Johnny Canuck2 said:
What can we learn from the social breakdown in New Orleans?
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Steve Booth
Bourgeois apologist
Misrepresentation
There is a way in which people tend to self organise in a crisis. I am quite sure that the boy scouts and sand bag fillers would not be enough to fill the gap in the leaking dyke.
I am sorry but you seem to have missed how I was commenting against the way the UK media, especially the BBC, would appropriate the community spirit aspect of this in the jingoistic cliche about the 'Dunkirk Spirit'.
I think the point is that many of the people here wouldn't have the same belief in their state coming along with the magic solution to the problem, and just sitting around in a sports stadium waiting for it to happen. Instead largely locally organised voluntary groups would try deal with it themselves.
This is a misrepresentation of what was being said in my original post.Johnny Canuck2 said:
There is a way in which people tend to self organise in a crisis. I am quite sure that the boy scouts and sand bag fillers would not be enough to fill the gap in the leaking dyke.
I am sorry but you seem to have missed how I was commenting against the way the UK media, especially the BBC, would appropriate the community spirit aspect of this in the jingoistic cliche about the 'Dunkirk Spirit'.
I think the point is that many of the people here wouldn't have the same belief in their state coming along with the magic solution to the problem, and just sitting around in a sports stadium waiting for it to happen. Instead largely locally organised voluntary groups would try deal with it themselves.
consumer135
Member
What do you do?
If your an emergancy planner:
(1)Stop people using one road into the center of the city so as to reserve it for access.
(2)Set up (i) transport hubs (ii) tempory shelters areas outside predicted path of hurricane
(2) Issue evacuation warning and advise (i)all people with their own transport to leave the city. Tell them to ask their neighbours if they need a lift (ii)all people without their own transport to go to 'evacuation areas'.
(3)Evacuate hospitals
(4)Ferry people at evacuation centers to transport hubs give them blankets, food and water and disperse to multiple shelters.
If your in the superdome.
Talk to people and organise a meeting of 50 people.
Get people to split into groups who will organise the provision of: water, food, sanitation, security, communications.
Let these groups self organise but insist on meeting up again every n hours.
If your an emergancy planner:
(1)Stop people using one road into the center of the city so as to reserve it for access.
(2)Set up (i) transport hubs (ii) tempory shelters areas outside predicted path of hurricane
(2) Issue evacuation warning and advise (i)all people with their own transport to leave the city. Tell them to ask their neighbours if they need a lift (ii)all people without their own transport to go to 'evacuation areas'.
(3)Evacuate hospitals
(4)Ferry people at evacuation centers to transport hubs give them blankets, food and water and disperse to multiple shelters.
If your in the superdome.
Talk to people and organise a meeting of 50 people.
Get people to split into groups who will organise the provision of: water, food, sanitation, security, communications.
Let these groups self organise but insist on meeting up again every n hours.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Sorry. said:
Do you mean Hurricane Dennis in Cuba according to Reuters it was 1.5 Million people (out of about 12million).
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11501816.htm
I was just reading round on other floods. EM-DAT is a good place to start. This PDF on the last 30 years of floods is interesting particularly for the worldwide upward trend in flooding incidents.
Looking at other disaster relief operations particularly the frequent floods in Bangladesh I came across the theme that relief should be targeted at the poorest. It's a little different in Bangledesh of course as a lot of people are inches away from famine at the best of times but looking at NO I can't help thinking that that's where than planning hours just weren't spent.
Usually the States handles disasters pretty well. I remmeber the last California earthquake being smugly compared to one in Turkey. This flood by world standards isn't actually that large but it was very predictable and it has been big enough to overwhelm the US. That is surprising.
In the US it's time to take a hard look at the basic social compact: the duty of government to protect its citizens. There has been too much ideological cheese-paring at a time when disasters both natural and man made are increasingly likely.
It's also hit at the largest port in the US and the economic impact on the Redstates may well far greater than is appreciated at the moment. We may see a great deal of change in American politics in the next few years as a consequence.
