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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.
About Katrina, I found this link very interesting...
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There are places in the world which don't suffer huge natural disasters. Of course if you're willing to risk flooding/hurricanes/earthquakes/tornadoes for a better view and better trade routes, well that's a risk you take. Just don't expect us in more boring, safe areas to bail you out.
hmmm... I live in a coastal town. It's 20 feet under sea level. Last year florida got destroyed by a series of hurricanes. Nah, I don't need to learn how to swim. Oh, a hurricane is on it's way? Well I still don't know how to swim, and I'll stay put. I'll be ok. Sorry but the stupid SHOULD be punished (children are of course exempt from this line of thinking)
I love this meme. The left having exhausted the usual methods of attacking a sitting president now puts him in charge of the weather and local disaster planing.
h tml#004752
these are photos of schoolbusses left unused to drown in flooding.
Just to refresh you on what you should have learned in grade school. Crisis management starts at the local level works its way up to the state level and then goes to the federal level. FEMA's own stated parameters are that city and state governments will have to wait 2 to 3 days for federal relief to kick in.
The Mayor of New Orleans completely failed to mobilize the resources at his disposal. No city provisions to evac people without means to exit the city were made. No provisions were put in place at releif shelters. Heck the roof of the superdome had been redone to benefit local roofing contractors prior to the storm. The Most telling piece is this http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.
You may hate Bush to the point were you see red, I don't care. But It is damn annoying to have every idiot try and twist anything that goes wrong in this world to his fault. It just gets in the way of fixing the real problems.
The only reason someone lives from paycheck to paycheck is because they choose to live that life.
It may be gambling- it may be drugs- it may have been a lifetime of partying and not saving so they are poor in old age. If you apply yourself, you can easily reach a 40k per year income in the US. There are people (janitors, teachers, etc.) who retired millionaires on a lot less.
The people of NO tolerated corruption and graft. The outcome of such toleration is well hidden until a bridge collapses, or a house burns down because the wiring was substandard, etc.
The people of the US are increasingly tolerating it too. Why else would we be building a $175 MILLION dollar bridge to nowhere in Alaska instead of investing that money wisely or lowering taxes so the money can be used productively.
As much as I will personally help the evacuees from NO, I recognize that they are poor because of the personal choices they made during their lives. A very few may have actually had bad luck after doing the right things but most earned their poverty by decades of poor decisions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.