Category: In the News

[via Rude Pundit and Doc Searls] President Bush, on yesterday’s edition of Good Morning America said:

“I don’t think anyone could have anticipated the breach of the levees.”

That’s a bit of a stretch. He didn’t. I’ll admit that I didn’t, but I live nowhere near New Orleans and haven’t been there since I was 3.

However, these folks did:

• USA Today (2000)
• Scientific American (2001)
• Bill Moyers (2002)
• Associated Press (2003)
• National Geographic (2004)

  …and my favourite:

• Mr. Bill (2004) [2.4MB, Windows Media movie]

There’s a lot of “tsk tsk” going on with regards to the ill-preparedness of virtually everyone involved in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, from the President and his cabinet for lack of planning, an uncoordinated response and ill-timed guitar photo ops and shoe–shopping trips to the citizenry of New Orleans, many of whom stayed put despite warnings of a category 5 storm and didn’t even stock up on emergency supplies.

While the assignation of blame is an amusing intellectual exercise, I propose a more useful one: trying to extract lessons from this situation that could be applicable to our own lives. Are we who weren’t in Katrina’s path laughing at the speck in others’ eyes while ignoring the log in our own? How well prepared are we for life’s emergencies, both large and small?

The following is a set of questions, arranged into categories, that you might want to ask yourself about your own preparedness for the future. I’ll admit that these are pulled straight out of my head (or ass, depending on your point of view about this sort of thing), but many of these are based on casual personal research, advice from trusted people and good old-fashioned experience. This is by no means a complete list, but I think it’s a good start and walks the median mindset between not-thinking-beyond-today and paranoiac survivalist.

If you have any comments about any of these questions or would like to add to the list, please feel free to do so in the comments.

Money

• Are you putting at least 10% of your take-home income away in some kind of savings account or investment?
• Are you saving money in an RRSP (if you’re Canadian), 401k (if you’re American) or some similar retirement savings plan?
• If you were suddenly to lose your job, would you be able to cover this month’s rent or mortgage? Next month’s?
• Do you have any “rainy day” money stashed away to cover a small emergency — say at least $300?
• Do you have “breathing room” on your credit card, or is it maxed out? Are you paying it off as qucikly as possible? Getting by on the minimum monthly payment? Are you “kiting” — that is, paying off one credit card with another?
• What sort of insurance do you have? Medical? Disability? Life? Homeowner’s? Car?
• When you travel, are you covered by travel insurance?

House

• Do you have flashlights and candles handy in the event of a power outage? Do the flashlights have batteries? Do you have matches or a lighter for the candles?
• If you live in a country with cold winters: do you have spare blankets should the heat go out?
• Do you have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen?
• Do you have smoke detectors? Are their batteries still good?
• Do you have a planned escape route in case of fire? Do you have a backup escape route?
• If you have a house with direct access to the garage or you have a gas or oil furnace: do you have a carbon monoxide detector?
• Do you keep a supply of non-perishable ready-to-eat food?
• If you live in an area that is prone to natural disaster — it could be flooding, tornadoes/hurricanes/typhoons/monsoons, earthquake or forest fire — do you have something like a jump kit?
• Do you have a plunger or toilet snake?
• Do you keep a bottle of drain opener handy?
• Do you have a home alarm? Do you use it? Does it have a “panic button”? Does your home alarm notify the police and/or a security company and/or the fire department? DO you know how to report a false alarm?

Medical

• Do you have a first-aid kit in the house?
• If you take medicine on a regular basis, how vital is it to your survival and how much of it do you keep on hand?
• How much first aid do you know? Can you staunch serious bleeding? Set a broken bone? Help a choking victim? Help a drowning victim? Jump-start someone whose heart has stopped?
• Do you know where the nearest walk-in clinic is? The nearest hospital? The nearest one with an emergency room (not all hospitals
  have emergency rooms)? The nearest emergency dental clinic?

Car

• Are the ownership and registration papers for your car up-to-date? Are copies in the glove compartment?
• Does your car have a “donut” or a full spare tire? Can you change a tire?
• Does you car have jumper cables? Do you know how to jump-start a car?
• In the event that your car breaks down at night, do you have road flares and a flashlight?
• If you live in a country with winters: Do you have an ice scraper and snow brush? If you go on long trips, do you have emergency supplies like a blanket, water and high-energy food (such as chocolate)?

Technology

• Do you have a cell phone? Does it have a spare battery?
• Do you keep extra batteries for portable electronics?
• Do you back up the important data on your computer? How often?
• Do you have anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-adware software? Do you keep that software’s virus/spyware/adware definitions up-to-date?
• Are you careful when you open email attachments?
• Are your home appliances — especially those which generate heat — in good working order? Are their power cords in good shape?
• If you work on documents or files, do you save your work often? If your software supports it, do you enable auto-save?
• Do you change your computer passwords at some regular interval? Do you have them written down somewhere safe?

Safety

• What is the rate of violent crime where you live? What is the murder rate?
• Do you have “street smarts”? Have you taken any “street smarts” classes?
• Do you know any form of self-defense?
• Do you own a firearm? (Can you justify owning one?) Is it kept in a safe place? Do you have some kind of criteria, either explicitly stated or internalized that clearly states when it is an appropriate time to shoot someone?