Looking at other disaster relief operations particularly the frequent floods in Bangladesh I came across the theme that relief should be targeted at the poorest. It's a little different in Bangledesh of course as a lot of people are inches away from famine at the best of times but looking at NO I can't help thinking that that's where than planning hours just weren't spent.
Usually the States handles disasters pretty well. I remmeber the last California earthquake being smugly compared to one in Turkey. This flood by world standards isn't actually that large but it was very predictable and it has been big enough to overwhelm the US. That is surprising.
In the US it's time to take a hard look at the basic social compact: the duty of government to protect its citizens. There has been too much ideological cheese-paring at a time when disasters both natural and man made are increasingly likely.
It's also hit at the largest port in the US and the economic impact on the Redstates may well far greater than is appreciated at the moment. We may see a great deal of change in American politics in the next few years as a consequence.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Certainly there are some lessons here.
1) Don't ignore the scientists and engineers.
2) Don't privatise essential public safety.
3) Don't appoint incompetent ideologues to run critical public services.
4) Make sure you plan for the most vulnerable.
5) "Markets solving it" means leaving people with no credit card to die in filth.
1) Don't ignore the scientists and engineers.
2) Don't privatise essential public safety.
3) Don't appoint incompetent ideologues to run critical public services.
4) Make sure you plan for the most vulnerable.
5) "Markets solving it" means leaving people with no credit card to die in filth.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Steve Booth said:
I know what you're saying: the british would be more self sufficient, more organized etc.
The people weren't just 'sitting around in a sports stadium'; they were poor people with no means to get out quickly, and the local govt told them that the stadium was the shelter to report to.
It's like when the british govt told the Londoners to go into the subway tunnels during the Blitz.
The difference is, that after the event, the dome was surrounded by deep water, impeding efforts to get in or get out. Hence, the 'sitting around'. I'm unclear as to what british people would have done differently. Would they have ignored the call to go to the dome? Once the flooding came, and those extra twenty thousand, or at least the survivors, were sitting on rooftops, what self organizing would british people have marshalled that the americans on rooftops didn't?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
consumer135 said:
As of today, there were 1700 people left in hospitals who couldn't just be put on a bus and driven out. People on life support, etc, who will have to be medivac-ed out.
As for the dome, all the meetings in the world won't make nonexistent water and food suddenly appear on the fifty yard line.
I'm sure that if something happened to London exactly the way it did to New Orleans the scenes inside Wembley Stadium would have made the Superdome look like Shangri-La - but because there's less reliance on private cars in this country and more reliance on public transport, everybody who wanted to get out would have been able to get out when the evacuation order came.
I reckon there must have been enough empty seats in cars leaving New Orleans to evacuate the entire population.
I reckon there must have been enough empty seats in cars leaving New Orleans to evacuate the entire population.
Sorry. said:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015
Ask the mayor why he just let his busses sit their then.
He had busses parked their for 40,000 people.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Yossarian said:
Typically, those numbers reflect the total commuter movements during a day.
pbman said:
I've just checked the statistics to make sure and it's 1.2 million into central London every day, 3.8 million in greater London.
Of course, many of the trains involved make many journeys a day to pick people up and drop them off again.
This must be how Helen Keller's teacher felt - she clearly had far more patience than me.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Point is that a system designed for commuter use isn't usually up to the task of a rapid mass evacuation to some spot outside the metropolitan area.
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Yes - but they're not completely full trains, and they are trains operating mostly during the peak journey times of getting people to work and back for office hours so in theory, if pushed to capacity they could evacuate the entire city in a day, easily.
This is only in theory, of course - in reality I'm not certain the rail system will get me as far as work tomorrrow, but things here seem to work better in times of crisis.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
MC5 said:
It's an attempt by the right wing media and Bush's spin doctors (I include Mellon Scaife and all the others in this nomenclature) to smear the poor and the blacks who have been caught up in this. It is also a means to vindicate the social Darwinist thread that runs through American society by saying "Look they're poor, what do you expect the poor to do?".
pbman said:
well quite. But I think you have to ask if this would have happened in any other developed nation, if any other developed nation has the kind of attitude toward its poor that the US has - that allows the kind of blase response we've seen displayed at mayoral, state and federal level toward the problems of people without the resources to save themselves.
