OK - here is a question. What will the libertarians say if there is a horrible tragedy on the interstates if Rita hits before the folks who took the advice and helped themselves can get off the roads and hundreds of packed cars get flipped like the cards of losers on <i>Celebrity Poker</i>? How will the Randian Monday morning quarterbacks spin their "they shoulda..." line then?<p>I am hoping the <i>Boston Herald</i> is wrong but I doubt it.

Where the f--- did that come from?

Which - my horrible scenerio or the slag on the Randians? I'm just wondering as they were so quick to lay blame on the people who stayed in New Orleans - you know, the folks in nursing homes or held back by armed civil servants. Will they now find a way to blame those that leave Houston and find the transportation infrastructure insufficient? <p>[Ed.: <i>Were you in Greece when we coined the phrase "Libertarians: useless in a crisis"?</i>]

I must have been.

99% of the blame I've seen going around has been from the left side of things, who seem to have uncannily perfect knowledge how things should have been handled 36 hours beforehand, but somehow it slipped their minds to tell us then.

Many (though not all, I will admit) libertarians do believe in civics, you know. So what if some fool shot off his mouth? The government at all levels had mighty plans; they just never bothered to follow them.

A couple of blog posts, culled from e-mails, to follow.

I agree that there was much talk about about more should have been done but there was also much about "people who did not look after themselves" from the neo-quasi-Randian-set...which is the non-civic republican sort of liberty lover so is the bunch I just do not get.<p>By the way, did you hear that NPR is running audio of tapes of phone recordings made by a staffer from two days before Katrina hit with the Mayor saying he feared an evacuation would cause a road block and risk greater exposure of people to the hurricane? Not any gotcha indictments but the fact appears to be there was advance discussion and people trying to figure out what should be done - but without central authority, opinions had to be addressed. Also, as far as I can tell, the message is the plans were not only not followed but if followed do not work out as the logistics are not fully assessed. No one takes into account cars moving 30 miles in 12 hours and running out of gas on the overpasses.

That's why you make plans, do dry runs, etc. -- to figure out this in the first place. When it's time to execute a plan such as this _there is no choice to be made_: either it's the plan to evacuate or it's the plan not to.

In terms of hurricane evacuation at 72h before landfall, Katrina was at the top of any least you could _possibly_ make: NOLA was the target and the predicted strength was Cat 5.

NOLA had an excellent hurricane plan [http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005372.php], including contigencies for sheltering people in sane places, rather than the Superdome which was used in the end. There was very little reason to be winging it on anyone's part.

Agreed - that is why it is really an example of the weakness of decentralized government in time of crisis.

There wasn't a decentralized approached to the hurricane evacuation plan. There was basically 1 guy in charge with 100% of the power to order the plan to be carried out. He decided not to. You can shuffle the responsiblity to another person, either upwards or horizontally, the but the factors determining what the outcome is going to be remain the same: the guy orders the plan to be executed or not.

Read what I just posted on my blog -- the decentralized approach is probably the reason the death toll is closer to 500 than to 10,000. Government departments, (except the f-cking tools at FEMA) decided to mount their own rescue missions. [http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_15_05_LD.html]

If the guy in charge is the Mayor, he did not have aurhority over the next parish let alone the entire area of the Hurricane. If you mean FEMA director Brown, he did not have the authority to override the Mayor. <p>But you are quite correct that the second wave of response (to both the crisis and the stunned first wave of response) by the good people on the grounds (aside from the bad officials on the ground) saved many lives. But was that not due to their individual choices of good people in many instances - the police who did not quit, the Vietnamese church members that went out and found its own elderly - and not decentralized <i>government</i>. Decentralized government stood at the bridge and turned people back into the flood zone. Maybe that is too black and white in a literally fluid situation, where good people did the best that they could with the resources at hand despite the plan failing or people faling the plan - so I present it more as ends of a continuous range than an either or...for discussion purposes...'cause I really believe and know zippo.

The decision to evacuate was (rightfully) distributed to the people who could make the proper choice. Whether you would evacuate people from a low-lying area of a city is a very different decision than whether you would evacuate someone from a more conventional less-flood prone area.

As far as I can tell, the stories you are relating above -- people being turned back into the flood zone -- are all NOLA stories, under the control of a single individual, that is, entirely centralized.

