The unfolding mass human tragedy that is the Burmese cyclone (the specifics of which I don’t have anything except that a) I hope that the junta stops putting up barriers to international assistance, and b) that it’s going to make the global food crunch worse) reminds us of the awesome power of nature to inflict death and destruction. While we have great capacity for inflicting misery on our fellow humans, nature has similar capacities and inflicts them far more randomly and far more often. Particularly when compared small groups of discontents sitting in caves in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
But how is Australia prepared for such disasters? Not very well, according to a just-published report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. For instance, while everybody expects the ABC to handle emergency services broadcasting, ABC Local Radio doesn’t have redundant communications links to all its stations. We may have invested money in tsunami sensors, but there’s no centralized telephone warning system (something that could be done very cheaply, according to the report). Our hospitals aren’t really set up for a surge capacity in the case of even rather modest incidents.
This kind of stuff is often cheap, mostly relatively easy, and could potentially spare a lot of heartache when the unthinkable happens, be it through accident or malevolence. But why don’t we do it? Because it has the unique combination of being both scary and boring, earns governments no credit until the crap hits the fan, and we don’t have a historical precedent of a mass-casualty incident. And, over the past few years, we’ve had the distraction of the horribly overblown War on Terrah – something, incidentally, the ASPI has helped in its own small way to fan here.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the Rudd government has a bit more of a focus on the boring bits of government than its predecessor. This is one boring bit that I hope gets more attention.
Just a sideline: the tsunami and consequent arrival of many aid workers and foreign Govt officials in Aceh, is said to have had a large influence in finally bringing the Acehnese rebels and Indonesian govt. together for peace talks.
If only a similar political cataclysm, and freedom with democracy for the long-suffering Burmese, could be a long-term result of this calamity.
just sayin’
(and it’s probably this kind of sentiment that persuades the junta to delay or keep out European, US aid folks out while accepting aid shipments from China, India…)
Right issue, wrong article.
It’s hard to begrudge people who’ve lost what little they had and who despair of regaining even that much a bit of food aid – the s(n)ide reference to the global food crunch was well beyond inappropriate, absolutely appalling. Go to any skip behind any restaurant wherever you live and shut the hell up about the global food crunch in this context.
Robert, the first part of this sentence is negated by the sheer silliness of the second. It’s like blaming the Peter Mac for cancer or claiming that it rubs its hands at its increasing prevalence.
Darwin and Cairns hospitals, to name two, are far bigger and better-equipped than is justified by the populations surrounding them. These are built explicitly to handle disasters. The way that the Royal Melbourne handled the onomatopoecially-unfortunate train disaster at Kerrrrangggg!!!!! is yet another example that negates the final sentence in Robert’s third-last paragraph.
Robert, wouldn’t much of the disaster planning for terrorist attacks be just as applicable to natural disasters as well? Eg loss of communications, destruction of infrastructure, overloaded hospitals etc?
Only the lack of bananas got a guernsey on this subject recently.I feel Australia is a sitting duck for a major catastrophe,where real leadership,if any, will come forward by sheer luck.Big operating machinery,with full fuel compliment will need to just swing into action.Cable, and large sheets of steel and aluminium,riveting and large concrete pipes for multiple useage.We have endless minor disasters,which bring people together.But a state of near on defiance of event and a huge reservoir of denial of emotional pain..will be the key psychological attributes.The key logistical qualities will be to make do,argue and direct people,whilst their thoughts are completely scattered.And a command of language,that defies at every breath,whilst being a voice that will carry as one in a crowd of people,like the ever resourceful,once,sports fan with instruction near on frightening abuse.A foghorn,that knows its stuff,and can assist people to survive emotionally by being a kinghit of a prick. And a humbleness to retreat entirely and apologise for being so much of a bastard.Practical people,who do care,but,under these circumstances even more time pressed.Seeing that voluntary work is rarely hard slog,it will probably be those,who have already shed a tear or two,about similar events,and know now they will be called upon ,not for their wisdom,but have to do.I recommend that,whenever there is an oppurtunity in an emergency of smaller impacts,if you have read this,either join Emergency Services,or learn how to be useful in emotional upheaval states by breathing and denying self..to do what is necessary.There should be a closer link between Mens Sheds,Emergency Services Defence,Sports clubs,locational academic institutions,Chambers of Commerce,and heavy engineering and equipment firms.Forget about hospitals accept to insure entrances are accessible,and that could be a major undertaking in itself… it will be probably necessary to rely on less than modern first aid,as it will be a learning curve in defiance at every possible problem.But an analogy springs eternal,if the wagons circle,as in cowboys and indians,the disaster area,then the blood curdling scream,of surround the bastards and attack in circles will hoist its own necessity.No Actors allowed,unless they are hurting badly, and, know what they are doing.
