[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Disasters

[Shaun Hately]

On 2 Sep 2005 at 19:40, Judy wrote:

> The follow-up response to the disater was even worse. I heard an
> interview with the head of FEMA in which he said his agency hadn't
> known of the desperate conditions at the Superdome and Convention
> Center until Thursday.  How is that possible?  Doesn't anyone in his
> agency own a TV?

Look, I work in an area related to emergency management and have 
spent the last few days helping to work out how Australia might be 
able to help with Katrina.

First of all, people working at places like FEMA - at the moment, 
most of them won't have time to be watching television (although 
generally speaking there will be teams doing just that). Secondly, 
you don't base decisions on what the media is telling you is 
happening, because the media is prone to exagerate things during 
emergencies. You rely on proper communications.

If FEMA didn't know there were problems, that points to a real 
communications breakdown and that's a problem - but seriously, don't 
expect these organisations to base decisions on TV news - for one 
thing, journalists generally aren't in the worst affected areas, so 
if you go where the journalists are, it looks good on TV, but you 
often wind up missing out on helping people in far worse situations.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia