Let's Brainstorm The Problems...And Come Up With Some Solutions

By DHinMI

I've been incredibly impressed by so many of the comments on The Next Hurrah over the last few days.  Not to be too arrogant, but a collection of our readers and contributors, stuck in a crisis center for a couple days, could probably be much further along at recognizing the scope and depth of this catastrophe than the Bush administration has been to date.  It's clear that all the attention on "homeland security" was misguided, botched or just plain not matched up with any actual policy achievements. 

Reading the posts and comments here, and emails between friends, it's obvious to me--and most folks reading this--that there are almost innumerable consequences to this catastrophe that haven't even dented the conciousness of the public, or probably most federal officials.  We're starting to hear the media talk about one consequence I wrote about a few days ago: the biggest domestic refugee crisis this country has faced since the Civil War.  But get past the immediate concerns about housing people currently spending their fifth day without a roof over their heads, and start trying to think about some of the implications of them not having a roof over their heads:

Where does their mail go?

What happens to their creditors when they can't find them, or when they do and the debtors can't pay their bills?  Will there be bank collapses in the region?  Will the mortage lenders prominent in the area go under?

How do people replace all their identifying paperwork all at once, with tens or hundreds of thousands of others doing the same thing?  For instance, where will they go to get replacement birth certificates?

What about money owed by an employer, say for a partial workweek; how does the employee find the employeer and vice-versa?

Will people who've lost everything be able to get emergency loans?  What will they list as their residence?

Will the utilities in the area go bankrupt?

What happens to kids nearing graduation?  Where their academic records saved electronically somewhere?  How will they apply to college?

Are special needs children being attended to?  Will the parents of autistic or severely and multiply disabled children be able to find care for their children if they're moved to Texas or Arkansas or Tennessee?

I could sit here for hours asking these questions.  But I'm asking you.  Let's put our heads together, and brainstorm the problems that need to be addressed.  If we can start getting a fuller picture of all the problems ahead--for families, for the local infrastructure, nationally with the economy, for what it says to potential terrorists about our vulnerabilities, for long-term environmental damage, for energy production, for shipping, for whatever you can think of--we will be better able to know what should be our policy priorities over the next months and beyond.

So, what have you thought about that isn't being talked about in the media, and may not be getting addressed by the crisis managers? 

Comments

[DHinMI]

We've written about not having enough troops and not having enough national guard.

What about mental health professionals? Are there going to be enough mental health professionals to treat all the cases of PTSD and depression once people are past crisis mode and realize they've lost everything? I know there are teams that do that kind of triage work immediately after tornados, or horrible community violence (like the shootings in Minnesota last year). But how do you deal with that when the people in need of the care are dispersed over a huge chunk of the country, and there are probably over a million of them?

[Meteor Blades]

Twenty-five years ago, FEMA posited a Crisis Relocation Plan for use during what was called "imminent" nuclear war. The idea was that if it appeared by virtue of heightend Cold War tensions, alerts, troop movements and the like, that the Soviets were getting ready to launch an attack, Americans in high target areas - including all the major cities - would evacuate to low target areas. It was a stupid plan, and after I and some colleagues first exposed it in Boulder, Colorado, it was ultimately demolished by publicity when "60 Minutes" came to town and thanks to Bob Scheer's book With Enough Shovels.

They had plans for everything - except nuclear winter ensuring from a major "exchange" of warheads (since government officials denied nuclear winter could occur).

They urged people to leave forwarding addresses with the post office (even though most of those would be obliterated). And they had answers to most of those other questions you've asked DHinMI. Impossible answers. Ridiculous answers. Like where food would come from. And medical care.

As the emergency services guy in Houston told me at the time, just the logistics for one city boggles the mind, much less 100 or more.

Now, as we have seen to everyone's rue, that Houstonian was right. FEMA can't even handle the emergency generated by the devastation of a single city.

So, one issue I'd like to see us brainstorm is exactly how to turn the Department of Homeland Security into an agency worthy of its goddamned name.

[Kagro X]

Part of the next round of emergency supplemental funding should be a federally mandated amnesty from credit card late payment fees. Otherwise, this disaster simply becomes a huge windfall for MBNA.

[Greg]

One thing that terrifies me to even think about is another disaster on top of this one. Last year, there were four major hurricanes in a short amount of time. Is there another one brewing? And what if there's a terror cell in Houston that tries to bomb the Astrodome. Or for that matter, what if there's a terror cell anywhere in the country that decides to take advantage?

