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DEL.ICIO.USAn ounce of prevention…
Lack of attention to preparedness could come back to haunt close to Election Day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This thought rattled round through the entire session, and a quickie trip to New Orleans over the weekend has done nothing to dislodge it. It’s about the most surprising omission we noticed this year.
After the huge traffic jam caused by the evacuation of Savannah before Hurricane Floyd in 1999, state and local officials took steps to insure that any future evacuation would go more smoothly. And the state officials in charge of emergency preparedness tweak their plans on a regular basis.
But on a purely political level, wouldn’t you think that if you were running for re-election this year anywhere near a hurricane zone, you would go to some pains to demonstrate you’d tried to avoid anything like a repeat of the Katrina debacle?
At the beginning of the year, several states did take steps along these lines. Despite a governor and several prominent coastal legislators up for re-election right after the close of hurricane season, nothing similar happened here.
Aren’t we talking about the often just symbolic gestures that politicians make only to cover their rears? Maybe so, but if the wind gets high enough it won’t seem like it was such a bad idea.
Aren’t we over reacting, given the forecast this week that this hurricane season won’t be as bad as the last? Take another look at that story. The experts – who by the way vastly underestimated the severity of last year’s hurricane season – expect an only somewhat milder year this year. They say there’s an 81 percent chance a hurricane as strong or stronger than Katrina – which, while huge, was a Category 3 when she hit shore – will hit the U.S. coastline this year, in all likelihood within two to four months before Election Day.
If that storm causes anything close to the breakdown that followed Katrina, there’s a 100 percent chance it’s gong to cause big waves at the polls.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Lee
April 7, 2006 10:04 AM | Link to this
I think you guys have run out of story ideas and are just trying to drum something up. A hurricane/election story in APRIL? Come on. At least wait until hurricane season is closer.
By Jason
April 7, 2006 12:55 PM | Link to this
It’s funny that the first comment on a blog article about a lack of preparedness is critical of the writers for writing about a subject ahead of time.