)Too much government involvement creates complacency. Instead of people preparing themselves to handle an emergency, they expect the government to take care of them. I think we saw a lot of this during Katrina, especially in New Orleans.
Now, the e-mail. Can I please ask that people avoid commenting on how uncharitable this e-mail is and instead concentrate on the real point of this post, which is a discussion of government involvement in natural disasters, especially federal government involvement? Thanks.
Denver Post:
This text is from a county emergency manager out in the central part
of Colorado after todays snowstorm.WEATHER BULLETIN
Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic
event— may I even say a “Weather Event” of “Biblical Proportions” — with a historic blizzard of up to 44″ inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10’s of thousands.FYI:
George Bush did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV.
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit – or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody – I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, No Bill O’Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No
Geraldo Rivera.No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.
Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUV’s to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments
delivered it to the snowbound families. Families took in the stranded people – total strangers.We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman
lanterns.We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or Die”.
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ‘sittin at home’ checks.
Even though a Category “5” blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
Geoff,
Woah woah woah, hold your horses. What is un-American about criticizing our government for failing in the responsibilities 1. we gave it, and 2. it said it would uphold? You may believe that a local government can do a better job at cleanup. And that’s fine. But don’t get huffy puffy when the Federal government was ordered by the will of the people through their representatives in Congress to clean up and they failed!
I like how the writer misspelled the names of both Sean Penn and Barbara Streisand. Nice hick touch.
I won’t focus on the email being uncharitable. It is asinine, though.
The Colorado storm dumped about 24 inches of snow in Denver, up to 55 inches in the foothills west of Denver. Water content is roughly 1 inch per 12 inches of snow (roughly), so the first storm dropped anywhere from 2 inches to 5 inches of water. It inconvenienced travelers, made driving treacherous, and did indeed cause economic damage. According to a story in the Denver Post on the 27th of December, it also may have caused 5 deaths.
Katrina’s storm surge was as high as 28 feet in Mississippi. It spawned 43 tornados. It affected 1.2 million people under the evacuation order, caused $80B in damage, and resulted in nearly 2,000 deaths.
Give me a couple of feet of snow any day. But don’t try to make a political point about being able to cope with a few days of snow by comparing it to the response of a natural disaster that is orders of magnitude greater.
It’s akin to criticizing people who need major insurance for a transplant because other people are able to handle basic first aid on their own.
I am actually kind of surprised that the mountain west cannot seem to dig out of this storm. The amount of snow fall is not much more than a strong nor’easter’ in the Northeast, and they seem prepared well enough….
I like how Dave, in sticking it to the anonymous email writer for misspelling Ms. Streisand’s name, managed to get her first name spelled wrong. It’s Barbra.
For those who flunked 7th grade geography, Denver and points east are not in the mountains. You can see the mountains from Denver, but they’re all west of the city. And everything east of Denver is the plains. So, don’t call it the mountain west.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
Has snowplowing been privatized in Colorado?
Also, isn’t it handy that nobody expects this guys employer (an unnamed county government) to do anything? Nice work, if you can get it.
Seriously, though, I have little sympathy for folks who keep rebuilding on barrier islands, flood plains, and earthquake faults.
What’s this I hear that the National Guard is dropping hay from helicopters to suffering cattle?
Mark,
Uh, what is Denver’s elevation?
David Rogers, national guards are state government responsibility during peace time. No problem, as far as I’m concerned, with state governments cleaning up their states and rescuing people. If we had to call in the federal government, get prepared for major bureaucracy.
See more on the national guard here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/united-states-national-guard
Agreed with the comments that Katrina was worse than the two blizzards. That’s the first thought that went through my head after I made this post, and it’s a valid point. But, again, the larger point is, why should federal governments get involved in emergency rescue work, and why should we expect the federal government to do it when the federal government does it so poorly?
Geoff,
Because that is what the American people wanted when they elected their representatives to set up such organizations. As far as how effective the federal government is…I actually haven’t heard many complaints of incompetence at the Federal level before the Bush administration. How was the federal aid during Hurricane Andrew, Geoff?