What happens to all that dirty water in "Lake George"? They're going to pump it out, but it's filthy. They can't just dump it into the ocean. Likewise, what happens to the debris?

I'm also worried about the prospect of crime flaring up in cities where refugees are relocated. You're filling these cities with poor, homeless, unemployed people, many of whom have substance abuse problems. And then there's the racial component. Populations that have to absorb refugees tend to start resenting them, and given the fact that the refugees will be overwhelmingly black, that resentment could quickly turn into a general resentment for poor blacks (which is never far from the surface anyway, particularly in the South). On top of that, what of the refugees' resentment? I've seen a lot of video on TV of people at the Convention Center who've been abandoned for days to sit in raw sewage, starve and die. These aren't people who had a lot of faith in government to begin with, and now that they've been abandoned, I imagine quite a few of them might snap. Thrown in Rush "Father Coughlin" Limbaugh to stir the pot, and I wouldn't be surprised if race riots erupt in places like Baton Rouge and Houston.

[DHinMI]

What's our capacity to provide building supplies on the scale that will be needed? Anyone have any idea?

[Mimikatz]

It is going to be like the aftermath of WWII with the displaced persons. The Red Cross did a huge job then. The net can be a great resource, but we are talking for the most part about people without access to computers, so that is one thing volunteers could do, go the the shelters with laptops and build a database of who is where.

I said in a post below that we really do have an opportunity to make things right for these folks, if we get it together. Relocate and resettle each one of these people, give them a fresh start. This is a big, generous, rich country. Make it an experiment in decent, affordable housing. We will also need new schools, or extra resources for existing schools. As Gov Blaj of IL said last night, many people from the South have relatives in the north from the Great Migration, and people could be resettled where they have family or friends, and then integrated into existing communities. I know that is true here in the Bay Area, where many people came from Mississippi and Louisiana. We did it for the Hill Tribes and Laotians and we can do it for our own people.

As with the WWII aftermath, so much is gone that people will just need to start over in an economic sense.

And mental health workers. Tons of them.

[DHinMI]

Mimikatz, the database idea is great.

[DHinMI]

Greg, you're 100% correct about the potential for resentment and real problems in how we resettle these folks, and whether it's temporary or permanent.

And here's a question: how do we feel about people who refuse to give their real names? You just KNOW that some of the people who've been scooped up and are part of this refugee crisis had warrants out for their arrest. Do you treat them first as victims of the disaster, or threats to the other victims?

[emptypockets]

a collection of our readers and contributors, stuck in a crisis center for a couple days... Ever been on a committee with a dozen or two Type A personalities? I think TNH is our crisis center.

I may be a minority of one in thinking this matters at all, but Tulane has very active research community, particularly at the medical school. The http://www.tulane.edu/>Tulane home page is now a stark series of emergency updates (thankfully it seems most students and personnel are safe, and facilities were not destroyed). The medical school web site won't load for me at all -- they are down.

I've never been there but Google Maps is showing me the main campus is on Canal St. about ten blocks from a major waterfront (the river? sorry, still don't know the geography). Tulane Medical School and LSU Medical School are nearby, a couple blocks from the Superdome.

They've likely lost everything. Just a power outage that lasts that long will destroy all frozen samples -- mouse lines are the most vulnerable. People will have lost careers' worth of work, and it will take years to remake those reagents.

It sounds absurd when there are still corpses in the street, but you asked. Two to six months from now, likely undergraduate classes will be underway at LSU campus in Baton Rouge or other nearby campuses; and general populace will be broke and unemployed but will be able, at least in principle, with loans to get back on their feet and find jobs and rebuild businesses. But the research is lost... it will need to be restarted from scratch. Hopefully most of their valuable cell lines & mouse lines were important enough that other labs requested them & there are "backup" copies around the country. Houston had a similar problem in flooding a couple years ago, people lost their entire PhD work (before graduating) when the mouse facilities flooded & all their lines drowned. I don't know how much they were able to reconstruct in the end. There will be a lot of research lost, and a lot of the scientists will find their careers permanently set back 5 years from where they were.

[emptypockets]

oh and mimikatz: absofuckinglutely. it has just been appalling to me that after september 11 there STILL is no organized way for people to find out where their families are, or if they're alive. it is totally unacceptable that an emergency national registry system (also for tracking medical records) has not been set up.

[DHinMI]

Is it possible that the medical or other research facilities have agents that are dangerous if released? And does anyone know if these facilities are being guarded?

