Over at Varifrank is a list of 10 Things I learned From Hurricane Katrina.
The ones that stand out to me are:
4. Civilization has a 24 hour shelf life
Modern humans think that the conditions they live in are natural; that people are nice and that they have no need for police forces or weapons and that peace in their neighborhoods will exist forever even with no authority imposed on it.
Hurricane Katrina hits and 24 hours later its ?lord of the flies?. Civilization, like fresh fish, tends to go off very quickly when there is no refrigeration. You should plan accordingly
and
10. Modern Man, for all his advances, still lives at the mercy of nature.
It is striking to me that for all the satellite models, for all the computer simulations, for all the projections of disaster, for all the communication, the net effect of all this was that we still found ourselves caught flat footed by something like a Hurricane. While on one hand I do find myself surprised by the damage, but I also know just how bad it could have been, had not satellite projections and the communication allowed as many people to leave as they did.
Instapundit has a list of his own which focuses more on the practical side of things including:
1. Don’t build your city below sea level: If you do, sooner or later it will flood. Better levees, pumps, etc. will put that day off, but not prevent it.
and
2. Order evacuations early: You hate to have false alarms, but as Brendan Loy noted earlier, even 48 hours in advance is really too late if you want to get everyone out.
For me, the biggest lesson from Katrina is one that I hardly like and is related to the point above about the 24 hour shelf life of civilization:
Americans cannot count on their government in the face of a catastrophic disaster.
I’m sure Al Qaeda noticed that too.