mixed signals
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/critics-want-go-bag-gone/2008/05/06/1209839649473.html
In my local area of Newcastle, there is an on going debate about whether the hospital would be able to handle a large scale disaster. Its being said that the hospital is long overdue for a second entrance in order to cope with the influx of people arising from such an event. And that’s not even talking about the facilities themselves.
Andrew E: For one thing, obviously it’s a horrible tragedy, and we need to help as much as we can. I thought that went without saying. If you’ve got some good links, let’s see them.
But on your other point, I’ve read a lot of ASPI reports. In my opinion, there’s been a lot of “terrorism exports” pop out of the woodwork since September 11 and Bali whose prominence, and indeed employment, seems to be owed to talking up the threat, many of whom have issued reports for ASPI.
Finally, in 2008, they’ve started publishing a few things – this, and a round table on the issue – which have said that we may have gotten the threat a little bit out of proportion.
Nice for that view to finally get an airing, but as a think tank on strategic policy issues, maybe they should have been saying it over the last seven years, before we built up this gargantuan internal security apparatus which over the next few years will be scouting around for something to justify its continued existence.
Chris and Rayedish: I think perhaps the point of the paper is that we’ve got things the wrong way round. If we plan for disasters, we’ll be ready for terrorist-inflicted ones.
And yes, as I understand it, the discussion about hospitals having enough extra capacity to cope with a disaster is a national one.
Robert, One thing that strikes me about the Burmese catastrophe (it is rapidly becoming that) is that the disfunctional local politics and poverty combine to leave people very exposed to disasters.
These types of cyclones could become more severe with climate change. I read one report they might head far down the east coast of Australia.
Given our wealth and stable political environment we are in a better position to plan and deal with these events than those in poor developing countries. Of course you are right that it costs relatively little to be well prepared – we should be.
The other thing we should be preparing for as climate change brings this stuff on is to gear up so that we are able to take rapid effective aid into effected populations whichever national border they lie behind.
Obviously we are a miserable lot when it comes to averting threats due to our ostrich like tendencies, but I reckon we are pretty good – as a species – at reacting to crises. Time to get over the chimera of nationalism – and for each country to plan for its region rather than its strict political domain.
The synergies thus derived will greatly multiply our collective effectiveness.
(Of course in the present instance Burmese isolationism masks the collective’s incapacity in this regard.)
We did seem to cope well with the Newcastle flood last year. I was down there a week after it, and you’d hardly have known it had happened. Similarly, though it took about a year, we also appear to have done pretty well with the recent North Qld. cyclone (though I’m ready to stand corrected by people who might have lived through it.) Neither of these were of the scale of Burma or the Boxing Day tsunami, admittedly, but I don’r think any country could cope with a catastroiphe on that scale. The US couldn’t cope with Katrina,and even allowing for the Great Imbecile and the GWOT both being uneeded distractions, I suspect they may not have in normal times.
Its a bit silly to think we can control Nature, no matter how well we plan. Time and time again we’ve proved we can’t.
Andrew E, I have to say I didn’t have the same sense of moral outrage when I read Robert’s post. I’m still scratching my head a bit. What he said seemed logical, given that a country of 47 million has just had it’s main food bowl smashed. A couple of weeks ago Lefty E was saying that Timor-Leste with about 1 million was having trouble buying the rice it needed. It seems logical that this event is going to worsen the situation.
That having been said, I recalled a radio comment that said the food shortages in Myanmar would be significant, but there would be few implications for elsewhere. This may have been based on the fact that they don’t export much anymore.
Anyway I googled and turned up this report which indicates that things will be tough indeed internally.
Secondly, although at the time of the Asian bird flu scare we were told that plans were in place, in Brisbane I don’t have much confidence. The hospital system, especially the emergency facilities, seem more than fully stretched already.
hc, the jury is still out on cyclone frequency and intensity. I did a bit of reading on it about a year ago. This is roughly what I found then.