You _do not want unnecessary evacuations_, or you'll end up with a host of other problems, such as we are seeing from Rita's evacuation which are fairly predictable from a risk management/statistical point of view. The problem with Rota right now is that too many people are unnecessarily evacuating.

Rota -> Rita.

Just as a FYI, the bridge story (verified by NPR in an interview this week) occured at a NOLA and neighbouring parish border point when the police of the parish wouldn't let the <i>auslanders</i> of the next community pass. <p>I think your point on the unnecessary evacuations is interesting as we are both Atlantic Canadians and know how to ride out a hurrican which is in the Juan range or less. But, I suspect the building code may require less robust framing in the US south with the lack of snow load concerns and the less than constant 100 km winds. I spoke with my folks in PEI this week and they mentioned 80 km gusts in passing, as no big thing - because they and worse happen weekly. I wonder if an average house in Houston is up to a Category 1-2 hurricane. Anything in Nova Scotia would be [heck, the cottage in PEI held up in Juan's direct hit and that sits on posts.] Also I wonder if 30 inches of rain tomorrow would drown the place, unlike your St. John's or My Halifax which are built on the hillsides of the Canadian Shield.

FYI to you, I actually live on one of the highest geographical points in Toronto. It's all downhill from here, baby! :-)

I thought they'd be pretty prepared for hurricanes in the south, no?

That is the question. When in - what - October 1987 there was that massive storm in England, my uncle in Scotland in the construction trade said that the only issue was southern construction standards as the houses of Scotland were built to a tougher code reflecting more regularly strong winds. <p>...and I am over 80 feet up in a tower of stone myself.

I think you're missing some things here, dang Canadians;)(I didn't forget my emoticon, Alan.).

Evacuation orders were given. They weren't followed. Do you go 'storm trooper' and MAKE them leave? Yeah, I can see troops called in to make people leave at gun point(wouldn't the howls of how much a fascist state the US is
become louder over those images, desu neh?) You're smart people. You know down here in the Lower Half of the Continent we've got a Constitution that makes such a thing a real sticky proposition. That's potentially illegal, and borderline immoral and unConstitutional(depending on what paperwork's been filed and the time line).

Also, we aren't parliamentarian. The cen't gov't isn't all powerful. Posse Comitatus and 'Make No Truce With Kings.' Blanco, in her inexperience, didn't follow the given Big Gov't procedures and hence slowed things down(the reports that she called up George and asked for everything available(it wasn't like any other states were facing problems so the resources available were endless. only 12 had already declared states of emergency(western states with wild fires, the SW states with immigration issue(NM and Arizona), and people still recovering from storm damage from previous storms) before Katrina hit and other states were facing trouble from her too), but was rebuffed and asked for a somewhat specific list of assets she needed).
How well did the SE section of Canada do when the power went out near Niagra two years ago? Did the RCMP have everything under control or did the lack of power hamper command and control? Strategic corporals don't always make the greatest of decisions, you know. Particularly when they aren't trained to do so and are used to asking Daddy what to do. Did those troopers make a mistake? Maybe. What was the situation like at the Convention Center and the Superdome, and could it handle 50 more people on the very limited supplies the had(and why were there so few supplies? Did Nagin order RC shipments to stay out? Why, yes he did. He chose to make evac the priority on his few operable roads.)? Can it be looked at as triage by those police in a terrible situation? Maybe, but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that bigger, more robust, gov't is neccessary now does it?(selective slagging, Alan? I thought that was my job. :))
Then there's this showing that big gov't solutions have problems too: http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_20451.shtml
All those rules that come with big, beauracratic gov't seem to be getting in the way of relief efforts.

And aren't you shorting people in the American South? Juan was a CAT1 or CAT2 storm when it hit( http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~prospect/juan.html, and http://www.atl.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/juan/category_e.html ). That's like comparing a mild sprain to complete avulsion of the ligaments of the knee. Let's compare apples to apples, shall we?