Geoff B,
Although in the early days of Katrina, the federal government did a horrible job, I wonder if volunteers are in it for the long haul. (I don’t have any information either way, but I know that the longer it’s been since a tragedy occurred, the less likely I am to help.) When a disaster hits, churches and volunteer organizations get there within days, if not hours. But how many volunteers can afford (and will afford) to be there a year later, if the need is there?
As for state vs. federal government, the feds have a lot more resources at their fingertips. Again, I’m not saying they didn’t bungle the first few days/weeks of Katrina, and I’m not saying that there wasn’t a lot of finger-pointing (although if DC were less polarized, maybe that would diminish), but I’m not convinced that, past the 1-month mark, the federal government has been outstripped by volunteers, etc.
Nor am I convinced that Colorado does without federal aid. One of the big sticking points when I lived in NY was that Homeland Security money was being divided, not by risk, but by population (or size, or something)–it was a case where Colorado and Wyoming and Nebraska were getting federal grants unrelated to any need.
Last Lemming, #6, actually much of the snow plowing that goes on in Colorado is handled either privately (the homeowner contracts a company) or through neighborhood associations, depending on where you live. I have no problem with local governments doing snow plowing, and that is exactly my point.
Dan, #10, federal aid during Hurricane Andrew was late, redundant and largely ineffective, imho. Everybody praised Bush 41 for his Hurricane Andrew response, but most of it was symbolic. Most of the actual help was given by private organizations or state and local government.
I’m not convinced most people really want the federal government to respond to disasters. They don’t really know that much about it and assume “the government” should be involved. Well, local governments yes, federal government no because it is too costly and doesn’t work well.
SamB, I understand your point, but I gotta say that local governments in general always do a better job of looking after the long-term welfare of the people in the area. And the federal government has done so many stupid things in New Orleans — giving out months of rent checks to people who are basically scam artists, etc. Folks, when are we going to get away from the idea that the government is responsible for doing everything for us? If there are no jobs in New Orleans because it was nearly destroyed by a hurricane, you need to move someplace that is not 10 feet below sea level and find another job there in a new location that is perhaps a bit safer. This is basic common sense.
It seems to me that Katrina was a big disaster precisely because it was so much more than the locals could handle. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of Louisiana government. Which seems very incompetent and corrupt. But expecting the locals to do this and then simply expecting the feds to sit by when the locals can’t seems rather uncharitable.
Clark, how do you ever get local governments to take care of their people if they can always count on the feds to come in and rescue them? It seems to me the principle of personal responsibility is basic here. The Church welfare program has it exactly right: we don’t hand out checks to people the moment they get out of work. We ask them to ask family and friends first and then, as a last resort, come to the Church for help. We encourage personal responsibility and rehabilitation. The same principle should apply to local governments. The people who live there should make them accountable. New Orleans needs to get a disaster response plan that works.
There is a role for the federal government. For example, New Orleans could develop a plan that shows that the feds need to help in specific areas that are beyond New Orleans’ ability to fix (I’m thinking of those dikes that overflowed that were federal projects, for example). New Orleans should make it clear where local government and federal government responsibility lies. But it should not be the federal government’s job to evacuate people and pay them welfare for years to live in trailer parks. The New Orleans wards need to have their own plans, and that will never happen without accountability.
The federal government should have made New Orleans get their act together long before Katrina. Then there wouldn’t have been a disaster in the first place.
And the federal government shouldn’t have been financially responsible for maintaining the levees. Why should I, halfway across the country, have to help subsidize people who choose to live in disaster-prone areas?
But to answer the question about how the federal government should be involved in emergencies, the most it should do is help organize efforts across state boundaries to provide emergency services and disaster relief. And that whole thing where they threw money at the problem by providing the victims with debit cards was just boneheaded.
Did anyone die from the storm?
The bravado of this post would be incredibly obtuse to those who suffered losses if so and apples and oranges in its comparisons if not.
Time for members to make sure they have their food storage! I’ll trust my own preparations before trusting the Federal govt to help me.