I reckon Holland and Webster are on the money. They found a three-step increase in intense cyclones in the North Atalantic basin over the last century. But the last pattern is not firmly established in climate terms and they don’t pretend to know what is going to happen next. There is a shorter summary here.
Earlier they had found a thirty year increase in activity in most basins, but 30 years is not really long enough to wash out any cyclical factors. The North Atlantic basin is the only one that has adequate records going back a century.
Nevertheless if you look at the frequency of extreme events (from memory percentile 95 and above) caused by weather there is a distinct upward trend. I recall an article indicating at least a doubling from 2002 to 2006. These are two articles I bookmarked last year. Some day I might update and do a post, but I think a pattern is already emerging that when you take extreme events in toto climate change is already having an effect on food production.
Paul: I think one thing to keep in mind is that New Orleans was a disaster on a scale far beyond anything Australia has seen (at least in living memory).
wbb: that’s an excellent point.
Robert,
Apart from a couple of pre-war bushfires (1939?) and the 1954 Maitland Floods can’t think of anything comparable here. Interestingly, as of last year, so far as I know, New Orleans had still not recovered from Katrina. So how long is it likely to take Burma, given the regime’s paranoia and recalcitrance?
We of course have the Marray Darling mess, but for all sorts of reasons we’ve probably left it far too late to do anything about that. In almost all these environmental /climates crises the hallmark of all Australian governments, regardless of their empty words, is inaction.
Paul: not even the 1939 bushfires comes close to what Katrina did – we’re talking about the near-total destruction of a medium-size city and several smaller ones.
Only WWI, WWII and perhaps the flu epidemic of 1918 are comparable, and those are quite different in nature.
The Murray-Darling is different again, it’s a slow-burn disaster, and it’s not going to kill anybody. We cope with sudden crises much better than slow ones.
“When it comes to preparedness, the
average Australian family has little
concept of planning for a situation
where they may have no access to
food, water or power for three days
or more.”
The ASPI report, you link to, covers it very well, here, Robert. It’s all about “she’ll be right” and hope the ADF will do something. My bet is that our army, in similar circumstances, would prove just as inadequate as any Burmese junta. They just are not trained up for a scenario like this.
I am getting pretty sick of this tragedy being used as a local political football, as well. Shame, Downer, shame!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/09/2240569.htm?section=australia
Erm, Robert, you are seven years behind the game.
One of the quiet but brilliantly successful initiatives of the Howard government was a thing called the ‘Trusted Information Sharing network’ or TISN, a program run by the Attorney-General’s Dept.
Go see their website and get some details, it is fascinating stuff. The TISN itself was set up five years ago. it specifically builds data sharing and contingency planning between government and the private sector through a range of ‘information assurance advisory groups’. They deal with all sectors of industry/economy and some non industry sectors (like emergency services). The whole thing is supported by a second massive project that maps national infrastructure so interdependencies, upstream and downstream effects, and disaster effects can all be worked out in advance. The iaggs also work across sectors where cross sector interdependencies are identified.
The amount of work already achieved is simply amazing. The Food Supply iaag, for example, has built not only systems to be able to keep distributing food in case of pandemic. That’s in a cut-throat industry employing nearly 300,000 people with 1500 supermarkets and 3000 small supermarkets, and all the players a ruthlessly competitive. They cannot even talk to each other directly! Yet, they have cooperated in a national system to distribute food in pandemic, including hygeine stations at each store remaining open (and a couple of thousand will), and a triage centre at each, with a mask distribution centre at each. Over $20 million in masks have been ordered or stockpiled. Just the training task in training 300,000 employees is staggering. I understand that they have also designed a national rationing system too. There are electrical energy iaags, water, transport fuel, etc etc etc
That’s one small example. Here is hoping that Krudd and his mob do not shut it down to save ten bucks.
MarkL
canberra
Darwin in 1974, surely?
If you build a city below sea level and do not maintain the levees that keep the sea out then you must expect near-total destruction when a cyclone in a cyclone-prone area strikes that city. Nothing compared to what happened to Galveston in 1900 though.
Well yes, I’d have to agree with that.
MarkL: that’s very interesting; I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in this area, and it sounds like Howard etc. deserve some credit for the initiative you describe.
