Today, in the UK "Observer", I have read the interviewed but
passionate observations of Princeton's Cornel West on "exiles from a
city and from a nation"..."New Orleans was Third World long before
the hurricane":
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1567216,00.html
and, notwithstanding the White Paper by the Association of State
Floodplain Managers (David Crichton 10/09/05: did Gilbert White
finally succeed with the Corps of Engineers ?), I am left wondering
how much of the comment conveyed on this network has any chance of
reaching and maybe influencing US policy and implementation. I am
sharing therefore, to a very limited extent, Martyn Garvey's
frustration (10/09/2005), though I hasten to add for those who do not
know, I am one who has worked in the field, many of them and with
many others, hopefully towards reductions in the numbers of bodies
that Martyn would like to see us all logging.
Recent reference to Henry Quarantelli and Russell Dynes, as further
examples, coincided with thoughts re the volumes of hazards research
that have emanated from the US for more than fifty years, not to
mention the mountains of US$ that have paid for it, which would
suggest that if any country should have gotten itself organised for
its disasters it would be the USA. Did I assume too much, not that
many years ago, in my reading of it (and brief participation with it) ?
Does the fact that Cornel West is interviewed for a newspaper
published outside of the USA, and a UK prof writes to the Washington
Post (published or not, their website will not reveal) indicate a
communication blockage or embargo between US academics and US policy
makers and implementers ? Do Nat-Haz-Dis / Radix correspondents in
the US write as well to their local and national politicians and to
their national newspapers, or via other avenues, as vociferously as
they do to the network - or does the climate of fear extend to that as well ?
If it does, it is a cause of the colossal canyon that appears to
exist between US research and US practice. Seemingly half the country
is saying how it should be while the other half does, or doesn't do,
what it wants - perhaps not a new phenomenon and one not unique to
the US, but one of the tasks now of reconstruction surely has to be
bridges across that canyon - another great divide ?
James
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