Geoff,
This is one of the issues on which I would have to respectivefully disagree with you. Idealogy and theory aside, as a practical matter, there are some catastrophes that overwhelm smaller governmental entities, the private sector, and local communities. I am glad the international community, for example, has helped in the response to the tsunami, and not left it to the countries affected.
Regarding the private sector, my understanding is that the private sector of insurance companies do not (or for a period of time did not) believe they have the financial wherewithal to insure against terrorist incidents after 9/11, and a conservative Congress and President agreed to provide federal backing in such situations (I do not recall the mechanics).
The Denver excerpt circulating on the internet (which I first saw a few days ago) reminds me of the old complaints about “welfare queens” and “welfare cadillacs.” On the one hand, those complaints were significantly overstated and might have had a touch of “us” versus “them” in the complaints; on the other hand, there were problems and abuses in the old system, which I believe the welfare reform of the 1990s, hammered out between a republican Congress and democratic President, have addressed fairly well.
Some of the complaints about the response to Katrina were shrill and unfair. But some of the them were legitimate. Hopefully a collaboration of conservatives, liberals, moderates, technicians, and pragmatists can work out improvements, including a fair and better allocation of responsibilities among the various governmental and private entities.
BTW, I grew up in Sugar City, ID which was flattened by a the broken teton dam when I was a child. There are many who state flatly it was the church that took care of them. The truth however, is that everyone’s house was replaced by federal money. Is that anything to be ashamed of? Only in what was recently referred to as the “reddest place in America”. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/10/24/reddest_state/index2.html
I live in Denver Metro, and have most of my life. These storms are not unique, nor were they all that large individually. What is perhaps odd is that we’ve had three major snow storms in the last three weeks. Denver does not get as much snow as our tourism dept and ski areas would like the country to believe. Our closest ski areas are at least an hour drive (in good conditions and traffic) from the metro area.
I received the e-mail from this post a few days ago at work. Snopes shows that the e-mail had made the rounds before after a North Dakota blizzard. It’s anybody’s guess as to who actually wrote it.
The reason the storms were so disruptive and received so much attention was due to the travel hassels it caused for pre and post-christmas travelers.
There is no way that this storm (or any blizzard really) can compare to Katrina and the effect on the Gulf Coast. I had hit the store the day before, loading up on junk food, a couple of gallons of milk, and new snow shovels. Then once I got home from work on Wednesday, we just hunkered down and watched it snow. We had a great time. Too bad the first storm came before Christmas, because we got a Nintendo for Christmas and it had to stay in the wrapping paper until Monday.
Some folks at work figured we’d need to get ~30ft of snow for it to be like Katrina. I don’t know if we’d really need 30ft. If we were to get 8-10ft of snow all at once, you would have roofs caving in all over the place (I think building codes assume 5ft of snow), people would be exposed to the elements and access for rescue personnel would be virtually impossible.
If your house didn’t cave in you still wouldn’t be going anywhere for weeks, nor would stores be open and receiving shipments. That’s where your food storage will come in handy.
Losing power could become an power if the snow got too severe. Fortunately most of the power lines in and around Denver have been run underground for a very long time, so large scale power outages are not generally an issue.
Up shot is that I don’t think anyone in Denver is feeling like New Orleans. Like a friend of mine said, “Do you think I’ll still be shoveling snow 6 months from now?”
#17 and #21, please see again my comment in #9. No, this is not apples to apples. But that is not the point. The point is, once again, what should the federal govt role be in national disasters? There have been some interesting points made about that but a lot of off-topic stuff.
“We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.”
I don’t actually believe that, by the way. Notwithstanding the fact that it is a pronouncement by a politician that I voted for three times.
Geoff,
Protest all you want. The comparison was utterly ridiculous. And you were using it to try and make a point.
I live 45 minutes north of Denver. This storm didn’t even really damage anyone’s home or otherwise cause much property loss. Heck, it didn’t even stop me from delivering newspapers that morning (although I couldn’t get to about half my customers in snowed-in side streets). The worst it did was strand thousands at the airport (and prevent my in-laws from visiting before Christmas) and delay everyone’s commute home. It also cleaned out shelves at local Wal Marts. Katrina DESTROYED homes. The blizzard just made them inaccessible for 3 days at most. The farmers on the eastern plains are a different ballgame entirely. Farmers have ALWAYS been living off federal payments in the United States.
