For a time, the National Emergency Training Center offered courses in shelter management and radiologic monitoring, and distributed copies of Cresson Kearny's Nuclear War Survival Skills. But this initiative did not last past Reagan's departure from office.
As the political blame game escalates, the federal government is accused of slighting hurricane defense in the war against terrorism: protecting us only against hijackers with boxcutters who want to destroy the World Trade Center again. But protection against terrorism really requires all-hazards preparedness. After all, a few well-placed conventional explosives might have flooded New Orleans without Katrina's help. And a terrorist nuke under a levee would have complicated outside rescue efforts even more than the floods did.
Katrina and its catastrophic aftermath could conceivably spark the growth of a true civil defense program. Surely America's enemies are learning of our vulnerability: will we?
Critical weaknesses include these:
(1) Key industries are concentrated in small areas, partly because of overzealous protection against exaggerated (or fabricated) “environmental” threats.
(2) The skills, self-reliance, and morality of the population has deteriorated alarmingly. Too many people just sat on street corners, waiting for the government to come help them, or actually assaulted rescuers–a reaction unprecedented in the experience of many workers. While government is criticized for doing too little, others say the hurricane exposed the man-made disaster of the welfare state doing too much (Robert Tracinski, “An Unnatural Disaster,” www.tiadaily.com 9/2/05; Craig Cantoni, “Rebuilding New Orleans and the Black Family,” www.phxnews.com). Comparisons with the Johnstown flood in 1899, when all help was private–and no one was ever held responsible for the deplorable state of the ruptured dam–is instructive ( www.oism.org/ddp/neworleans.htm).
(3) Basic requirements such as communication were lacking. Physicians in the field reported that incident command had one satellite phone. A ham radio line connected through the television antenna was the only other extension to the outside.
FEMA will be under the microscope, which will reveal the cronyism and corruption inevitable in a government agency. More important is a review of FEMA's mission.
National television features grown-ups wailing for Mommy. “We need FEMA! Where's FEMA?” FEMA is supposed to serve them food and water, buy them new stuff, and rebuild a city that, had nature been allowed to take its course, would have been at the bottom of a lake long ago–at the expense of people in places like North Dakota.
Should private entities, risking their own money, make the decisions about how to rebuild? (Walter Block, “Then Katrina Came,” www.mises.org 9/5/05; John Tierney, “Ben Franklin Had the Right Idea for New Orleans,” NY Times 9/3/05.)
Shouldn't Americans demand that the government meet its responsibility to provide for the common defense, instead of closing their eyes to the lessons of 9/11 and NOLA?
As border patrol agents are being sent to the Gulf Coast, reports surface of nuclear weapons and material being transported across the border by MS-13 gang members.
“The next disaster to hit America may be a nuclear hell-storm, the details of which were found on the laptop computer of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the time of his arrest in Karachi on March 1, 2003,” writes Paul L. Williams. “When that hell-storm hits, Katrina will appear kind” ( WorldNetDaily 9/3/05).
In New York, we are rebuilding the waterfront, with parks, a stadium, and a 1,776 ft-high monument–at the same time that “various insane and quite evil men...won't be happy until those skyscrapers are cinders,” writes Peggy Noonan. “Maybe we could throw in a fallout shelter? Maybe we could be throwing in a few small health clinics, well stocked for a bad day?” She concludes that “nothing is bigger than civil defense” (Wall St J 3/10/05).
The all-hazards program provides much practical, well-illustrated information to the public on bombs, floods, tsunami, power outage, chem/bio threats, and much more.
Neither Barbour, Bush, nor Cheney caused the hurricane, of course. Should Kennedy be an example in the next edition of Sallie Baliunas's lecture on “Witches, Whisky, and Bad Weather”? This tape/CD from the 2005 annual meeting is especially timely.
In fact, according to reports by the National Hurricane Center and the World Meteorological Association, hurricane frequency has declined since the 1940s (S.T. Karnick, “The Political Usefulness of Disasters,” see TWTW 9/3/05, www.sepp.org).
DDP, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, (520)325-2680, www.oism.org/ddp