That said, I spent some time talking to somebody doing academic research into pandemic preparedness, particularly the human factors (would medical practitioners continue to work in such circumstances) and their conclusion was that there was still a hell of a lot of work left undone.
And I do know that, at least in country Victoria, radio communications for the emergency services are still a dog’s breakfast.
Darwin, of course. How could I have missed it?!
Robert,
I’d agree that we still have a lot of work to do on this – the two big issues that worry me in this regard both have to do with weather:
1) Friends who work for the bureau of met are working 12 hour days due to short-staffing and the equipment which they’re using is so crap it has to be seen to be believed! Old staff due to retire and no new trainees to learn…
2) Brian’s comments about weather extremes are right on the nail. Will effect different areas in different ways but bushfires and cyclones are potentially the scariest.
So we are already shooting ourselves in the foot due to under-resourced forecasting (even hours can make a difference as Darwin proved). Then add in the shortfall in hospital services and/or medical staff and things could get really exciting.
It is well and good to state that our supermarkets have contingency plans but other transportation issues come into it as well – evacuating thousands at one time would be a struggle even for Sydney.
If something occurs near a mine site then we should be OK for heavy equipment (if that kind of thing is needed) but it’s more the healthcare/evac capabilities that would cause a bottleneck (my $0.05 worth).
From Opp. Organ Saturday 10th May, quoting Tobias Grote-Beverborg of Deutsche Welle: “The huge contingent of foreign aid workers who became a presence in Aceh… after the tsunami catastrophe nearly 4 years ago led to an end to the bloody civil war there. Parallels to the situation in (Burma) come to mind”
auf wiedersehen
Utter nonsense. The Indonesian government was looking for a way to end the impasse in Aceh. The Acehnese separatists were looking for an end to the stand-off as well.
The tsunami gave them an opportunity and they both took it.
The presence of a huge contingent of foreign parasites had no effect on the course of events except perhaps that the Indonesian government and the Acehnese were united in wanting to see the back of them.
Aunty has pushed the recalcitrant Burmese government line, with regard to aid, on every single report. Only trouble is, those who are on the ground, are far too busy to engage in political games or arguments and seem not to understand the line of questioning.
Robert
Then he needs to talk to Attorney General’s about the TISN. I have been powerfully impressed by the food iaag’s work and (asking around the traps), the others are also doing very impressive things. One interlocutor said that the infrastructure modelling program is so far out in front of the rest of the world that it’s amazing. To my mind, that would be the central core of something like this. If you can map the interdependencies both upstream and downstream and then across sectors – ye gods and little fishes.
I have also noticed the risible comments in this thread about New Orleans and Katrina. One of my interlocutors noted this about this type of ignorant and idiotic comment:
“It is regrettable that people do not bother with the actual facts of that cyclone and still spout the stupid and wrong media narrative. The Mississippi coast received the worst of that storm, not New Orleans. Gulfport, Biloxi, and to a lesser extent Pascagoula (it is partially sheltered by the offshore islands) were destroyed – literally wiped out like Darwin was. And I was at Darwin in ‘74 doing the new building standards work by examining the ruins.
Jackson activated its State emergency plan 72 hours out. Baton Rouge did not. The entire Mississippi coast to a depth of 20 miles inland was smoothly evacuated before she came in. Casualties were minimal, and ALL the pre-positioned local emergency services were up, fully booted and spurred, when Katrina roared ashore. Physical damage was vastly worse than New Orleans before its levees broke, and matched that of the city even after it flooded. Neither Baton Rouge nor the New Orleans governments did a damn thing by comparison except whine that it was not their job/fault/responsibility but give us lots of cash, please. Their indolence, corruption and incompetence killed a lot of people.
The coastal area from Gulfport to Pascagoula area is now mostly rebuilt, on about 30% of the Federal aid money per capita that Louisiana got. They have also used the lessons learned to upgrade their state and coastal strip, county and city emergency plans. The new coastal wetland scheme to absorb storm surge is really great. Biloxi held a series of exercises to test parts of the revamped plans BEFORE they allowed people to come back (they wanted to exercise their storm surge wreckage clearance planning in real storm surge wreckage, for example). They have better integrated their plans up from excellent to better-than-excellent.
