Lessons for OC from Katrina?

What lessons are being learned from the tragedy along the Gulf Coast that could be applicable in OC and SoCal?

OC officials (county & city) should be glued to their televisions to see how things are unfolding in and around New Orleans and learn what they can should something of that magnitude occur here.

Basic services are gone. Martial law has been declared. Lootings, car jackings, a reversion to basic survival instincts for some, baser instincts for others. Where do I sleep, how do I feed my children, where are the rest of my family…where do I turn?

What happens when systems break-down far beyond anyone’s imagination?

What happens when the roads don’t go anywhere, the airports can’t be used, the water stops, there are no communications, and the electricity is out?

Every Supervisor, city council member and special district board member in OC needs to take a hard look at emergency plans for their individual areas of responsibility and insist that they’re workable…not just look good on paper. Public protection and emergency services are two basic responsibilities of government. And it’s a basic responsibility of the private sector to assure they are adequately addressed by their elected officials.

How will OC deal with a major, catastrophic disaster with failure of multiple critical systems?

New Orleans had two days to prepare before Katrina hit. The type of disaster likely to occur in OC will come with little or no notice.

Comments

[Steve]

Interesting factoid…

The media keeps talking about how many are affected along the Gulf Coast and how populated the area has become. Consider this…

Gulf Coast population density = 188 people per sq. mi.
Orange County population density = 3,164 people per sq. mi.

[Lurk]

It's heartening, tho, to see the UN and all those other countries we've been aiding all these years lining up to help us out.

[Critic]

Learn from examples? Read the disaster plans?

Never. Instead we have idiots like Bill Campbell pushing to build a soaring elevated freeway over our only major flood control channel on exactly the type of soil that amplifies earthquake waves so elevated structures collapse. Let's leverage our disasters in the OC so the major quake will also take out a major transportation route, fill our only flood control channel with debris, and make sure that an ensuing rainstorm will flood our sewage treatment plants adding flood and disease to our original disaster.

[illogical]

Thank goodness I have developed the cynicism to expect nothing from my fellow man. The rain hadn't even stopped falling, and entire counters of products from stores were being pushed down the street. Why oh why did Bush and Halliburton allow the global warming that caused this? They could have at least left it at a category five so the talking heads would have been able to show more false concern and at least rend some clothes or something!

[Spanky]

Bush had advance warning to prepare for this as he had advance warning that Osama bin Laden was looking to attack this country.

And Lurk wants everyone to look at the UN.

Sad. Really, really sad.