The Debt We Owe Katrina
New York, New Jersey and the Northeastern seaboard owe a debt of gratitude to Hurricane Katrina.
The lesson of the Gulf Coast disaster was the failure of government at every level — federal, state and local — and across party lines. Towns were unprepared; Louisiana’s Democratic governor was slow to mobilize troops; the Republican president oversaw a Federal Emergency Management Agency response that was an almost complete fiasco. Evacuation orders were either not issued or not followed, and many who wanted to get out couldn’t, because public trains and buses weren’t made available. The legacy of Hurricane Katrina was as simple as the Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.”… Seguir leyendo »