California vs. New Orleans.

ImaginalDisc

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First, I am very glad that the response to the wildfires in California has been swift and well executed. However, I've heard unflattering comparisons between the emergency response to these fires and the emergency response to hurricane Katrina. Obviously, there are huge differences in what can be done in a hurricane and what can be done about a wildfire.

Do you think it's fair to compare the response to this disaster on the West Coast to the disaster in the Gulf Coast?
 
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I do not believe it is a fair comparison. People can and do fight wild fires, but there is not much a person can do to fight (or limit) a hurricane. Cleaning up the aftermath is about the same though.
 
Not at all. San Diego (and various points north) were never cut off from help. New Orleans was. At the very least San Diegans could get help via the harbor.
 
I think there can be comparisons made e.g. how has the emergency organisation itself reacted (FERMA isn't it) so you can compare that to how it reacted after the New Orleans tragedy and see if it's better, worse the same and so on.

I do agree however that there aren't many like for like comparisons regarding the actual tasks that they can undertake. For instance there is a huge difference in shipping in supplies to a refuge area that has road access from a major conurbation compared to doing the same when the refuge area itself is cut off from road access.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
Not at all. San Diego (and various points north) were never cut off from help. New Orleans was. At the very least San Diegans could get help via the harbor.
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Also you can react to changes in scale of the fire much more effectively as the dammage would be caused over a longer period of time.
 
Irrespective of the actual disaster, it occurred to me a day or two ago that this can be a lose-lose situation depending on how you spin it:

California Response was effective - "Oho, so you can be effective when it's rich white people and celebrities, eh? Swine!"
California Response was ineffective - "So you have learned nothing from Katrina? Idiots!"

A more charitable view would, of course, to be to suggest that the people in charge of these things took one look at the mess made at New Orleans and resolved never to make those mistakes again.

I daresay it may all be apples and oranges, mind.
 
No comparison. I'm sure the lessons from Katrina contributed to the response time in CA.
 
CosCos said:
No comparison. I'm sure the lessons from Katrina contributed to the response time in CA.
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I doubt that. We get brush fires every year. New Orleans doesn't get hurricanes every year. The lessons from Katrina may have helped in regards to what to do with all the evacuees crammed into Qualcomm Stadium.
 
It's always fair to make comparisons. Even when the things compared have only superficial similarities.

- Apples and Oranges (Fruit)
- New Orleans and San Diego (Cities)
- Protestant Reformation and the Rennaissance (Historical / Philosophical Events)
- Faith and Reason (Both assume that some form of Justice may be achieved)
- Hurricanes and Brushfires (Both destroy lives and property)
- Ouzo and Turpentine (They only taste the same)

IMHO, Southern California people seem to be better prepared for a disaster as individuals, while Southern Louisiana people seem to assume the greater responsibility for their survival belongs to someone else.

Of course, there are those who would blame the gummint for everything that goes wrong, while paying only lip service to each individual's responsibility for themselves.

When the first word comes to evacuate, leave! Don't wait for an engraved invitation or a stretch limo, don't expect to wait it out, and don't expect to be rescued at the very moment that your house is engulfed in flames or up to the eaves in floodwater! Get out while the gettin's good!

And if you even suspect that it might be a good idea to take a long trip when a hurricane may be heading your way, or when the Santa Ana winds might start blowing after a long dry spell, then just effing do it!

If you're too stupid to leave while it's still safe to do so, then you have no-one to blame but yourself.
 
Fnord said:
And if you even suspect that it might be a good idea to take a long trip when a hurricane may be heading your way, or when the Santa Ana winds might start blowing after a long dry spell, then just effing do it!

If you're too stupid to leave while it's still safe to do so, then you have no-one to blame but yourself.
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Wow, it must be nice to be rich and carefree enough to drop everything and flee at the merest hint of a hurricane. There are often as many a dozen false alarms during the course of a hurricane season.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
I doubt that. We get brush fires every year. New Orleans doesn't get hurricanes every year. The lessons from Katrina may have helped in regards to what to do with all the evacuees crammed into Qualcomm Stadium.
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I've lived in NOLA since 98, I can tell you that we've gotten a hurricane, or the threat of a hurricane, every single year since then. Keep in mind that "hurricane" does not equal "Katrina!"

That wasn't my point though.

I said the lessons from Katrina helped in the response time.

That is to say, we can't really tell if the response in California was "good" or "bad" compared to the response to Katrina because the Katrina debacle colored the response in California. Who's to say what the response would have been had Katrina never happened? Remember the mass evacuation from Houston for Rita? Do you think that would have occurred had Katrina not happened 3 weeks earlier? We can't judge these events in a vaccuum as they are colored by preceding events.

Aren't the evacuees in Qualcomm getting kicked out for this week's Chargers/Texans game?
 
Um...this website said New Orleans had since '98:

1998 - tropical storm, 2002- 2 tropical storms, 2004 tropical storm and brush by, 2005 tropical storm, 2005 direct hit

That's hardly every year.