Louisiana still has not upgraded their state emergency system despite being paid to do so (someone apparently stole the money anyway from what I hear). New Orleans still has the old plan and still has not exercised it anyway. Nothing there has changed.
Mississippi sent people over [Australian state capital and date deleted] and we have worked with all the other US cyclone states except one as we have common problems. [sentence deleted]
Louisiana has never bothered. Having been over to see why their plans failed, I know why. The state is filthy rotten with corruption from top to bottom and run by a mafia-Democrat machine. They make NSW’s government look like angels of rectitude and professional competence.”
That’s out of the horse’s mouth. This interlocutor is in that game.
Yet, various idiots blame the US Federal govt for a record response in record time. Amazing. What can any federal/central government do when the local response system in the disaster area fails completely? Initial response is a LOCAL responsibility because they live in the affected area.
Louisiana had not created a real state emergency plan. They had a city plan, but it was unfunded and had never practised it. Not once. That was why we all saw those pictures of the entire city’s school bus fleet drowned in their bus parks. The state and city governments did not coordinate. There was no decision to implement the plan. The city and state leaders got themselves out of the way, and abandoned their responsibilities. Federal aid was cut off at $400,000 PER PERSON in pre-flood New Orleans (something like $15 billion). The city and local/state officials have squandered or stolen most of the aid money.
MarkL
Canberra
MarkL
My mother lives in Pass Christian, MS and to this day the town consists of slabs, broken houses and trailers, so don’t be too proud of Mississippi. Louisiana had 5 times the damage per capitia as Mississippi so 30% of the aid is a pretty good percentage. The result in both places was the same- total devastation. The recovery today is the same, heroic people rebuilding their lives with very little help from any form of government. Stop trying to make a difference where none exits. I am not buying it.
Hi GregM at 10.37pm, May 10th
You may know better, but the story was first told to me by an Australian volunteer (not parasitical) who worked in Aceh uder exacting conditions, and believed that the presence of foreigners meant that ABRI units were being observed by outsiders (for the first time) and had to behave decently.
Now he/she may have been mistaken about this, but he/she was there and is intelligent, so I’d take the story as plausible, prima facie.
Of course there were many other internal factors at work. Perhaps some of the donor nations exerted pressure too?
Doctorj
I am not ‘proud’ of anything – I live on the other side of the planet and have no coal in that fire.
Please take note of the quotation marks.
MarkL
Canberra
Sorry to jump on you Mark but as an eyewitness I am sick of the MS vs LA spin. I am a New Orleans native still living in the area and as I said my mother lives near the beach in Pass Christian, MS. I have seen the “aid” and the lies from the beginning. I have seen the suffering and the bravery of the locals in the face of unspeakable devastation. The road back has been very difficult, with many ups and downs along the road. They have faced it with courage in both locations. They have had the same problems with governmenal bureaucracy and SLIMY insurance companies that will do anything not to pay claims. I have seen political partisans play politics with tragedy and it makes me ill. PLEASE help the people of Myamar if you can. It is not only the aid but it is the comfort of knowing you are not alone in the impossible struggle to rebuild. The struggle is as much a mental struggle as a physical struggle. The Gulf South is on its way back, but I have lost something very dear to me. I have lost faith in my own country. The volunteers that still come from the US and all over the world are the only thing that gives me hope that the world I thought existed before the storm still exists out there somewhere. Don’t let the people of Myamar come out of this tragedy feeling this way. Do whatever you can and make the world better in whatever small way possible. You cannot imagine how powerful that small thing will mean to the people you touch.
doctorj
So insurance companies are trying to get out of paying and government bureaucracies are full of red tape. This is not news. WHICH government bureaucracies are the worst is – may I ask that question? Is it local, city, state or federal, and why?
My interlocutor is a disaster management and business resilience planner – and a good one. He notes the following about the response to the cyclone coming ashore:
- “Jackson activated its State emergency plan 72 hours out. Baton Rouge did not. “
Is this true? WHEN did Baton Rouge activate the state emergency response plan, and how effective was it by comparison to that Jackson ran?
- “The entire Mississippi coast to a depth of 20 miles inland was smoothly evacuated before she came in. Casualties were minimal, and ALL the pre-positioned local emergency services were up, fully booted and spurred, when Katrina roared ashore. “
Is this so? Did Mississippi manage to evacuate the affected areas ahead of the cyclone?