Perhaps I’ll address your main point later, but the comparison just does not work on so many levels.
By the way, our governor did declare a state of emergency and DID request (and get) federal aid.
If we rely on local governments to sort out emergency relief, then the wealthier local governments — those which are able to collect more taxes based on property values–will have a better response (and preparation and everything else) than those who are strapped for cash because of the lack of a tax base.
Your response might be, ‘Well, then you should move somewhere that has better government,’ or is safer, or has more jobs. That’s applying a middle class solution to a working class problem. Comparing the people of Colorado with their housing association funded snow plows and the poorest residents of the Louisiana Delta is silly and tediously short-sighted.
Seth,
You make great points. What some (for political points) have forgotten is that the first response in New Orleans, Louisiana and Mississippi, was the local, and NOT FEMA. Only after it was clearly overwhelmed by the monstrosity of the storm were the Feds called in, because they had the resources (or so we thought) to handle such a powerful storm.
Denver will never get a storm on par with what New Orleans got. It is impossible.
Guys, what you need to start looking at is why Mississippi handled the storm well and New Orleans didn’t. One of the reasons was basic imcompetence on the part of New Orleans local government. New Orleans govt will never get its act together as long as it can count on the feds to come in and save the day. Sorry folks, too much federal involvement makes the problem worse.
“New Orleans govt will never get its act together as long as it can count on the feds to come in and save the day. Sorry folks, too much federal involvement makes the problem worse.”
Geoff, are you advocating “tough love” here? That the next time a geographic area is overwhelmed by a disaster the feds should take a hands off attitude (like a parent letting a child spend the night in jail as a learning experience)? Or are you advocating a careful discussion about how to determine the respective roles of federal, state and local governments (along with the private and church sectors) in responding to disasters?
What do you think the roles should have been in Katrina? Do you think there should ever be “redundancy” in roles, so that if the responsible government sector fails, another can provide help?
I was just going to add what Seth said. The situation in Colorado doesn’t even come close to Katrina, not even the hungry cattle in south-east colorado. And yes, our school district just declared a state of emergency yesterday, hoping for some federal aid (I live about 45 minutes due north of Denver). Our problem is one of getting children safely to school where the whole urban transportation system is designed around pedestrian/bicycling, but the roads and sidewalks cannot be cleared enough to allow that kind of traffic.
But to compare this to Katrina is just ludicrous.
Geoff,
You’re trying to make a broader ideological point about how we’d be more self-reliant without the Feds wiping our noses for us.
But you’re trying to do so by oversimplifying a complex interplay of local government bungling, urban engineering failures, demographics, mishandled federal response, and a very bad natural phenomenon.
Also, have you checked a basic road atlas lately? Notice a difference between the Mississippi coastline and Louisianna’s?
There’s only a fraction of the population. Mississippi’s coastline doesn’t have anything that even remotely resembles New Orleans. Mississippi isn’t going to play the “Asian model student” in this debate I’m afraid.
Actually Dan, I think those were Norbert’s points you were responding to.
Geoff,
Handled the storm well?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_Mississippi
I know you have a hatred for Democratic leaders, Geoff, but please, oh please be realistic!
One thing that Colorado did to itself is the TABOR restrictions. Because of the TABOR ratchet, local governments have thin resources to respond to unusual situations. The voters chose this situation, and we have nobody to blame but ourselves (except, maybe, Doug Bruce). TABOR works when the economy is humming and Mother Nature cooperates. But when something goes wrong (like three snow-storms in a row), then we have to go crying to the federal government to bail us out of our self-imposed fiscal crisis.
I’m surprised this has generated so much discussion when the email is a fake…
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/dakota.asp
Connor,
it’s not the email (it was obviously fake, and not actually originally from Denver), that got, at least me, riled up. It’s the attempt to say that were Louisianans not to rely on the government all the time for help when a Category 5 hurricane strikes, they wouldn’t have 2000 dead and millions displaced. It’s obviously FEMA’s fault for the dead and displaced in the eyes of some!
