SINCE the advent of “real-time” television and the immediacy of harrowing stories of human tragedies in the midst of natural disasters, the sense of shock of the average television viewer has become somehow numbed by distressed people whose lives have been destroyed by some overwhelming force of nature.
Nine months ago, it was a tsunami — a word, most of us, if we had heard it at all, had only heard it in geography lessons. When we saw it on our TV screens, reduced to a picture a few centimeters across, we had difficulty in comprehending the immense power of a wave and the damage it could do.
Hurricanes we may have been a little more familiar with; a frequent occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico and along the southeastern US coast, they are probably one of the best-monitored and well-researched of all weather systems, especially because of the potential for disaster they hold for the holiday and retirement areas of Florida and the oil-rich southern coast of America.
So when hurricane Katrina struck, the surprise was not in the impact of the strike. A category five storm was expected to do damage. President George W. Bush though, among others, seemed surprised. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” he told Diane Sawyer, co-anchor on ABC News Prime Time Live.
They had, however, been warned over the years about the sinking levees; the US Army Corps of Engineers only last year asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs. The White House cut it back to $40 million.
In spite of the scenes of disaster and the reports of possibly thousands dead and the costs escalating past the $25 billion mark, (that is about 5 months of running the US adventure in Iraq), the real shock is the reaction of the people in widely separated cultures in the face of the Asian tsunami and hurricane in Louisiana.
Initially, the images of both events were similar in style — scenes of distraught people who had lost families and everything they owned. Soon though, the images coming out of New Orleans became far more disturbing.
TV pictures showed crowds looting shops, breaking into stores and homes, even opening fire on rescue helicopters. In the first day or so, before the lack of food and water became life threatening, the first reaction of a significant proportion of the US South was to go for the consumer goods. There was every appearance of total social breakdown.
Compare the scenes from the Indian Ocean rim. Initial shock, no signs of looting, a slow but steady return to getting on with the job of re-building what had been destroyed and ready acceptance of help, wherever it came from. In those “developing” countries as opposed to the “advanced and civilized” society that the US purports to be, people took charge and got on with it, aware that their governments probably could not cope.
In the US, however, where the expectation was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would organize and address the immediate problems of the disaster, a most incredible thing happened.
The head of the agency, one Michael Brown who, it seems, is more used to running the International Arabian Horse Association — a job he held before his appointment to FEMA — did not know until Thursday — over two days later — that there were 15,000 desperate people who were dehydrated and dying in New Orleans.
Others did see and offers of help came from the UN, Cuba, Venezuela and a myriad of aid agencies. National Public Radio interviewed the head of one agency who said that the agency had offered FEMA immediate shelter for the thousands of victims who were ironically dehydrating in the pouring rain. Their offer was refused on the grounds that — and I quote — “Americans don’t live in tents.”
Originally of course, Americans did live in tents — teepees, to be exact. But then of course, they were forcibly “civilized.”
George Bush was once asked, when it turned out that Texas had the worst record for child healthcare in the US, why that was. He looked blank for a moment and then replied, “We take care of our own.”
He looked blank again when asked some particularly pointed questions about his reaction time to the disaster in the south — most especially about the 30 percent of the National Guard and half its equipment in Iraq and the subsuming of disaster preparedness drills into the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Bush, exactly who do you regard as “your own?”
