Too Many People in Nature's Way

Ant writes "Wired News report that the dead and the desperate of New Orleans now join the farmers of Aceh and the fishermen of Trincomalee, villagers in Iran and the slum dwellers of Haiti in a world being dealt ever more punishing blows by natural disasters... ... "We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not," said Miletti, of the University of Colorado. "The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet." By one critical measure, the impact on populations, statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe. More than 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous two 10-year periods, U.N. officials reported at a conference on disaster prevention in January. Those numbers don't include millions displaced by last December 2004's tsunami, which killed an estimated 180,000 people as its monstrous waves swept over coastlines from Indonesia's Aceh province to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, and beyond. By another measure -- property damage -- 2004 was the costliest year on record for global insurers, who paid out more than $40 billion on natural disasters, reports German insurance giant Munich Re. Florida's quartet of 2004 hurricanes was the big factor. But generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way, said Thomas Loster, a Munich Re expert. "More and more people are being hit," he said..." I'd also like to point out a project here to find housing for Katrina's victims; it tries to combine lists of sites offering housing, and do a meta-search.

Comments

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[nickos]

It's interesting to read about why a settlement developed in that area - from wikipedia

"The site was selected because it was a rare bit of natural high ground along the flood-prone banks of the lower Mississippi, and was adjacent to a Native American trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John (known to the natives as Bayou Choupique)."

Re:Population

[TapeCutter]

Nobody can say if Katrina was caused by global warming, but global warming will tend to impart more energy to the atmosphere (storms, high winds). I live over in Australia and had seen documentaries about New Orleans venerability over 10yrs ago, yet the nation was unprepared?

The scientific community is doing a lot of arm waving and unified declarations, basically saying Humans are an endagered species. The biggest threat ever to mankind and yet most US (and Australian) polititians would prefer not to look at it, let alone acknowlage it. How many times does the media report that the Global demand for grain has outstripped supply five years running and that reserve stocks have fallen by 50% since 2000. People are either not interested or don't understand that the biggest dangers from increased CO2 is not rising sea levels and extreme weather. The biggest and arguably most imminent[sic?] dangers are prolonged crop failures and acidic oceans.

Re:This is what happens

[cold fjord]

Lets just add in some of the details from the article so that nobody is confused by your shorthand:

Accustomed to being a rich donor rather than on the receiving end of charity, the United States initially seemed reticent about accepting foreign aid, but later said it would take up any offers. The hurricane devastated New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast, killing hundreds and possibly thousands.

"Anything that can be of help to alleviate the tragic situation of the area affected by Hurricane Katrina will be accepted," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

"America should be heartened by the fact that the world is reaching out to America at a time of need," he added.

Earlier, President George W. Bush said in a television interview that the United States could take care of itself.

"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it," Bush told ABC's "Good Morning America."

McCormack said there had not been a change of position over accepting foreign aid and White House spokesman Scott McClellan also said later the United States would take up offers of help.

The State Department said offers so far had come from Canada, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Britain, China, Australia, Jamaica, Honduras, Greece, Venezuela, the Organization of American States, NATO, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, South Korea, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Assistance ranged from medical teams, boats, aircraft, tents, blankets, generators and cash donations.

State Department officials said it was likely some of the offers would not materialize and, as a wealthy nation, the United States would be uncomfortable taking funds from poorer countries.

Re:Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT...

[evol262]

955,609 (about 36%) of our total Active Duty/Reserve/National Guard forces of 2,656,300 have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan during this period. 651,622 (24.5%) have one deployment during this period, and 303,987 (11.4%) have deployed more than once.

For active duty, 708,428 (48.2%) of the force has deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. 494,482 (33.6%) have deployed once, while 213.946 (14.6%) have deployed more than once.

For the National Guard and Reserves, 247,181 (20.8%) have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sound like 10% to you? No. We're at 40% commitment over the next 3 years (including rotations). Start using a more reliable source.

Times-Picayune Op-Ed

[EccentricAnomaly]

What governmental disaster relief?

The New Orleans Times-Picayune (which in 2002: published this report which predicted much of the current disaster.) has a scathing open letter to the president that spells out a lot of the FEMA incompetence.

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[TrevorB]

Photos of entire subdivisions with each house sporting what appears to be a bank vault that serves as a safe room demonstrate what can happen when people actually care about what might happen.

So the people so poor that they're living paycheck to paycheck, unable to build a "bank vault" to protect themselves in, or even have the common decency to own a car and be able to fill it with expensive gas didn't care enough to live?

Those bank vault storm shelters were completely paid for by the goverment, their either subsidized or paid for in full by the residents of the suburbs, am I right?

New Orleans itself is in the same situation, living "paycheck to paycheck". They've been begging for federal funds for years before this happened to upgrade the levees. Those funds got redirected to Iraq for the past two years.

(Rant considerably more nasty before editing, consider yourself lucky... :)

Re:Blame Bill Clinton

[demachina]

"Then what explains Bill Clinton's failure to fix these problems?"

It can safely be said the Clinton administration funded the levees way better than the Bush administration did. The Bush administration has slashed EVERY Army Corps of Engineer funding request for the levees since they came to power. They've been to busy funding Iraq, squandering money on biowarfare gear for fire departments in Podunk, Wyoming and directing pork to their rich, white Republican friends.

I especially love the fact the Bush administration allocated $100 million, and transfered a key Army engineer in Louisiana, to restore the marshlands in Iraq. $100 million for the wetlands in Iraq this year versus $87 million for New Orleans levees. Really screwed up priorities there, with 20/20 hindsight.

Fortunately for the Bush administration it probably can't be established if the breeches would have been prevented if they hadn't gutted Army Corp funding and personel for levee maintenance and upgrade though an independent investigation will be interesting. Its a certainty that slashing funding for them didn't help. The fact is levees, especially at the extent they exist around New Orleans, are expensive to maintain. Either you have to committ to maintain them, abandon New Orleans or do what the Bush administration did, let them deteriorate in the face of a surge in hurricanes and their intensity and have a catastrophic disaster.

Follows is a great run down from from factchecks.org which is a pretty nonpartisan outfit:

"In the past five years, the amount of money spent on all Corps construction projects in the New Orleans district has declined by 44 percent, according to the New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper, from $147 million in 2001 to $82 million in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30." ...

A long history of complaints

Local officials had long complained that funding for hurricane protection projects was inadequate:

October 13, 2001: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that federal officials are postponing new projects of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Program, or SELA, fearing that federal budget constraints and the cost of the war on terrorism may create a financial pinch for the program. The paper went on to report that President Bushs budget proposed $52 million for SELA in the 2002 fiscal year. The House approved $57 million and the Senate approved $62 million. Still, the $62 million would be well below the $80 million that corps officials estimate is needed to pay for the next 12 months of construction, as well as design expenses for future projects.

April 24, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that less money is available to the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees and water projects in the Missisippi River valley this year and next year. Meanwhile, an engineer who had direct the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study a study of how to restore coastal wetlands areas in order to provide a buffer from hurricane storm surges was sent to Iraq "to oversee the restoration of the Garden of Eden wetlands at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, for which President Bushs 2005 budget gave $100 million.

June 8, 2004: Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the Times-Picayune:

Walter Maestri: It appears that the money has been moved in the presidents budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq , and I suppose thats the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees cant be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

September 22, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that a pilot study on raising the height of the levees surrounding New Orleans had been completed and generated enough information for a second study necessary to estimate the cost of doing so. The Bush administration ordered the New Orleans district office of the Army Corps of Engineers no