[Kagro X]

Moving into execution mode for Mimikatz's outstanding suggestion: Who can mobilize this force? Should the "liberal blogosphere" (or maybe just leading light Daily Kos) be contacting Slashdot? Through fellow Scoop pioneers Kuro5hin?

[DHinMI]

It's out of my comfort zone.

I'll email Markos and see if he has a suggestion.

[emptypockets]

there will be a lot of radioactivity. it won't be guarded. there will be cocaine and other drugs of abuse under lock -- the average looter would not think of getting it or know where it was (it would just be kept in an ordinary locker or perhaps safe in a room in the labs that are using it -- no central storage). Again, I don't know what the layout of the medical center there is, but it seems unlikely from where it is relative to the superdome & based on the way most labs are built, that there is anything too dangerous at the level the water reached. Release of an entire medical center's worth of radioactivity into the water would be, um, a problem. But it is most likely fine. Same goes for other chemicals -- most likely they are high and dry. The loss of power is the most catastrophic, but shouldn't be hazardous.

[DHinMI]

The Database idea: maybe something done in cooperation with the Times-Picayune? Maybe off their server? They've kept their community forums running for this type of stuff.

[emptypockets]

what about life insurance. many families lost someone. many of them may never reclaim a body, I'm guessing. They are going to need that life insurance money ASAP. Anyone know what the rules are for collecting without a body? How to properly distibrute that money as soon as possible without opening the door to false claims? (this was also a problem after 9/11, I don't recall any great solution being found.)

[rba]

DHinMI: the building materials are likely already being staged, orders out for more. There will be shortages of the most common items: drywall, studs, concrete, roofing, and plywood/osb. Prices will rise on all those items, impacting the housing industry generally.

Waste-to-energy: I have suggested to the DOE that locals be hired for the cleanup to sort, chip, and burn all non-toxic combustibles in the plethora of wood-processing and cogen plants scattered along the entire Gulf Coast. Part of that involves immediate hires to assist the 9000 utility crews streaming in from literally everywhere in the country. (Entergy is the utility.)

Sorting material is labor intensive, but far less damaging than a tractor. No broken pipes, destroyed vegetation, or shredded lots. You'd be surprised how easy it is to re-set underground plumbing when it's not buried by a tractor.

Immediate needs: I have no idea why someone hasn't shipped in hand-crank radios - no batteries required, been on the market for seven years. Same with camper-type water purifiers, though a bottle of bleach and container will do it.

Just a couple suggestions.....

[verplanck colvin]

rba, the sodden building materials would smolder until you remove a lot of the water. I can't see that as being very energy efficient.

Unfortunately, I am almost certain that the water will, in fact, be pumped back into the Mississippi. The remaining danger is the sludge that remains. After 9/11, firefighters didn't wear asbestos masks, resulting in serious problems. I sincerely hope that qualified HAZMAT technicians are exclusively used in the dredging of New Orleans, and that all protective measures (tyvek suits, respirators if necessary, multistage decontamination areas after leaving the work area, etc.) will be used.

[rba]

Cogen plants use multiple-hearth boiler systems, which can be fed with high moisture content wood (trees, vegetation, and structural lumber). They've been used in the timber industry for decades, and are indeed, energy efficient.

New Orleans is only one patch in a 90 mile stretch of destruction. For the other 87 miles the concept is sound.

[DemFromCT]

btw, Flu Wiki has been exploring some of these issues. Scan the pages for relevant ideas.

Start with risk communication. See

How to Lead During Bioattacks and Epidemics with the Public’s Trust and Help “A manual for mayors, governors and top health officials” from the Center for Biosecurity at University of Pittsburgh’s Medical Center. (March 2004)

[Drew]

In re: the survivor database -

CNN has one already.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/list/

You can add to it by sending email here:

hurricanevictims@cnn.com

[DHinMI]

The existing databases rely on people with access to computers to go there and enter the date on their own. What needs to happen is what mimikatz described, people going with laptops to wherever there are survivors and enter their data in a single repository of data.

[Drew]

Well, then you have the database. Now, all you need is a laptop with an email program on it; if you have a wireless connection, you can save the info there. If you don't, you can wait until you get access to one and send the saved emails then.

[Greg]

What about all the school districts in Texas and Louisiana that will have to absorb thousands of new students right as the school year is beginning? Where are they going to find the space? And the books?

[Street Kid]

if i have read this correctly,someone else has similar idea. coordinate efforts???? just a thought--am still learning computers

http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,68720,00.html