James Lewis raises many very important and difficult questions.  I have admired his work since 1975, when we first met.  His very thoughtful reflection on Katrina both reinforces that admiration and makes me ponder what we have achieved over the last 30-40 years in the business of risk reduction.

I have just three immediate thoughts to offer for now, in no way exhausting the rich echoes of James' questions.

First, the U.S. was under the Clinton administration better at dealing with natural hazards.  As others in this discussion list have commented, there has been a massive erosion of FEMA since Bush took power, accelerated by FEMA's absorption into the "Homeland Security Borg".  However, an aspect of the weakening of FEMA that has not much been discussed is that under its then director, James Lee Wit, FEMA was more visible academically on an international scale.  FEMA learned from good practices in other countries and shared, for example, it's experiences with Project Impact and other forms of mitigation.  On the destruction of FEMA see a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Mark Sandalow http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/11/MNG40EM00T1.DTL&hw=fema&sn=042&sc=265 .

Second, the rest of the world may be in the process of overtaking the U.S. in hazard management.  The messages this list and the Gender and Disaster Network list have been getting from south Asia and especially Bangladesh need to be taken very seriously.  There are lessons to be learned both about "living with floods" and also about preparedness at neighborhood and town level.  

Third, and finally, it is very difficult to make an impact on U.S. policy in an environment that is very hostile to science in the first place.  This is the administration that redacted and edited Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies  that showed very hazardous levels of air pollution caused by the collapse of the World Trade Towers and other EPA reports on global warning.  This doesn't mean we should give up trying to impact U.S. federal policy, but it does mean that we should diversity the audience for professional advice and results of research.  Two complementary audiences come to mind.  One is local government in the U.S., bypassing the federal level.  The second is civil society.  In other messages I have discussed the growing demand for inclusive, participatory recovery planning in the aftermath of Katrina.  The civil society groups making such demands (e.g. trade union affiliated Community Labor United, for example) may be able to benefit from what we, as professionals and practitioners, have to offer.  (See, for example, the "Peoples Hurricane Fund" http://www.qecr.org/index.html & Community Labor United http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=9094, as well as a recent article by Naomi Klein: http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1566200,00.html ).

At official levels, so far, in the U.S. there has been little or no discussion of a "bottom-up" approach to recovery planning that would complement a more conventional city and regional planning "top-down" approach (see, for example, the resource section of the American Planning Association's Katrina page: http://www.planning.org/katrina/index.htm ).

Ben Wisner
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-----Original Message-----
From: James Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sep 12, 2005 4:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Another great divide ?

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