Our emergency was mainly of supply and demand. Demand came first for food, fuel and medical supplies; soon after for clothes, bedding, shelter and cash. Within two weeks, city services buckled and traffic swelled, straining an infrastructure designed for half as many people. Lines were long and tempers short. Rumors of running gunfights in the streets brought panic and confusion. A month later, as FEMA trailers popped up in the cow pastures, a low-grade fever gripped the capitol city: compassion fatigue.
Hurricane Rita rolled through at about that time. It flooded Southwest Louisiana then took out trees in Baton Rouge, tore off roofs and turned out the lights.
Living in Louisiana is like that. I don’t mean to be flippant: Tropical cyclones are serious events, and our last two prompted a vast exodus of long-time residents. Thousands of Louisiana natives have had enough of her.
But bad as it is, once it was worse. Consider a place with monster storms plus waves of malaria, encephalitis, leprosy and yellow fever. That was our state well into the twentieth century.
Hurricanes are terrible but also predictable and passing events. Recovery is in large part a matter of money, materials and manpower. The federal response to Katrina and Rita has been infamously criticized, but note that these are the kinds of disaster our government handles best. Government stumbles to address disasters more difficult to predict, like terrorist attack, or to contain, like pandemic flu.
Last week the White House released its guidelines to preparing for worldwide deadly illness. Given the inescapably sketchy nature of the threat, the report is predictably vague and like most over-vetted government documents, penned in language not quite fit for human consumption. A sample from the overview:
Chapters 2 and 3 (U.S. Government Planning and Response) describe the unique threat posed by a pandemic that would spread across the globe over a period of many months; the specific and coordinated actions to be taken by the Federal Government as well as its capabilities and limitations in responding to thesustained and distributed burden of a pandemic; and the central importance of comprehensive preparation at the State, local, and community levels to address medical and non-medical impacts with available resources.
The language is clearer on this point:
The center of gravity of the pandemic response . . . will be in communities. The distributed nature of a pandemic, as well as the sheer burden of disease across the Nation over a period of months or longer, means that the Federal Government’s support to any particular State, Tribal Nation, or community will be limited in comparison to the aid it mobilizes for disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes, which strike a more confined geographic area over a shorter period of time. Local communities will have to address the medical and non-medical effects of the pandemic with available resources.
Unfortunately, the report’s specifics are not much more specific than its overview. The section concerning “individuals and families” (i.e., what we can do for ourselves) comes perilously close to the duct tape and blue tarp solutions we received after 9-11.
But first some throat-clearing:
It is difficult to predict when the next influenza pandemic will occur or how severe it will be. The effects of a pandemic can be lessened if preparations are made ahead of time. When a pandemic starts, every one around the world could be at risk. The United States has been working closely with other countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) to strengthen systems to detect outbreaks of
influenza that might cause a pandemic. A pandemic would touch every aspect of society, and so every aspect of society must begin to prepare. State, tribal, and local governments are developing, improving, and testing their plans for an influenza pandemic. Businesses, schools, universities, and other community organizations are preparing plans as well.
As you begin your individual or family planning, you may want to review your State’s planning efforts and those of your local public health and emergency preparedness officials. Many of the State plans and other planning information can be found at http://www.pandemicflu.gov.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other Federal agencies are providing funding, advice, and other support to
your State. The Federal Government will provide up-to-date information and guidance to the public if an influenza pandemic unfolds. For reliable, accurate, and timely information, visit the Federal Government’s official website at www.pandemicflu.gov. The benefits of preparation will be many. States and communities will be better prepared for any disaster. Preparation will bring peace of mind and the confidence that we are ready to fight an influenza pandemic.
At last some recommendations:
- Plan for the possible reduction or loss of income if you are unable to work or your place of employment is closed. &
- Plan home learning activities and exercises. Have materials, such as books, on hand. Also plan recreational activities that your children can do at home.
And for eating, be sure to:
Stock a supply of water and food. During a pandemic you may not be able to get to a store. Even if you can get to a store, it may be out of supplies. Public waterworks services may also be interrupted.
Stocking supplies can be useful in other types of emergencies, such as power outages and disasters. Store foods that are nonperishable (will keep for a long time) and don’t require refrigeration; are easy to prepare in case you are unable to cook; require little or no water, so you can conserve water for drinking.
When the 1918 pandemic killed an estimated half-million Americans, 40% of our citizenry lived and worked on farms (US Census Bureau), places by nature thinly populated and (back then) fairly self-sufficient. An equal percentage of Americans lived in cities, which, unsurprisingly, became the foci of influenza: San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York.
Today more than 75% of us live in urban areas (and less than 2% on family farms). Not only will this likely speed the spread of a virulent influenza, it will reduce our ability to cope with its effects long term. We are farther from the sources of our food and clothing, both in physical distance and in the cultural knowledge required to produce it. We are wholly dependent on complex mechanical systems to provide our clean water and power.
Considering the space available in most urban living units, and the months of disrupted services that may accompany a deadly pandemic, how much nonperishable food will we be able to stockpile as suggested by the Department of Homeland Security?
The vulnerability of urban life is no revelation; it’s well known and easily demonstrated in times of crisis. Ironically, rural life as we have it today is not much safer because it is not much more self-sufficient. Increasingly, urban people populate our rural landscapes; we simply move to the country and bring our dependence on others with us.
But that process is not complete. A community I know along Bayou Lafourche, about an hour south of Baton Rouge on Highway 1, is not yet a suburb of anyplace in particular. It’s just a sleepy little bend in the river about three houses deep. Most of the homes boast substantial kitchen gardens, equal in size to the house lot and some of them plowed by small vintage tractors. The locals work, farm and hunt near home, buy groceries at the corner and breakfast at the diner. My friend Kenneth lives there, and while the storm knocked out his power for weeks, it did little to disrupt his daily routine. In fact he drove up once a week to check on us.
As we sit and wait for the next big thing---bird flu, terror attack, or tropical storm---we might consider that the worst damage to the health and resiliency of the nation has already been done.
No comments:
Post a Comment