But the good ole US of A is bigger and more populus. Proportionately it is like a city a bit smaller than Cardiff being inundated like New Orleans and an area extending about 40km east (Swansea) and west (Bristol) and 80km north (Shhrewsbury) being damaged to similar extent to the the rest of the affected area of the US (i.e. smaller towns near Cardiff devastated, with damage decreasing as the distance rises).Johnny Canuck2 said:
Would like to think we could have managed a bit better, mate.
Even without the opportunity to pre-plan on the basis that (a) much of New Orleans is below sea level and (b) the odd hurricane has been known in the area previously.
Just face it. The US and it's people really are not as all-seeing, all- knowing, faultless and invincible as some of their leaders and people seem to think.
Stats. assumed:
Population: USA 293m UK 60m New Orleans 240k Cardiff 315k
Area (sqkm): USA 9.63m UK 0.25m Damaged area US 0.23m
Is New Orleans the capital city then? Has it a population of 7.46m?Johnny Canuck2 said:
In short, what you are saying is that the US and the UK have a different national psyche. We have. And it why various things do not happen here which happen in the US. How often do we read about the "next big threat/craze" which is going to reach us across the Atlantic, only to see it disappear as a bit of damp squib because the people of the UK are very deifferent from the people of the US.Steve Booth said:
I much prefer the UK psyche but I fear that we are slowly becoming more and more like the US for a variety of reasons - social, economic, political ...
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Maybe so, I would at least hope that if we had a disaster on this scale some thought would have been given to the survival and recovery of the people without valid credit cards.detective-boy said:<snip> I much prefer the UK psyche but I fear that we are slowly becoming more and more like the US for a variety of reasons - social, economic, political ...
I don't think we've quite sunk as low as the US into free-market madness, yet. Perhaps seeing this will be a timely reminder not to let that happen.
They are if there is a plan for their deployment for that use. And there is. There is a plan to evacuate the entire central London area which is periodically reviewed and, in part, practised and tested. It wouldn't be perfect ... but it would be achievable.Johnny Canuck2 said:
And no ... there is no chapter which says leave those poor people in Feltham / Brent / Tower Hamlets ... Quite the contrary, the plan anticipates that the government organised transport will be disproportionately required by those populations as they do not have their own means of transport.
And that is my greatest hope ... that it alerts all those who would have us model ourselves in the image of the US to the fact that they are actually not quite what they like to think they are. I for one really DON'T wanna be like them.Bernie Gunther said:
Moving all the "foreigners" together in an evacuation centre "for their own safety" for fucks sake ...
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Nice new revenue stream for Wackenhut though.detective-boy said:<snip> Moving all the "foreigners" together in an evacuation centre "for their own safety" for fucks sake ...
dylanredefined
Not a house elf a tiger
The buses could have got thousands out .There was a plan but it wasent used for whatever reason . Hosptials ,nursing homes etc well you could have got a lot more out than they did .
The amphibious trucks made by alvis are called stalwarts their unfortunatly
scrapped or in private hands .
The amphibious trucks made by alvis are called stalwarts their unfortunatly
scrapped or in private hands .
detective-boy said:And that is my greatest hope ... that it alerts all those who would have us model ourselves in the image of the US to the fact that they are actually not quite what they like to think they are. I for one really DON'T wanna be like them.
Moving all the "foreigners" together in an evacuation centre "for their own safety" for fucks sake ...
Thank God we have some humans running things here.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
detective-boy said:
Frankly, I don't see how your country could handle it worse. I was just rankled by the smugness of the poster who originally raised the point.
IMO, it's one thing to criticize those who appear to be responsible for this disaster; it's another to stand on the sidelines crowing about your own superiority, while people are still dying in the water.
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