Community

• Is your neighbourhood busy or quiet? What is the crime rate? What is the violent crime rate?
• Is there a sense of community in your neighbourhood?
• Do you know your neighbours? Is there a neighbour you can call on for help?
• Do you participate in community events — anything from organizing a local rummage sale to something like a neighbourhood watch?
• Do you keep in touch with your family? Could you call on a family member for help? How long a period of non-communication with them would have to pass before they got worried about you?
• Do you keep in touch with your friends? Could you call on a friend for help? How long a period of non-communication with them would have to pass before they got worried about you?

Super-Duper Bonus Question

For the purposes of this question, please ignore certain geographical impossibilities, such as your living in the midwest and being a thousand miles away from any large body of water.

Here’s the scenario: imagine that you’re doing exactly what you’re doing right now. There’ve been rumblings in the news of an extremely severe storm that might come your way. Suddenly, you are given notice — perhaps from your supervisor at work, a phone call, email or instant message from a family member or friend, a civil defense announcement on TV or radio — that the order to evacuate is given.

The storm is headed right for your town, and it is expected to be a category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale: winds at 150 miles per hour (250 kilometres per hour), trees blown down, damage and even complete destruction to houses and buildings.

The evacuation order says that the safe distance is at least 150 miles (250 kilometres), which you can assume to be a two and one-half hour trip under normal conditions. You have 24 hours before the storm is expected to hit.

Assume that you have only the resources available to you, in their current state. Do you have a car, is it working and is the tank full of gas? If not, can you arrange for a ride? Are you at work, and how long would it take you to get home to collect your things under normal circumstances? How about during a general evacuation? Where would you go? Is there somewhere you can stay where you’re going? Whom would you take with you? What would you take with you?

Additional Scenario Twists

For an additional challenge, add these twists to the scenario:

• The Joey twist: Your father, who lives in the same town as you, is handicapped and walks slowly with a walker. He also takes insulin before each meal, which means you need to stock up.
• The Joey’s sister twist, part 1: You have three kids, aged 4, 2 and 4 months.
• The Joey’s sister twist, part 2: You are the assistant health director for the region; they’re going to
  call on you for emergency duty. And yes, you still have the kids.
• The new kid in town twist: You just moved into town, don’t have a car and know almost no one.
• The “the Weather Channel screwed up again!” twist: They were right about the storm, but wrong about the time — you have 12 hours before it hits.

Strangest photo of the Katrina aftermath thus far:

This blog, along with the others for which I write (The Farm, Blogware, IndieGameDev) is joining with Instapundit, The Truth Laid Bear and several others in the Hurricane Katrina Blog for Relief Day drive. If you’re reading this blog, the chances are that you’re probably able to spare even the equivalent of your lunch money.

How badly off are people there? According to this blog entry by author Cherie Priest (I got the link from the Neilsen Hayden’s Making Light blog), quite badly off.

There are a number of charities from which to choose (here’s a list from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency). Choose the one you think appropriate. I’m sending my money to the Canadian Red Cross, who are sending aid and accept tax-deductible donations from Canadians). If you’re in the United States, the American Red Cross will take your donations.

Napoleon Dynamite reference: “I caught you this delicious mouse!”

One of my favourite observations of Paulina Borsook, author of the book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech is what she calls the “Cat/Dead Rat” theory of geek philanthropy. She summarized it in this Mother Jones article from late 2000:

There is a universally acknowledged truth that if a cat loves you, it will give you a dead rat, whether you want a dead rat or not. In high-tech, pretty much the most common instantiantion of communitarian impulses is in the donation of computers, i.e. dead rats.

And lo and behold, Cat/Dead Rat manifested itself again in this Boing Boing posting. There is no doubt that the intent of providing tech assistance is good, but really, my fellow geeks: for the love of Maslow, think about it for a moment! The city of New Orleans is covered in several feet of water that is both undrinkable and a disease vector. The most pressing needs are drinkable water, water to wash in, food, shelter, search and rescue, shoring up high-priority structures and maintaining some kind of civil order. Aside from helping set up some kind of site where people can report missing relatives and friends or collect donations for the relief effort, most of the high-tech help won’t be needed in the immediate future.

Thankfully, Erik V. Olson emailed helpful points to Boing Boing, which they published as an addendum to the entry. Kudos to both! The email is published below.

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People want to help. That’s good. The problem is they often can’t, but they think they can. And, in the end, all they really do is get in the way.

The single best thing Joe Geek can do is give cash. Not stuff, cash.

Cash is portable, fast, and useful. Everything else has problems — even if it is something they really and truly need, because it isn’t there, and people and resources are needed to get it there.

The canonical example: Bottled water. Something otherwise useless that is critical in this sort of emergency. So you give a few flats to the ARC. Well, you bought them at retail, and now, the ARC has to put them on a truck (which costs money) and ship them down there (which cost money, and time.)

