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Friday, October 14, 2005

Disaster readiness - US vs Pakistan
4 comments

I'm curious. With all of America's security and rescue preparations over the past 4 years, how is it that Pakistan was able to get military and civilian personnel on the ground, and rescue operations well underway, within 24 hours of the earthquake that hit without warning, and the US was unable to do the same after a week - and they had almost a week's warning in the first place?

How is it that the mightiest superpower, the most technologically advanced, the most culturally superior (allegedly) country in the world was unable to do in a week what Pakistan was able to do in a day?


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Posted on 10/14/2005 06:27:00 AM


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4 Comments:

Blogger Chancelucky said...

I think it's called "incompetence" and/or "neglect".

10/14/2005 07:02:00 AM  
Blogger Corona Red said...

Alan - It could also be called "politics." In the US, they are more concerned with who gets to play the hero and who gets blamed. They worry also about being sued, so they try to go "by the book." Pakistan barely has a book and they got it done through a top down approach. The US has local, city, state and federal bureacracies and noone clearly in charge. No wonder we bungled it.

Corona

10/14/2005 07:53:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chancelucky and Corona Red made some good points. Louisianna's government made some big mistakes in a) not developing a disaster plan years earlier, and b) failing to evacuate the people before Katrina hit.

A family friend recently joined the Red Cross and went down to Mississippi to help out. He came home and told my sister-in-law that there was nothing left in the disaster areas and that it didn't matter what the government did or didn't do in regard to those levees.

What made Katrina so powerful was the eye hovering over the coast the way it did. Under normal circumstances, the eye breaks up when the center of the hurricane reaches landfall.

10/15/2005 04:38:00 AM  
Blogger Alan Howard said...

Hi deborah, thanks for visiting and commenting!

While I can understand that the disaster was of such proportions that it didn't matter what the government did, I still feel that it DOES matter what the government does, otherwise it shows itself as a government that doesn't TRY, doesn't CARE, and doesn't even have the resources and administration in place to even come CLOSE to dealing with a disaster. Makes you wonder what all the exta money into Homeland Security and FEMA has been for, if all it's done is is made them more inadequate than what they used to be.

10/15/2005 09:31:00 AM  

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