I recieved a comment to one of my previous Katrina posts that I'd like to address. Let's start with what Barkley had to say:
"Do you still want to emigrate to the US, even after Katrina? the Dutch would have weathered that storm and had everything prepared for the fix-up...the US is a "make it on your own or die" type of place, but this time it's a little too harsh for me"
Now, I'm sure mistakes where made and the images of people on rooftops, waiting days to get help made me mad as well. But to say that the Dutch (or anybody else) would have done a better job? I seriously doubt it. Here's why...
First the area affected was, according to the Whitehouse and international press, about the size of the UK. That's 241,590 sq km (according to the CIA Factbook) and Holland is just 33,882 sq km. So the affected area was 7 times the size of the Netherlands. Still think we would have done a better job dealing with it?
Let's take a look at the number of people that died. The last storm in Holland with a large number of casualties and flooding was in 1953. In the Dutch provencies of Zeeland and Zuid-Holland, 1836 people died. The area affected was a bit larger including parts of Noord-Brabant. I couldn't find information on how many people lived in the affected part of Holland at the time but the total population of The Netherlands was little over 10 million. Let's say half of them lived in that area (it's probably a lot less). So 1836 out of 5 million people died. Compare that with the states Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi there are 12 million people of which 1000 died. That's a lot less.
Then there's the storm itself. In 1953 the storm had a reached wind speeds of 150 km/h. Katrina reached speeds of up to 240 km/h. There's no way you can compare a Hurricane 4/5 like Katrina with a storm like we have them in The Netherlands.
Barkley ends with a remark on mentallaty. I think that if Americans have a "make it on your own or die" the Dutch have a "someone else should take care of it". I don't know what is worse...
Very well thought-out, well-researched information there. :)
Well written. Especially the last sentence is a fundamental difference between the two countries and an interesting cultural difference to explore.
The US was founded with the idea, that government would have as little influence op people's lives as possible (look at the Constitution: "We, the People,..."). Our whole society is based on this premise. Of course, when bad things happen, people suddenly do turn to the government to "do something", but in truth, this society was not set up like that from the beginning.
Add to that the autonomy of the individual states and their governments and it becomes way more complicated than "where was George Bush (in no way do I say here, that he acted well, though)".
There is no doubt that the Federal response was slow to Katrina. But I think a review of the Local, State and Federal actions following the hurricane will show that the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans were the real problems.
If a disaster of this kind were to occur in Iowa, Minnesota or most other areas of the country it would have been dealt with.
New Orleans is a dysfunctional, corrupt and dangerous place.
John - Pennsylvania