Since I was not in the state (work!) to reply in the comments section of Alan’s (excellent) post and since I do not want to end a thread as the last person ‘trolling’, a quick overview here:
In my comments I was not poking fun at the American government: I only observed a pattern of running after the facts. Simple as that. Secondly (completely separate from above observation), as a former student in Civil Engineering I thought it was rather amazing that despite frequent warnings nothing was done about the levees in New Orleans. I find this unacceptable. In simple civil engineering economics: it’s cheaper to build dikes and dams and preserve human lifes than trying to reclaim flooded land and find hundreds (thousands) of deads. As for the consequences of building dikes, of course this is an ongoing struggle: Where humans live, there’s a constant fight with mother nature.
Alfons mentions about the experiences during and after the Juan hurricane in 2003. Reading back the entries I still taste the same nonchalance. And we weren’t even mentioned on CNN!
I call bro and we (Gayle and I) throw a memorable act of ‘cynically depressed survivors of Hurricane Juan’ together. We laugh about our own misery as we decide to eat another dry cold sandwich for supper.
As a matter of fact, had we known about the impending disaster, we would have had the car parked in Truro’s fabulous high-rise 6-tier underground 24 hour guarded parking lot. And, we would have made sure the kitty was tied to the couch and we would have had a backup generator to keep our Internet connection running so you could experience our misery live, 13 hours a day. But then, if you add up all those wishes, you come up with something that is close to the definition of 20/20 hindsight.