Reply #32: ah but there are solutions [View All]

There is no reason not to build your infrastructure to weather a Cat 5 storm. There is no reason not to make utterly absolutely certain that your drinking water supply will survive a storm surge.

I understand about people not trusting the government's weather predictions, but when the government says it's a Cat 5 storm, it's going to be bad, whether or not it turns out to be a Cat 5 or a Cat 3.

People have to take some responsibility some of the time too, or else it's useless to blame city officials for not doing enough.

Regarding your comment on port cities, this is a great example for why we need better preparation and better planning. It's not enough to design an infrastructure to get a million people out of a city in a day; you have build your infrastructure to handle the worst-case-scenario, especially if your WCS happens reliably every thirty years.

Everyone is anguished and angry and wants to find a person or agency to blame, but the fact is that everyone who put their heads in the sand on this, from people who didn't listen to the evacuation orders to the city and state officials "hoping" it wouldn't be too bad share some responsibility for the difficulties of the aftermath.

All of that notwithstanding, it could have been much much worse in terms of loss of life, and that's something that the volunteers and city officials and people who really are dealing with this aftermath have to be proud of. It's not a human disaster, it's a natural disaster.