We have major brush fires every year. Most people evacuate when told to. Firefighters know how to fight brush fires. A better response comparison would be a large earthquake to Katrina.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
Um...this website said New Orleans had since '98:

1998 - tropical storm, 2002- 2 tropical storms, 2004 tropical storm and brush by, 2005 tropical storm, 2005 direct hit

That's hardly every year.

We have major brush fires every year. Most people evacuate when told to. Firefighters know how to fight brush fires. A better response comparison would be a large earthquake to Katrina.
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I think it's fair to quibble on the point of "threat of a hurricane."
 
Lisa Simpson said:
I doubt that. We get brush fires every year. New Orleans doesn't get hurricanes every year. The lessons from Katrina may have helped in regards to what to do with all the evacuees crammed into Qualcomm Stadium.
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The big thing that will be remembered by a number of us is that the Shrub engine lost no time at all in spinning fast relief to California vs. minimal relief to New Orleans (YET!!!) by blaming the Governor of Louisiana (only a coincidence that she was a democrat, I'm sure) for US govt doing so little there (though , oddly, they did a lot in Republic based Mississippi for the same Katrina). At the risk of Bushing this ("Godwinning" equivalent), Shrub is slime - democrat states can burn/flood whatever and get minimal help and lots of excuses, republic states get lot's of help and minimal excuses.:mad:
 
Lisa Simpson said:
Um...this website said New Orleans had since '98:

1998 - tropical storm, 2002- 2 tropical storms, 2004 tropical storm and brush by, 2005 tropical storm, 2005 direct hit

That's hardly every year.

We have major brush fires every year. Most people evacuate when told to. Firefighters know how to fight brush fires. A better response comparison would be a large earthquake to Katrina.
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What, you just want to play a game of gotcha? That wasn't even my point and yet you continue to argue :rolleyes:

It's annoying when discussions on this board devolve into games of semantics, definitions, and nitpicks; which appears to be every single discussion lately. Once more, my point wasn't the hurricanes (or THREATS--as I made abundandtly clear many times), it was comparing response time in California to that in New Orleans per the original post. If you just want to argue over a nitpick to prove to yourself that you're right, I'm not interested. Get over yourself.
 
CosCos said:
It's annoying when discussions on this board devolve into games of semantics, definitions, and nitpicks; which appears to be every single discussion lately.
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What's even more annoying is when intelligent, educated, and articulate people must resort to using facts to prove themselves right. It's those little details of reality that just seem to destroy the most well-felt out opinions and sacred generalizations.

:mad:
 
fuelair said:
The big thing that will be remembered by a number of us is that the Shrub engine lost no time at all in spinning fast relief to California vs. minimal relief to New Orleans (YET!!!) by blaming the Governor of Louisiana (only a coincidence that she was a democrat, I'm sure) for US govt doing so little there (though , oddly, they did a lot in Republic based Mississippi for the same Katrina). At the risk of Bushing this ("Godwinning" equivalent), Shrub is slime - democrat states can burn/flood whatever and get minimal help and lots of excuses, republic states get lot's of help and minimal excuses.:mad:
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Yeah, let's just glaze over the fact that when the president offered federal help on monday aug 29, your favorite Democrat gov asked him to give her 24 hours to "think about it." Two can play the political game.

Having said that:

There were a lot of mistakes made in Katrina: individual, local, state, and federal. For people living here and having gone through the experience, nothing pisses us off more than seeing arrogant politicos such as yourself wrapping yourself in the Katrina banner and trying to score political points off of it, indeed making this a political game.

Since when are states deemed Rep or Dem based on the policital party of the governor anyway? I guess when it's convenient....let's forget that LA is primarily a "red" state (went to Bush in the last election) and CA is primarily a "blue" state (went to Kerry). I guess for your whole ridiculous argument to work you had to grasp at those straws!

Now that we have a Republican governor, I guess we'll get immediate federal help by your logic. Bring on Katrina II!!!
 
Fnord said:
What's even more annoying is when intelligent, educated, and articulate people must resort to using facts to prove themselves right. It's those little details of reality that just seem to destroy the most well-felt out opinions and sacred generalizations.

:mad:
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quotemine much? let's try reading the whole thing the next time.

"Once more, my point wasn't the hurricanes (or THREATS--as I made abundandtly clear many times), it was comparing response time in California to that in New Orleans per the original post. If you just want to argue over a nitpick to prove to yourself that you're right, I'm not interested. Get over yourself."
 
Let's not forget what really happened with Katrina. It was not the hurricane, which had already passed, but the sudden flood as the levies failed that created the disaster in NO. It is not fair to use what happened to retroactively judge the decisions that people made beforehand. It is not as if the people were told the storm would flood the city, and they decided to stay anyway.

If Southern California suddenly found itself under water, no one would be complaining that the people who sought assistance were not sufficiently self reliant. When the next big earthquake hits, people are not generally going to scoff at requests for federal help, or ask why anyone would be stupid enough to live in Southern California in the first place.
 
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