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Re: Completely Offtopic


From: Rodney Thayer <rodney () canola-jones com>
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2005 08:57:43 -0700

See the paper trail on all the money for flood control in Louisiana
that's been diverted over the past several years.  See Bush's
not-always-positively-received reactions to the events.

Yeah, a metric fsck-ton of water fell on the place and it makes
it hard for anyone to deal, but we've been terraforming that part
of the planet for 200 years and we seem to get that wrong sometimes.

And I think people DO train urban rescue for flooding conditions.  These
hurricane things have been happening for a while.

Ron Gula wrote:
At 10:50 AM 9/2/2005, Rodney Thayer wrote:

It's times like this I hate the fact that it appears we have some legitimate
reason to be embarassed in front of our European collegues
about our federal government's incompetence at disaster management.
One tries not to imagine what they'll do if confronted with a "digital
Pearl Harbor".


Really? I'm sure things could have been done better here, but we
have 50,000+ people in the area, hundreds of thousands trying to
get out and no roads. When was the last time any major superpower
had to evacuate a whole city in just a few days, and then contend
with no roads and flooding.

There are lots of positive examples of things that did work, like
the fact that a large amount of the population made it out before
the bad weather hit. Things like showers and hot meals in the
Houston stadium just 1-2 days after things hit are also amazing.

Lastly, no-one trains urban rescue in 3-4' of flood water. I think
if you take any well trained response force from anywhere in the
world and put them in NO right now, they would be having similar
issues.

Ron Gula




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