What lessons can we learn from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?

Don't live in a place that's lower than sea level.

If you can get out, GO! Dead bodies can't defend anything from looters.

If you have property insurance and no flood insurance, make sure your house burns down right away.

If you're poor, your government really doesn't care if you live or die, so don't depend on them.

Sue <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

False bravado isn't worth squat, should you survive and have to stand on the roof and beg to be rescued because you were too stupid to leave when you were ordered to.

that is, if you are still breathing, have a roof to get to, and can stand on it......

These will sound harsh. They're not meant to be. Keep in mind, I live in Florida.

• If you live in a wood frame house in a hurricane prone area, you're betting It Won't Happen To You. You'll eventually lose that bet.
• If you live in a hurricane prone region and at a location close enough and low enough to be flooded by a normal storm surge, you're betting it Won't Happen To You. You'll eventually lose that bet.
• If you live behind dams, and brag that your city has the world's largest sump pump because without it you'd flood in normal conditions, well, you're dumb. That's not sustainable. Move.
• If you're going to ignore the above, and continue to live in a high risk area, at least be sensible about evacutating. You'll have to evacuate early and often. Yes, there will be a high false alarm rate. But you can't know which time will be The One, and evacuation is your only option since you can't shelter in place.
• If you're too old or too poor to rebuild, move or evacuate, at least try to prepare. It doesn't take fancy equipment to store water in old pop bottles and a little extra food.
• If you're too stubborn to rebuild, move, evacuate or prepare, you're probably not going to make it. Evolution in action.
• If you're reading this, good. You've come to the right place. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

We won't know the "aftermath" of Katrina for several years. I can give an opinion as to the situation as I see it.

First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, New Orleans (as a matter of fact all of Lousiana) is one of my least favorite places on earth, and as much as the human suffering is horrible, I'm not that sorry to see the punishment of the hubris, arrogance and downright stupidity of building a city in a pit at the intersection of three major bodies of water in an area that routinely gets hurricanes.

That said, the words "dumb" "idiotic" "preventable" and all the other words I can find in the Thesaurus come to mind.

For example - the hospital that is flooding to the first floor - but the backup generator, rather than being on the roof, is on the ground - now it's not working. The people who ignored the warnings to leave. The fact that they CHARGED people to take a bus to the Superdome. The fact that the Superdome is the only practical shelter and it's a shelter of "last resort".

The fact that the levees were made of dirt and designed for a Cat 3 - at best.

More and more, I see that the idiocy of short-term thinking is the "root cause" here. How many thousands will die because of it?

Published December 2000:
Louisiana's marshlands, the only buffer for hurricanes that come out of the Gulf, are slipping into the ocean at an alarming rate. New search indicates that just one major hurricane could put New Orleans under water.

Whole article:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BJK/is_15_11/ai_68642805#continue

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/wetlands/hurricane_print.html

"One of the things that's frustrating now for all of us in my business," explains Maestri, "is that if that Category Five Hurricane comes to New Orleans, 50,000 people could lose their lives. Now that is significantly larger than any estimates that we would have of individuals who might lose their lives from a terrorist attack. When you start to do that kind of calculus - and it's horrendous that you have to do that kind of calculus - it appears to those of us in emergency management, that the risk is much more real and much more significant, when you talk about hurricanes. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, has come to grip with that: that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone."

I read somewhere that people 'climbing' away from rising water moved into their attic, only to discover no way out - with water still rising. Someone said keep an ax in your attic in case you need to make an exit hole.

Let's try another direction, too:

This is definitely causing me to review my kits and plans here, making sure they are as realistic as possible. This isn't news to me, nor to most of us, but priorities seem to be:

• Evacuating via vehicle (with sheltering in place, evacuating on foot, evacuating via other transport as alternative possibilities), when given advance notice of a disaster
• Recovery from a disaster with no advance notice (an earthquake, a terrorist attack), starting with immediate safety and exit from danger if possible (pry bars, lights, masks, etc.), then medical treatment, then getting out of the area (to home, to an evacuation point)
• Knowing which of the above are likely in your particular area, and how the scenarios differ
• Good relationships with neighbors, friends and relatives, including plans to help each other out when evacuations are necessary
• Plans for dealing with long-term economic ramifications (savings, people you can count on, reserves of goods and items of value)
• Training of value to yourself, your family, your community (CERT, Ham skills, First Aid (e.g., I have a WFR certificate), backed up with practice

That's just a start. As most of us know, wilderness survival skills are not an exact match with everyday real-world survival skills; some of the kits we carry may need a rethinking. I think we can all get a lot from discussing what is going on here - including moving beyond the "get out of Dodge stuff" (while the precarious nature of New Orleans is an extreme example, frankly most major urban areas have some kind of natural disaster that can strike...and none are completely immune from man-made disasters such as urban unrest or terrorist actions).

How will you all adjust your thinking? How might this evolve as this story plays out?

- Steve