Let’s say you give them $20 instead. The ARC notes that they need water. So, they call a bottler in a city close to, but not affected by, the storm. They get wholesale or cost prices, as opposed to retail. For the same amount of money, they get far more water, far closer to where they need to be. In six hours, you’re delivering your flats to the local ARC office. In six hours with cash, they’re handing water to people who desperately need it.

Finally, of course, if what they really need is food, your flats of water aren’t helpful, but your cash is.

So, the lesson:

1) Give cash. That’s the best thing you can do from your home.

2) Stay the hell away from New Orleans. Seriously. They’re ordering everyone out, that includes you. Do not go.

3) If you are trained to do rescue work, they have almost certainly called you by now. If not, check in with your local org — records and such get lost, and they may have missed you.

4) If you really insist, go to your *local* American Red Cross office and talk to them. If, in fact, they do need a skill you have, they’ll put you with the people you need to know, and start the wheels moving. The single biggest thing the ARC does in disasters is routing solutions to problems.

5) If you have supplies, not cash, you can talk to the local office, but realize that the cost of shipping your supplies may make them worse off then just buying them closer. If you have supplies *and* shipping — and we’re talking trucks, not FedEx, — then call the local ARC, and talk to them, and if they need what they have, they’ll put you in touch with the people who need it, who can arrange how to get it to them. In general, when they need something, they need lots of it, either in one place or put into one place so they can easily distribute at need. One satellite phone isn’t that helpful, esp. if they have to figure out how to make it work. A thousand phones, ready to go, however, is.

6) If they really need what you have to offer, and you are one of the few who can provided it, they’ve probably called you by now.

7) If you want to help in the future, start working with rescue orgs now. If you haven’t been trained in general rescue procedures, your not nearly as helpful. Think of it as backups — you can’t help New Orleans now, but there will be other bad days, and if you’ve done the classwork and drills, and kept in touch, then you will be one of the people they need — and they’ll call you when they need you. It may not be as elegant as network support — but right now, they don’t care about TCP/IP. They care about getting people out of the floodwaters, and plugging the holes in the levees.

…and really, even if it’s only a literal couple of bucks, send them to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. This Google search should help you find a suitable organization to whom you can send money.

Joi Ito — whom like Wendy, I met at the first BloggerCon — was

invited to write a guest editorial piece for the New York Times on the

60th anniversary of the atomic bomb’s dropping on Hiroshima. On the

#joiito IRC channel, I remember him mentioning that he was asked to

write an “impressionistic” piece, from which a number of us surmised

that it was supposed to be about what Joi thought of the events that

took place at Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago. Joi’s an interesting

case, as he regularly hops between Japan and America not just

physically, but culturally. He wouldn’t be out of place in America any

more than I would, nor would he be out of place in Japan.

(I would be out of place in

Japan — or at least the minute I opened my mouth. When I was last

there, many Japanese mistook me for one of them. This was a source of

consternation for my blonde-haried, blue-eyed friend Anne, who was

teaching English there at the time and spoke more Japanese than I did.

She’d ask for directions from local people, who would then turn to

answer me.)

Joi really didn’t have much of an impression of the bombs at Hiroshima

and Nagasaki, and neither did his contemporaries in Japan. As he writes

in his op-ed piece:

…at bottom, the bombings don’t really matter to me or, for that matter,

to most Japanese of my generation. My peers and I have little hatred or

blame in our hearts for the Americans; the horrors of that war and its

nuclear evils feel distant, even foreign. Instead, the bombs are simply

the flashpoint marking the discontinuity that characterized the

cultural world we grew up in.

My

more cynical side tends to think that peace movement kids here in North

America seem far more affected by this. It’s partially out of basic

human empathy, which is laudable, and treating what happened as some

kind of historical snuff film, which is not.

In the end, Joi managed to get “into the headspace” for the article and

managed to write his piece. He then hopped on the #joiito IRC channel,

which has a number of bright denizens and always seems to have some

kind of conversation going on, and got some help editing the piece

before submitting it to the Times. There’s another example of the power of collaboration through the internet.

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The most interesting part of the article is a little “tipping point” story about Joi’s great-grandmother:

My mother used to talk about the American occupation of our hometown

in northern Japan when she was a child. Our house, the largest in the

area, was designated to be the Americans’ local headquarters. When the

soldiers arrived, my great-grandmother, nearly blind at the time, was

head of the household, my grandfather having died during the war.

My

great-grandmother and my grandmother faced the occupiers alone, having

ordered the children to hide. The Japanese had been warned that the

invading barbarians would rape and pillage. My great-grandmother, a

battle-scarred early feminist, [which even in today’s Japan is one hell of an uphill battle — Joey] hissed, “Get your filthy barbarian shoes

off of my floor!” The interpreter refused to interpret. The officer in

command insisted. Upon hearing the translation from the red-faced

interpreter, the officer sat on the floor and removed his boots,

instructing his men to do the same. He apologized to my

great-grandmother and grandmother.

It was a startling

tipping-point experience for them, as the last bit of brainwashing that

began with “we won’t lose the war” and ended with “the barbarians will

rape and kill you” collapsed.