It took a day or two after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast to understand that it could affect our feelings about what happened at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania....Fair enough. Actually, it's pretty mild: "Katrina perfectly simulated a much larger terrorist attack than the one that hit New York." No, in fact, it didn't. (The second to the last sentence concedes the simulation was not perfect.) You see a hurricane forming, strengthening, and heading for shore for days. A terrorist attack — one that succeeds — comes out of the blue. And only parts of the country are especially vulnerable to hurricanes, with New Orleans being a unique case of vulnerability for which special precautions should have been made. So the lack of preparation exposed by Katrina is far less than the real lack of preparation.
Given the area it affected and its potential death toll, Katrina perfectly simulated a much larger terrorist attack than the one that hit New York. It was nearly nuclear in scale....
We felt that 9/11 had changed our lives in an instant, that we had been jerked out of a pleasant dream. The difference in the blow that Katrina struck was not merely that we could see it coming. It was that, as a nation, we thought we were already fully awake.
Here is a piece about what it would take to evacuate New York City after an attack:
Just imagine trying to move more than eight million New Yorkers - including the high number of people without cars - through streets that are clogged on an ordinary day and then through the tunnels and over the bridges that connect New York's islands to the mainland and to one another. "It would not be easy and it would not be pretty," said Jerome M. Hauer, the city's former emergency management director.Who has not tried to picture what would happen in Manhattan if the island suddenly became uninihabitable?
I wonder what the 9/11 editorials would have said if Katrina had not knocked our heads into a different position? I think they would have talked about Iraq. What would they have said?
(A more interesting question to me is what difference has it made — will it make — that we've turned our attention away from Iraq?)
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Bah. It wasn't "almost nuclear" in scope in physical terms, it was well beyond any plausible terrorist nuclear attack.
A one-megaton surface blast is about eighty times larger than a Hiroshima-type fission weapon or suitcase nuke, and 200 times larger than a backpack nuke. And even a one-megaton blast would have a severe damage radius of only five miles, and a moderate one of 7.5 miles.
Now, of course, you have a 100-or-so mile area around that where people will potentially be killed by fallout. But the lack of general structural damage makes it far easier to respond, and evacuations of the outlying areas would be relatively simple before the fallout falls.
More people would die from a nuclear attack than from Katrina, yes. But in terms of things that disaster-response could actually affect, Katrina was a much harder problem than a nuclear attack.
There is a huge differnece between 9/11 or any terrorist attack and Katrina. First, it appears that the death toll for Katrina will be much lower than originally estimate. In the end the death toll is all that matters. People will remember their dead loved ones far longer than being thirsty for a day.
Second, Katrina hasn't terrorized anyone. People in Minneapolis didn't think twice about their daily routines because of Katrina. Terrorism on the other hand can have devastating effect. Far more people could die in the decline in economic growth caused by a terror attack than the actual terror attack.
Lefties who read this blog might want to read James Wolcott.
I won't ruin it for you and spoil the NRO guy comparing 9/11 and Katrina, but here is a good quote.
"A more vulgar effort to shrink Katrina's impact as a national tragedy was made by Jack Burkman, a member in good standing of the vile order of Republican strategists, who said on MSNBC, 'I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen.'"
These things happen, folks. Nothing to look at, move along.
Um.. Sloanasaurus (and please refrain from instructing me how to post-I don't expect to change the opinions of any of you narrow-minded idiots, and so my sole purpose for responding to you and people like you is to rant. When I want your opinion, or care about it, I'll ask.) death toll is all that matters? East enough for you to say, sitting in your mansion in Atlanta or wherever-the-hell. Let's ask Elizabeth: Hey, Elizabeth, you're alive, so clearly you'll forget all about this in a couple weeks, right?
I'm sure losing an entire city, and losing your pets and your home aren't important at all.
You're a buffoon.
Yes, in the end, at least in America, the death toll will have most lasting impact on the economy and society. In America, building stuff is relatively cheap. Stuff can always be rebuilt and replaced.
This site lists some of the nation's worst disasters.
http://www.keene.edu/orgs/geogranite/lessons/X0066_203rtf.html
If the death toll remains as it is in the "few hundreds," Katrina won't even crack the top ten in terms of American disasters.
Drudge reports that it won't crack the top 25. Probably true if we had a complete list.
This statistic will have an enormous effect on how people perceive this disaster.
Brando: What if it turns out there are only 100 dead in New Orleans. How will you rationalize the foaming at the mouth done by liberals for this disaster?
The left will need lots of dead to keep this disaster going as a political story. 9/11 is 3000. How does 100 compare to 3000?
Larry: Perhaps the "real war" you refer to would be the war against the "white male establishment." To prove their self-loathing of themselves and America, and in their never-ending attempt to avoid being envied, they could be willing to take up arms against the perceived evil establishment.
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