Maybe the best thing to say is that nobody has the best plan(gov't, building codes, what-have-you-at-the-moment). That maybe all approaches have serious draw backs based on the fact you're dealing with a very tricky element: people(who can act irrational at any time). That maybe there isn't a one size fits all plan. Maybe. (what's 2 cents American convert to in Canadian money?--cause that's my contribution)
Ry

Hi Ry,<p>

We aren't really snapping as just trying to figure it out and I do think that the nature of US governance is one thing we up here do not get naturally so we wonder why things are done the same - so it is not about better so much as about different.<p>One thing that happened in my city when the blackout occurred is every auxilliary police officer or retired MP got out of their cars and started directing traffic at every street corner without being asked. As the blackout happened 45 minutes before rush hour that made a big difference. And we are particularly accepting of shows of authority and everyone gave them a big wave as they went by. But it was not a flood and I don't know if we have a city prone to a standing flood so it is a different question. We do get the equivalent in snow sometimes but most folk who are "storm stayed" have a stash of food and drink and some even have generators or neighbours with them. I was stuck in my farm house in PEI for three days a few years ago. When this area in the St. Lawrence had the ice storm in 1998, my pal (a doctor) and his village were down for about 37 days. Within one the military was on site with a big kitchen for the residents and the workers. <p>So we do kind of expect our military to show up real quick and, as we have a unified state in that area of jurisdiction, get it. We leave provincial rules to things like drinking laws and education. Local government (like where I work) is a creature of the province only, gets what it is given but on the other hand is never left out to make the calls on its own. So it is different and someways better some worse. <p>2 cents is 1.7 and rising fast, BTW!

Also, as an American admiring a centralized gov't approach: my understanding is that there was NO exchange of info just before 9/11, between FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, ATF etc, each guarding their turf jealously, which made things worse. Whereas the RCMP has oversight and control of all the criminal and investigative branches of Canada's gov't. It's called 'efficiency'.

The compartmentalization [it took me 2 minutes to spell that!] of intelligence that helped lead toward 9/11 was a result of Clinton era "chinese firewall" rules that didn't allow the FBI and the Pentegon to share information. The intention behind this was to ensure that the us military didn't start acting domestically, as per the constitution.

Canada has many levels of police services not answerable to each other or to the RCMP, including provincial and municipal police, ports police, customs police, military police and so forth.

But I don't think our division of police services would prohibit planning together. I've been in on a meeting (though rock concert related) with senior military and police and it was all "anything we can do" and not lumbered with any protocol.<p>...and sweet Clinton slag - way to work that in! 5 points. The FBI and CIA were set up distinct from each other as well to refect that constitutional fact. From the FBI's website:<blockquote class="smalltext">Today, most Americans take for granted that our country needs a federal investigative service, but in 1908, the establishment of this kind of agency at a national level was highly controversial. The U.S. Constitution is based on "federalism:" a national government with jurisdiction over matters that crossed boundaries, like interstate commerce and foreign affairs, with all other powers reserved to the states. Through the 1800s, Americans usually looked to cities, counties, and states to fulfill most government responsibilities. However, by the 20th century, easier transportation and communications had created a climate of opinion favorable to the federal government establishing a strong investigative tradition.</blockquote>I blame Theodore Roosevelt. He lied.

Hilarious! Blame Clinton! Certainly not the governing party in the White House and Congress. I guess people tend to forget the unprecedented peace and prosperity that Mr Clinton presided over in the 90s, tricky zipper or not.
Back to the original point: if Homeland Security was supposed to bundle together some of these alaphabet organazations, like FEMA and others, why was Katrina such a mess? Responsibility for poor management and oversight needs to be taken. Did it help that a huge percentage of the Mississippi and Lousiana Nat'l Guard were over saving the Iraqis from themselves?
Alan, and for a Republican, TR was a very good president in many ways...

No! Teddy lied and people died. We have to always remember to blame everyone for everything.

Gary made a factually incorrect statement; I corrected it [given the fantastic nature of his latter comment, I suspect I could do this all day]. For the record, I certainly do not blame Clinton for 9/11 and think he probably should be rated a fourth quintile president.

We are all fantastics, David. and, if it were worth anything, I suspect ratings will show Clinton far higher than either Bush expecially from a historic perspective when sexual choices will be considered far less important than administrative prowess.

Well, I'd rate Bush II a second quintile president. For the record: Kennedy: 3rd; LBJ: 1st; Nixon: can't make up my mind; Carter: 1st; Regan: 5th; Bush I: 3rd; Clinton: 4th; Bush II: 2nd.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/30/F0033000.html [2c]

<p>More on the Canadian Shield or lack thereof.