Were casualties there minimised as a result of this evacuation planning?
Were the local first response emergency services ‘fully booted and spurred’ as described in Mississippi?
What was their status in Louisiana?
Were they efficient at all?
Did the New Orleans city emergency plan work at all?
When was it implemented?
- “Physical damage was vastly worse than New Orleans before its levees broke, and matched that of the city even after it flooded.”
Is this true?
- “Neither Baton Rouge nor the New Orleans governments did a damn thing by comparison except whine that it was not their job/fault/responsibility but give us lots of cash, please.”
I already know that the performance of the city and state governments was, at best, hopelessly inept. Was it this bad?
- “Their indolence, corruption and incompetence killed a lot of people.”
Is this a fair assessment?
- “The coastal area from Gulfport to Pascagoula area is now mostly rebuilt, on about 30% of the Federal aid money per capita that Louisiana got.”
I assume (please note the term) that this was per capita. Is this so?
(My contact is out of the country right now – guess where)
- “They have also used the lessons learned to upgrade their state and coastal strip, county and city emergency plans. The new coastal wetland scheme to absorb storm surge is really great.”
Is this so? Have they actively absorbed the lessons in Mississippi and updated their emergency planning?
Has a new scheme to use coastal wetlands to absorb storm surge been developed in Mississippi?
- “Biloxi held a series of exercises to test parts of the revamped plans BEFORE they allowed people to come back (they wanted to exercise their storm surge wreckage clearance planning in real storm surge wreckage, for example). They have better integrated their plans up from excellent to better-than-excellent.”
Is this true?
- “Louisiana still has not upgraded their state emergency system despite being paid to do so (someone apparently stole the money anyway from what I hear). New Orleans still has the old plan and still has not exercised it anyway. Nothing there has changed.”
Is this true?
Precisely what has Louisiana done in terms of upgrading its state emergency plans?
What about New Orleans?
What exercises, if any, have been done?
…
- “Louisiana has never bothered. Having been over to see why their plans failed, I know why. The state is filthy rotten with corruption from top to bottom and run by a mafia-Democrat machine. They make NSW’s government look like angels of rectitude and professional competence.”
Now, here in Australia the New South Wales state government presently in office is notoriously inept and corrupt. The state is bankrupt, which is why its government is trying to sell off the electricity system, it needs the money to funds current expenditure.
Is Louisiana as corrupt as described?
Has this affected essential activities like emergency planning?
MarkL
Canberra
Ambi, I have followed Indonesian politics for thirty years. I have visited the country many times. I saw the fall of Suharto and the rise of democracy. I understand the difficulty of keeping together as a nation such dispersed and disparate people, and I have learned from long association to respect these people. So, yes, I do know better than your well-meaning Australian volunteer friend.
Following the restoration of democracy in Indonesia after the departure of Suharto one of the issues that the Indonesians had to address was the dismantling of the centralisation of power that had hall-marked his dictatorship and that got well under way under Gus Dur. However the Indonesian consensus is, for understandable reasons, that decentralisation must not be at the price of disintegration. This has been a most difficult issue for the Indonesians given the geographical and ethnic complexity of their country- and not helped at all by the humiliation they felt at the separation from their country of East Timor.
However under Yudhoyono it was Indonesia’s policy to seek an accommodation with GAM, Aceh’s liberation movement, subject only to GAM repudiating its claim for independence, and he was pursuing that policy when the tsunami struck. Negotiatians with GAM were under way but they were difficult and protracted as such negotiations are.
The tsunami in all sorts of ways provided a circuit breaker and because of that agreement was reached for Aceh to become an autonomous region within Indonesia much earlier than it might have. There was a huge amount of internal Indonesian political dynamics involved in this.
However the comment you quoted and to which I took objection:
is a contempibly arrogant mis-statement of the importance and influence of the foreign aid parasites in the achievement of the Aceh peace settlement. They would have been, at most, a marginal influence on what was already under way but, as is their record, because, as parasites, they will shamelessly claim the achievement of others as their own in order to get another aid dollar to live off, naturally they will make the outrageous claim that your intelligent, no doubt well-meaning but ignorant and self-serving friend made.
