Celsius 8/29

By Thomas Gangale
11 September 2005

Most of us are only now beginning to realize it, still in a state of numb shock as we pick up the pieces of our lives and of our very nation in the aftermath of Katrina, but the Post-9/11 Era ended when that horrific storm made landfall on August 29th and drowned the Big Easy.

We are now in the Post-8/29 Era or the Post-Katrina Era; in which a new trauma to the national psyche has replaced an older one; in which the "new normal" has been replaced by a newer "normalité nouvelle;" in which a great American city has not simply been wounded but almost entirely destroyed; in which not only thousands of American fatalities remain to be counted, but millions more have been hurled back into a Third World existence... and kept there under the tender mercies of a government that is either uncaring, incompetent, or both.

While 9/11 was the action of those who presume to act in the name of God, 8/29 was an act of God. In one case we can ask why, in the other it is pointless to do so. In both cases, however, we must acknowledge that in some part the fault was not in our stars, but in ourselves. We were unprepared. We could have been prepared, but we had other priorities.

So now we leave behind Fahrenheit 9/11, and look forward to Celsius 8/29. The consensus is that the Bush Administration's reaction to 9/11 was fairly swift, decisive, effective; its response to Katrina has been none of those, and it is here that we should ask why.

And, while we should not make the mistake of depersonalizing this tragedy by expressing it only in terms of dollars and body counts, neither should we make the mistake of overpersonalizing the responsibility for the ineptitude in its aftermath. Sending FEMA administrator Michael Brown back to Washington isn't enough, and firing him is irrelevant. If you carry high the severed head of one lawyer as you parade around the arena to the cheers of the vengeful crowd, what have you accomplished? How will this prevent the next disaster, or if unable to avert it, to ameliorate it?

What can be done, and who are best positioned to do it? It is these questions that an inquiry must ask. And, even more important than the questions that are asked is the question of who shall ask the questions?

We are all vulnerable. There will be another Saffir-Simpson category 4 hurricane in the South, a line of Fujita-Pearson class 5 tornadoes in the Midwest, another Blizzard of the Century in the Northeast, another Richter magnitude 8 earthquake in the West. Who will show us how to prepare? A commission of politicians and bureaucrats passing judgment on the actions of other politicians and bureaucrats?

We need to think outside the Beltway. There are many experts in academia and elsewhere who have made scientific studies of societal responses to past disasters. This is the brain trust with the lessons learned that officialdom never deigns to consult. These are the people we need to have on the Katrina Commission.