DavidH, to respond to your #29, I would say the federal govt should have a very limited roll in disaster recovery. FEMA should be one-tenth of its current size and should limit itself to: 1)monitoring local and state governments and keeping track of their disaster response capability based on needs (ie, how is Denver ready for tornadoes and blizzards and how is Pensacola ready for hurricanes) and 2)coordinating with, for example, the Army Corps of Engineers to make sure levees are high enough, fixed, etc. All other relief efforts should be left to state and local govts. FEMA should, using its monitoring ability, highlight the governments, like N Orleans and Louisiana that are not prepared. FEMA may even want to rate individual cities’ emergency response ability (New Orleans gets an F, Biloxi gets an A, etc). The local populace can then decide what it wants to do with that information. But the point is that the responsibility for acting lies with the states and local governments, and they get the blame for not acting.
Sorry, guys, your arguments are not convincing. The federal govt needs to get out of the disaster response business.
That does sound like a “tough love” approach. Why should the federal government even play the role you describe, and not leave it all (including the building and monitoring of the levees, which failed) to local and state governments?
Isn’t the attitude related to the “smaller-government” movement? There is great political pressure toward paring local government to the bone; preparing for rare, unpredictable, and uncontrollable events is perceived as wasteful expenditures.
Actually, the attitude also reflects the displacement of “God” in society. The Federal Government, with it’s seemingly endless resources, is the “god” that is turned to when an “act of god” screws up the mechanics of daily life. Then, when “god” doesn’t deliver (no deux et machina in Washington D.C. … and just what, exactly, did people expect Washington to do, anyway?), there is mumbling, murmuring, etc.
Geoff, you’re probably right.
We haven’t made convincing arguments as of yet about why the Feds should be in the business of disaster aid.
But you’re presuming that you yourself have made a convincing argument about why they should not. Thus far, you have not.
So all this really leaves us is the old entrenched ideological positions of:
1. From the right – government should mind its own business and let us take care of ourselves
and
2. From the left – government should help people out.
I don’t think this conversation has done much to advance either of us beyond those general assertions. So basically, each side has made an equally strong (or weak if you prefer) argument.
Why federal involvement? Simple — the same reason that insurance companies buy reinsurance, diversified investment portfolios perform better on average than non-diversified portfolios, and large businesses get better group health insurance rates than small businesses (or, heaven forefend, individuals) do: it is less costly, overall, to manage smaller risks than larger ones. The best way to reduce the magnitude of a particular risk is to distribute it across the largest group possible.
A single city, county, or state is not well situated to sufficiently diversify and manage a risk engendered by weather phenomena with the potential to affect, in essence, the entire city, county, or state. However, there really isn’t a single weather-related event that has the potential to affect the entire US (leaving aside global warming, of course). At least along this dimension, there is a rational and economically efficient reason for a federal emergency management program.
There are other dimensions to take into account in such matters that can easily weigh in the other direction. We have notions of the various states being somehow equivalent (which gave rise to the notion of the Senate’s two-fer rule) that would have to be abandoned if we were to apply economically rational risk distribution. Also, there are lots of potential moral failure problems — where the existence of insurance increases the likelihood of risky behavior. This, really, is a problem of setting the right premium for the particular risk. Recall, for example, that the savings & loan crisis of the 1980s arose because we had federal insurance for depositors while we relaxed federal regulation of the institutions — a version of the same problem can obtain for providing emergency risk protection for those building homes in hurricane-prone areas like Florida — it’s not that we want to prohibit the action, nor that we want to refuse them insurance — we just want to make sure that we haven’t created perverse S&L-like incentives.
At any rate, if those other factors are dealt with efficiently, according to a normal “smaller-risk-is-managed-cheaper” rule, it is cheaper for Coloradoans to toss their “insurance” emergency management dollars into the federal bucket that protects New Orleans from hurricanes and floods, protects Los Angeles from earthquakes, and protects New York City from terrorists, than it is for Colorado to maintain for itself the emergency reserves that would be required to manage low probability/high cost risks like catastrophic blizzards (which, as others have noted, we certainly have not experienced this year — just shovelling backaches).
