A Requiem for New Orleans

Craig Dimitri looks at "The Horrendous Failure of Politics - and Thus, By Extension, of the Human Condition" for philly1.com

Mr. Dimitri blames human psychology. The fear of the "nightmare scenario" overwhelmed all the leaders involved. They simply couldn't handle it:

New Orleans might be obliterated (Category 5), or rendered uninhabitable for a very long period of time (Category 4). The reasons it would be rendered uninhabitable would be, among other things:

a) There's so much flooding water that almost all of the property in the city would be wrecked or seriously damaged. And it's not even just a flood - it's a STABLE flood, one where the water won't flow out on its own - you have to go in and extract it. And obviously, that causes far more serious damage.

b) The health consequences of the hurricane would mean that diseases which plagued 18th-century America and modern Third World countries: cholera, dysentery, etc, would revive as major public health problems. An ABC News report took a sample of water that showed bacteria levels 45,000 times as high as ordinary pond water.

c) The ENTIRE city's population would need to be evacuated, a herculean task in and of itself.

d) Somewhere, someplace, would have to be found to put these people. They also would need the necessities of life (food, shelter, medication, etc.) for as long as the cleanup was necessary. They also would be in dire straits financially, since the entire New Orleans economy would be temporarily (and perhaps permanently) destroyed.

e) The public safety would be gravely threatened, since the city's resources would be strained to the breaking point. Lawless gangs of thugs would roam the city, exploiting the fact that the New Orleans cops wouldn't be able to stop them, and would terrorize the population, both those who remained in the city and in the evacuation areas, such as the Superdome.

f) Even if you safely evacuated all of the people out of the city - what are you going to do with them in the long-term, if New Orleans is either completely destroyed, or rendered uninhabitable for a very long period? Where will they live? How will they survive? To cite just one example - what about hospital patients and sick babies, who just can't be left in a makeshift shelter in a football stadium?

And now that the Nightmare Scenario has actually occurred, everything in categories a)-f) has now manifested itself, at an untold cost in human suffering, property damage, infrastructure wreckage, and economic dislocation. It also means that massive efforts are going to be needed to rectify these disasters, and some of those categories (such as maintaining lawful order in the city itself) have already gone unsolved by government, and had to be endured by the public, despite the heroic efforts of the New Orleans police.

However, when faced with the problems enumerated in a) - f) above-

In my belief, this is the natural typical human response to them - let's just pray to God that the Big One never happens, and ignore those potential problems.

Why? Because it would mean difficult, expensive, and divisive choices. It would mean a massive investment in infrastructure and evacuation points. It would mean a coordinated management of city, state, and federal resources, something which is difficult to achieve even when a problem presents itself like Katrina - and something that's even MORE to difficult to achieve when the problem is just hypothetical rather than real. And in the day-to-day, humdrum world of government at all levels, nobody wants to expend time and energy to deal with a potential catastrophe that from a statistical point of view, is very unlikely to happen on your watch.

Also, there is the sheer matter of terror. We do not like to accept the fact that a natural disaster, striking with little or no warning, could kill, injure, or psychologically scar thousands of American citizens, which has just taken place (and which could have been even worse than Katrina turned out to be). Who would want to spend time dwelling on such a morbid, frightening scenario?

And so, the decision makers and planners evaluated these questions, and made the conscious decision to simply disregard their unpalatable reality, and simply stuck them in a desk (or nowadays, a computer file). And they simply went about their lives, quietly hoping that this disastrous hurricane would simply never occur - or, perhaps more accurately, hoping that it occurred on someone else's watch. This is the crucial fact.

He may be right. Our fallible nature makes us prone to surrender to our fear. We don't want to look into the abyss. It might look back after all! The simple truth may be this: New Orleans, Louisiana and Federal leadership failed because they avoided their responsibilities out of denial and fear. Perfectly human

Perfectly inexcusable.

The people of New Orleans and Louisiana placed their trust in Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco. They entrusted their safety into their leaders' hands. They did this long before Katrina formed over the Atlantic. They expected their leaders to prepare their city and state for an emergency such as a severe hurricane. As Mr. Dimitri correctly points out, everyone knew the big one could come.

They expected wrong, as the nation has painfully witnessed. For Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, Director Brown, Secretary Chertoff and even President Bush to possibly avoid their responsibility for the safety and welfare of the citizens of NOLA out of fear is outrageous. Leadership requires courage, integrity and the willingness to sacrifice. Leaders do not have the luxury of surrendering to fear of a nightmare scenario. Leaders have the responsibility to get the job done. If the emergency preparedness plan faltered, they needed to fix it. If the plan had not effectively been put into action, they needed to adjust. Each of the leaders involved in Katrina's aftermath crucially failed in at least one of these responsibilities. They haven't paid for these mistakes, however. The suffering and dead of New Orleans have.

The proper understanding of leadership is service. Leaders serve the led. Leaders make the decisions that the led need not make. That's why their leaders. If those elected or appointed to leadership positions want the priviledge of living like the led, then they should remain among the led. They can then indulge their fear until their blood paralyzes in their vains. Leaders must surrender that indulgence. The lives of the led depend on it.