[EAS] Preparedness and Survival Generalities

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

Not sure those two responsibilities are actually different, Mike.  It depends on how much the individual identifies with his or her community, doesn't it?  The point is that even the most "unworthy" communities (and that's both urban and rural) show a strong automatic response of empathy and cooperation... attitudes frequently  lumped together under the rubric of "altruism."

>Double edged sword however. They will also eat through emergency rations more quickly. Then what...anarchy on the street when the water, food, and TP are gone...among other less savory things.

And here we see the dark nightmare of the ruralist looking at the city.  So maybe folks will eat a little more.  Would we prefer they sat around waiting for rescue while conserving their iron rations and toilet paper?

In any community, at any time, there's an invisible line that separates the "public" sphere of responsibility from the "private."  When there's a disaster that line moves... the public sector can't, by its design, scale up quickly enough to meet every demand, and thus that line slides as concerns that normally would be public  pass, by default, into the private.  The private sector, urban or rural, mobilizes rapidly and energetically, if a bit unpredictably, to take up the slack.

A few days later, we emerge from the "heroic" period of response.  The tempo slows and augmented public-sector resource come on line.  Now there's the challenge, in some folks' minds, of pushing that public/private issue boundary back to where it "belongs."   In Mexico City in 1985 there were riots between neighbors who were digging people out of collapsed buildings and the fire department rescue squads who saw that as an intrusion by unskilled and undisciplined civilians into the firefighters' realm.  Usually that transition back to public sector responsibility is non-violent, but there's always an underlying conflict between the "put things back" and the "build back better" approaches that generally works out politically over ensuing months and years.

> And my original point remains unchallenged. People need to drink clean water, eat suitable food, and continue taking their prescribed medications (never mind basic bodily functions). No one, urban or rural, will do that for long if they are not prepared for these basic necessities before government responds and relief efforts reach the impacted area(s). It's that simple.

Not to worry, Mike, I'll challenge it.  The question isn't whether people are people, but whether their systems of resilience are necessarily all the same.  Sure, we can hope that everyone in a tenement (or a high-rise condo if we prefer) will have a bucket and ancillary sanitation supplies on hand.  But if they do, is that the end of it?  Very shortly we're going to want a system for moving those buckets' contents down and out of the building.  (Real traditionalists might suggest simply opening a window and shouting "Gardy Loo!" before letting fly, but even traditionalism seems to have its limits.)  And then buckets will need to be recycled back upstairs.  That's starting to look like an organized effort that no individual can implement single-handedly.

And that's how city life works.  Only the most privileged and the most impoverished urban dwellers live alone.  Cooperation and reliance on shared systems is the way of life for the rest of us.  No Lone Rangers need apply.  But life the Lone Prairie is much simpler, so if we can define the rural lifestyle as inherently more virtuous that its counterpart, we can then plan for a relatively easy case, and declare any victims who don't fall within that artificial simplicity as unworthy, morally flawed, and sufficiently marginally human that we can rationalize ignoring and/or abusing them.

Speaking for myself, I really don't want to be the guy who thinks that way.

Art

PS - Bear in mind that in your Tsunami scenario, folks in multi-story buildings may have more "vertical evacuation" options that their rural cousins, who must make do with the limited supply of grain silos.  "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happenstance to them all." (Ecclesiastes 9:11)  We all like to think that our successes are due to our virtues, while our failures are somebody else's fault.  In practice, however, a lot of it is just dumb luck.

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Mike McCarthy

Let's not mix the missions of self-preservation responsibility with the virtue of public responsibility rescue. The fact folks are out there extending their life and limb to help those in immediate distress and peril are to be commended for their efforts.

And its precisely my point in how the government can be overwhelmed or prohibited from executing their mission by any number of obstacles and the public at large steps up every time. I will admit this "rescue by public"
is a virtue of the "urbanite" environment's collective manpower resource. 
Double edged sword however. They will also eat through emergency rations more quickly. Then what...anarchy on the street when the water, food, and TP are gone...among other less savory things.

And my original point remains unchallenged. People need to drink clean water, eat suitable food, and continue taking their prescribed medications (never mind basic bodily functions). No one, urban or rural, will do that for long if they are not prepared for these basic necessities before government responds and relief efforts reach the impacted area(s). It's that simple.

This event is simply unprecedented in scope and magnitude of impacted population and geography. And all resources are stretched beyond the planners imaginations. This could very well be bigger than Katrina when it's all done.

But will pale in comparison to something even bigger like a major Tsunami hitting an urban metro. Or worse...a nuke. Then what? Local government rural and urban will be equally paralyzed. Who will survive the immediate event and how?

I am neither urbanite (despite being born in the city and raised in suburbia), nor rural (despite my wife being a farm girl) predisposed. I see and appreciate both sides. But we always have a case of water, pop-top canned soup, and box of crackers handy along with a go bag.

MM