Clarion Content

Fair or unfair, many Americans and people around the world are going to look at government's (local, state and federal) response to the California wildfires and compare it to the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. They are going to make generalizations about where the disasters occurred and who they affected. This is not unreasonable, but it must be done with great care.

One element underlying all issues related to the government's response to these disasters is the difference in the scale of devastation. It is massive. Hurricane Katrina was so much worse. Hurricane Katrina saw not only more loss of life, but exponentially more houses lost and businesses destroyed. This statement is not to minimize the losses faced by Californians, collectively or individually. Their devastation also occurred on a grand scale and was no less tragic for being smaller than that of the Gulf Coast. This is rather a pro-active attempt to temper the shape of the discussion about the government's differing responses.

There is no doubt that the government has responded much more rapidly and forcefully in California than in Louisiana. There is no arguing that the socio-economic and racial background of the majority of victims in each disaster was quite different. The Clarion believes the difference in whom the victims were undoubtedly had some impact on the government's response, especially at the upper echelons of the federal government hierarchy. George the II's boots were on the ground much, much faster in California.

But again, it is important to recognize how broadly the difference in scale of the disasters affected the response. Hurricane Katrina was much bigger. Far more roads were blocked, distribution of supplies was much more difficult. The net total number of governments and local departments involved in the response to Hurricane Katrina was also far greater than the California wildfires because the scale of the devastation was so much wider in scope. This is to cite but two examples of the effects of the scale.

Allow one final populist comparison, to underline the difference in scale to which the Clarion is referring. The National Football League's San Diego Chargers have relocated the folks who were using their stadium as a shelter and are going to be able to play a game this Sunday. The New Orleans Saints did not play the first game in a decimated Superdome until over a year after Katrina, having played a full season in San Antonio, Texas. There were questions right up to the beginning of the following season about whether or not the team would be able to play home games in decimated New Orleans.

In both of these disasters individuals lost everything and that is tragic.

In both of these disasters government's response could have been far more effective. But differences abound, in California, government had the failure surrounding Hurricane Katrina to learn from, in California the government had a smaller, more slowly developing crisis on its hands.

Did the government respond equally effectively or with an equal sense of urgency in these two situations? The Clarion believes the answer is a fairly inarguable no, but there are mitigating factors to that response beyond the most base and obvious demographic ones. The composition of the victims will and should be discussed, but not sensationalized, nor used to marginalize all the other differences surrounding the governmental response to these human tragedies.

Labels: Politics, thought