Your friend would never have made the comment he/she made to you if he/she had informed him/herself on the history and dynamics of Indonesia and of Aceh and of the negotiations going on between them to resolve their differences. But foreign aid parasites don’t do that. They come in knowing everything, even when they know nothing about the society into which they are coming, and dispensing their bounty and taking credit for everything that goes well, whether they had any part in it or not, and finding someone else to blame for every failure, even those for which they are responsible.
The person that wrote this article either 1.) is ignorant of the area OR 2.) purposely used “facts” without giving the reasons for these differences. (I will go over this after I get back from work.) First your question of state and local government. They are useless. Always have been. No surprise there. But no government can function without money. Federal aid for LA was not voted on until 7 months after the storm. It was then sent to the state but the state had to request the money for each project, meaning filling out the paper work which was never good enough. Also there is this thing called the “Stafford Act”. It says that the community asking for the aid has to put 20% up front. Did you see pictures of the area? How can you come up with money when you have no tax base. So the government can allocate a trillion dollars and the communities would not be helped. It took 2 years for the president to sign a bill to nix the Stafford Act in catastrophic disasters so communities could access the aid. The city of New Orleans got its first aid November 2007, 2 1/2 years after the storm. So yes the local and state government are inept and corrupt, but it did not come into play until at least a year after the storm.
You seem to be harping on evacuation. Actually the evacuation of the city was very successful. Any emergency planner knows that 20% of an urban community will not evacuate either because they don’t think they have to or they do not have the means. That is why the Superdome was open to the public even though a compulsary evacuation was called. The city KNEW there would be people that stayed. Thank goodness they did because those people in the Superdome would have drowned or baked to death in their attics with the rest of the people that died. New Orleans is (was) a city of 450,000 people. 30,000 did not evacuate. 90,000 is 20%. The only thing the city did not do was supply transportation out. Good idea. The only problem was, if you know the people of New Orleans well, you know they would not have used it. New Orleans is the center of the the universe to New Orleanians. There is no where else. Many never even left the neighborhood they grew up with. The buses would have been largely empty. Evacuation is expensive. I am a dentist and I did not evacuate because of the expense, the fact that I will not leave my animals and by the time the tract was sure, the roads were in gridlock. I was lucky because my entire family was at my house because I was the furthest west and north. I KNEW they were safe. I had no problems worrying if anyone I loved was hurt or worse dead. I did know 2 people that died, an elderly couple that stayed in their house in Pass Christian. Here is an education for you. Almost all the dead were elderly. They would not leave their houses. They had survived many hurricanes in their lifetimes and having lived most of their lives before advance warnings, they did what they always do. They hunkered down, filled the bathtubs with water, filled their cars up with gas and waited the storm out. And you know what, they were RIGHT because the hurricane turned east and hit MS instead of the city. Where they were wrong was in believing that the federal levees were built correctly. It was the flooding AFTER the hurricane passed they devastated New Orleans, not the hurricane. Mississippi got the devastation by a hurricane. Of course the evacuation of MS went easier. Those living on the beach are quite well off. Money was not a limiting factor. Plus in has a very low population compared to the city. Plus there are many roads north off the coast of MS. There are exactly 2 roads out of southern LA due to the swamps. MS is a different ecosysem. There are water shores but not wetlands created by the Mississippi River. Still, in MS, it was the elderly that died. Again for the same reasons as in New Orleans. 264 people died on the coast. 1800 in LA. That is about on par with the population differences in the states, mostly due to the urban area of New Orleans. Evacuation exercises? Sure they have had them, but it doesn’t matter because NOBODY depends on the government for ANYTHING because it is USELESS. ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT! We all know now we are on our own. We will help one another like we have since the storm. I will send you some interesting links in a separate post because I do not know if they will block this post.
Here are the links. Video of the MS gulf coast 2 years after the storm”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aG4RZCUjcLQ
Representative Gene Taylor, my mother’s representative, takes on insurance vilantry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2WtS1u_b5g
What Katrina is to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us1d0Kvrwng&watch_response
Sorry GregM, I accept your explanations.
My friend didn’t claim political knowledge; he/she went there to ‘triage’ and save lives in the fraught first few days. I have difficulty in accepting the descriptor “parasite”. He/she is not on the aid ‘gravy train’, has not made a career out of meddling in poor countries.
He/she went to do FIRST AID only.
A kind of ‘disaster resilience’ question.
He/she does not boast – the most modest and quiet of Australians. I salute the work they did.
merdeka !!