Greenfrog, thank you for keeping on-topic and making some very thought-provoking comments. But in your answer you highlight one of the reasons this issue needs to remain local: disaster response changes from location to location. The response to a hurricane is completely different than a response to a blizzard or an earthquake. Local governments are better suited to deal with the individual needs of people on-site. I also disagree there are any cost savings for Coloradoans throwing their emergency management dollars in with people from Florida. If anything, people from Colorado are subsidizing people like me who live someplace (barrier islands on the Atlantic) people should not live.
But, despite the fact you disagree with me, your response is exactly what I was looking for in making this post.
I was offering the rationale for FEMA — not arguing in favor of the particular cost structure and cost allocation of FEMA. As a practical matter, I think that the potential to overwhelm a locality’s fical ability to mitigate risk is pretty large, but I don’t discount the fact of moral hazard. Indeed, I’m pretty convinced that many people are “free-riding” the system.
What seldom gets factored into discussions like this is the potential benefit to the US at large presented by having the city of New Orleans in approximately the (hurricane-exposed) location of the city of New Orleans. If it’s advantageous to us all (Gulf of Mexico port city with access to Mississippi River commerce, pipeline terminus for Gulf platform, etc.), we might decide as a country to pay something for its upkeep and replacement. I’m pretty skeptical that the case could be made to justify the current level of expenditures on dikes and reconstruction (let alone after taking into account the damage to wetlands and Gulf ecosystems), but I acknowledge that someone should do the math before concluding that it’s a rotten place for a city but a pretty good one for a swamp.
Well Geoff, it’s not just rich homebuyers living on sandbars you know.
I’ve seen pictures of some barrier islands, no more than 200 yards wide, jam-packed with 40-story high rise hotels, [insert word for places of betting], etc. As ill-advised as the locale may be, how much revenue do these folk generate in tax dollars? Is it fiscally worth having them there?
As far as local governments being well-suited for dealing with local disasters…
Well, they certainly would be, if there were enough of them.
Unfortunately, the locale Republican fossils at the Shriners Association shot down last year’s sales/property tax increase that would have paid for extra office staff.
Local delegation only works if the locals are up to the task. Unfortunately conservatives are not only unwilling to fund federal government, they also seem unwilling to fund local government either.
Which brings us to why large doses of conservative ideology make for lousy governance – if you believe that what you are doing is fundamentally wrong (in this case – running a federal government), you are highly likely to do it poorly. I mean, just look at Don Rumsfeld…
The self-sufficient colony days are over. Specialization is the name of the game. Federal government facillitates the kind of economic specializing that makes for a strong economy. There isn’t a municipality in the nation who is really capable of coping with a big disaster to the extent demanded by our current economic system.
What libertarians called “growing fat and lazy,” I call simply devoting labor and capital to where they are most usefully employed.
In December hundreds of thousands of Pudget Sound residents lost power for hours to almost 2 weeks. Houses were crushed by falling trees, people died and after the fact people died from carbon monoxide gas from generators. However, what we needed was linemen, not FEMA. We did get some emergency funds for first responder overtime.
Despite the the problems hundreds of thousands of us did not lose our homes and everything in them. I’m happy FEMA exists and how it represents a quick response to emergency problems. FEMA in the Clinton administration was much more effective that it was during Katrina. Maybe it needs to be a more independent emergency response agency.
When I lived in Salt Lake I always wondered what would happy to the Wasatch front when the fault actually slipped and created a 6 or 7 quake. Now with houses creeping up the hillsides, I don’t want to know and hope it never happens.
But I had a 2nd cousin die in the 59 Yellowstone quake when a hillside failed and buried a campground under 100+ feet of rubble. We are all subject to disaster: flood, wind, snow, rain, and quake. As a society I am happy that we can lend a hand to help our “neighbor” to reestablish their lives and be able to be productive members of our national society sooner rather than later.
An interesting article(if true) about the White House wanting to federalize the Katrina area during the disaster.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070120/ap_on_re_us/katrina_brown