Treacherous ground, the discussion of the value of human life. It is easy to say, after the fact, that all lives are equally valuable, and highly valued. Before the fact, in making preparations to cope with life-threatening emergencies, we see politicians and administrators allocating limited resources in ways that place a higher value on some lives than others, or a lower value on all. Car manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies use cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it will be less expensive to recall/redesign a product or to pay off the victims.

Hospitals and EMS systems make decisions daily about staffing, acquisition of backup supplies and new technology that limit the systems ability to respond to mass casualty incidents. Resources will always be limited, and the folks who frequent this forum are also the ones who fight the battles to get allocations for preparedness and rescue. WE know the difficulties.

Maybe there is a mathematical solution. Divide the dollars expended on preparation, rescue and relief efforts by the total number of rescued (or should it be number of fatalities?) in each of the floods, and determine empirically the value of human life.