Posted by Dinah on December 4, 2005, at 20:23:45
From Times Picayune, New Orleans
Will nation let feds back away from N.O.?
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Ivor van Heerden and Paul KempA city is the sum of all its parts, and New Orleans is missing many, if not its heart.
Though it has been called the most European of American cities, New Orleans is still quintessentially American. All Americans, wherever they live, go through life trusting in federally designed or certified structures to protect them from known dangers. Since Hurricane Katrina, we have seen an incredibly heartwarming outpouring of help from individual Americans all over the nation.
But other Americans, particularly in our nation's capital, are becoming aware of the threat Katrina poses to their less altruistic goals (think of Alaska's "bridge to nowhere"). These opinion leaders are beginning to blame Louisianians individually for living in New Orleans. We fear that this is psychic preparation for a denial of national responsibility.
This leads America rather quickly toward the chaos of Somalia and Haiti, where no one pretends to care. If in the future we are all left to fend for ourselves when the federal levees fail, whether really or metaphorically, then New Orleans will truly have given up its heart for an America that is no more. And what can Los Angeles and St. Louis and Charleston expect when the next big earthquake hits?
Most New Orleanians heeded the call to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina. Those who did not were predominantly without means, elderly or frail. The fact that more than 70 percent of those who lost their lives were older than 65 dramatically emphasizes this point.
An article in the current issue of Time magazine has got it right. The catastrophic failure of the levee system should not have happened. If the levees had not breached and were merely overtopped in sections, we would all be hard at work getting back to normal. We would not be facing statewide insolvency and perhaps an irreparable exposure of national hypocrisy.
We use the words "catastrophic structural failure" from both scientific and social perspectives. Katrina has forced us in Louisiana to look hard at what steel and earth was or wasn't under those levees in New Orleans. Similarly, the national response to Katrina tells us all whether we have a government by and for all the people, or only for those who have not yet tested the federal engineering systems that they think protect them.
So where does that leave us?
The America we love is a nation with broad shoulders and a sense of responsibility. As scientists involved in the forensics investigations, we are discovering the mechanisms of failure associated with each levee breach. Some of our findings have already been discussed in the report of the American Society of Civil Engineers and in Senate testimony. Other points will no doubt be elucidated through the painfully slow mechanisms of legal discovery.
But none of this information will change the fundamental ethical question Katrina poses to the nation. We submit that it is time for America to step up and do what's right for the Americans of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We must reassure those who have not yet been hit by disaster that we are not only a nation of individuals who care, but also of a government that does not turn away in time of crisis.
The president has appointed a new "recovery czar" and still has a chance to stop those who seek to turn the nation away from its real responsibilities. The head of the Corps of Engineers, really the nation's engineer, needs to stop talking about issuing a report June 1 and take responsibility now.
That sort of responsible behavior would certainly stimulate conversation around the dinner table this Thanksgiving holiday, whether in FEMA trailers or the halls of Congress, and would give all Americans something to be thankful for.
. . . . . . .
Ivor van Heerden and Paul Kemp are disaster science specialists investigating the failure of the floodwalls. They may be contacted at gpkemp@lsu.edu.
poster:Dinah
thread:585532
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20051121/msgs/585532.html