Rutgers Model Congress 2009
Massachusetts Democrat
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
Disaster Preparedness
Amy Ho
Churchill Junior High School
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As United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts states in his online
policy, “The American people have the right to know that they will be protected the next time a
disaster strikes” (Kennedy 1). However, the way that our federal, state, and local responders
countered the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina was deplorable. The shocking truth of the
condition of America’s disaster response system demoralizes American citizens and causes them
to feel unsure about their safety. In order to solve such a problem, Massachusetts proposes to use
a combination of all government levels of disaster response committees to ensure a better degree
of disaster preparedness.
Despite our best attempts to prepare for and respond to disasters so far, they have failed
brilliantly. When Katrina hit, the results quite clearly highlighted the fact that “our federal, state,
and local responders were not ready” (Crane 1). For example, although the residents of New
Orleans were warned to leave the disaster area, people without a means of transportation were
told to voluntarily evacuate (Redlener 40). Furthermore, as it appeared in a story in the New York
Times, “[t]he Department of Homeland Security, trying to focus antiterrorism spending better
nationwide, has identified a dozen possible strikes it views a most plausible or devastating….The
document, known simply as the National Planning Scenarios, reads more like a doomsday plan,
offering estimates of the probable deaths and economic damage caused by each type of attack.”
One such scenario in this document, written before Katrina, was a Category 5 hurricane with
sustained winds of 160 miles per house and storm surges of twenty feet hitting a major
metropolitan area. Hurricane Katrina fit the projected impact of 1,000 dead, 5,000 hospitalized,
and millions of dollars in economic losses almost perfectly (Ervin 182). Therefore, the damages
of Katrina were foreseeable. Why, then, did the government not take measures to lessen the
effects?
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In addition, the levees in New Orleans were not broken by overtopping as the
government claimed. Instead, they were worn down due to internal stability and architectural
problems, both of which were discovered later in an investigation by the American Society of
Civil Engineers (Grunwald 1). Such a problem of infrastructure was echoed in the collapse of a
Minneapolis Interstate highway bridge on August 1, 2007. The bridge, loaded with rush-hour
traffic, broke in three places and went tumbling down 60 feet into the Mississippi River. A 2001
evaluation of the bridge by the University of Minnesota Civil Engineering Department had
reported that there were dangerous “preliminary signs of fatigue on the steel truss section under
the roadway”, yet nothing was done to counteract the fatigue (Sander 1). Our common
infrastructure has been damaged in this way due to ideological influences that press for small
government and lower taxes. As a result, the ACSE reports that it would take more than one and
a half trillion dollars over a five-year period to bring our various forms of infrastructure back to
“any sort of reasonable condition” (McGirt 1). Currently, the top three infrastructure concerns in
Massachusetts are roads, bridges, and schools (“Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” 14).
Several Massachusetts counties have also had to deal with extreme flooding and severe
droughts over the past three years, including the worst flooding in Massachusetts in seventy
years in the spring of 2006 (“Kerry’s Disaster Reform Law” 1). On the topic of disaster
preparedness, Massachusetts Senators Kerry and Kennedy concur: the current system is far from
adequate and must be improved without delay. Kennedy states that “we need to acknowledge the
serious mistakes that were made [with the Katrina disaster], and take the appropriate steps to
rectify them” (Kennedy 1).
In agreement with this position, the House and Senate overrode President Bush’s veto of
the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (the Farm Bill) in May last year. Katrina
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revealed problems in the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program and showed the
need for “a bridge loan program to help businesses stay afloat until insurance or full loan
payments can be made”. As a response, the Farm Bill includes sections from Senator Kerry’s
disaster loan program reform legislation, which “increases access to timely assistance for
Massachusetts businesses and homeowners devastated by disaster, so that when the next tragedy
strikes, residents can get back in their homes and back on their feet quickly” (“Kerry’s Disaster
Reform Law” 1). The bill involves private sector by creating two programs for the private sector
to administer small-dollar, short-term disaster loans for businesses as well as a program to allow
private lenders to make disaster loans after a catastrophic disaster. Furthermore, the Farm Bill
expands disaster assistance to affected businesses nationwide by raising loan amounts and
increasing suspension periods. Even more importantly, the Farm Bill enhances disaster
preparedness, communications, and coordination by requiring the SBA to “conduct biennial
disaster simulation exercises, create a comprehensive disaster response plan for various disaster
scenarios, and improve its communication with the public when disaster assistance is made
available” (2). While this progress is taking place, more must be done if the nation is to be
properly prepared for the next disaster.
Massachusetts, in an attempt to help with the dilemma of disaster preparedness, would
like to support the existing initiative originally proposed by Senator Kerry. Although this
package is already included within the Farm Bill, it would be preferable to include some other
points as well, such as the FEMA regional emergency evacuation and preparation centers to
assist the victims of natural disasters. As Katrina showed all-too-clearly, there remain “serious
shortcomings in planning and infrastructure for disaster preparedness and relief”. These
suggested FEMA facilities would provide temporary or long-term shelter for displaced persons,
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replacing the “ad hoc solutions” and improvisation used in dealing with Katrina (“John Kerry
Offers” 2).
A research program should also be set up to analyze further catastrophic events. This
program would resemble the National Planning Scenarios. It would investigate the nature and
effects of the event and the range of possible responses to the event as well as risk analysis,
decision analysis, and conclusions or recommendations (Chapman 137). In order to ensure public
knowledge of the safety procedures, the results of these projections should be made public.
Finances are difficult due to the current recession, but the expenses of recovery would be
far greater than the cost of mitigation. I propose that some portions of local taxes be added to a
local disaster preparedness fund. These local funds would combine to form a national fund, and
then act as a kind of insurance for the country. Should a disaster occur, these funds could be
transferred quickly to the recovery process rather than wasting time by arguing over where to get
the money from.
On a broader scale, international models such as the disaster preparedness systems of
Israel, China, and Mexico should be taken into account when evaluating our own system. In
Israel, a comprehensive, scenario-specific section on disaster preparedness is printed and updated
regularly in the yellow pages of the phone book. The government has also developed websites
and videos to increase awareness, engagement, and information-sharing (Redlener 206). Medical
personnel train and drill regularly to improve response to major emergencies. Moreover, when an
emergency is declared, operations “move effortlessly into full emergency mode”, unlike the
authority disagreements of the U.S. disaster responders (207).
In China, a major earthquake that struck in 1976 basically demolished the city of
Tangshan while Qinglong, a community not far from Tangshan, suffered virtually no fatalities at
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all. Qinglong had been warned about the potential for the earthquake two years earlier and began
immediately to prepare by developing educational programs about preparing for earthquakes and
introducing modern monitoring for early warnings, building reinforcement, and more. As soon as
the early signs of disruption began, the community realized at once and took action to secure its
safety from the disaster. The lesson: mitigation, education, and planning work (212).
The Mexican model of civil protection would work with some degree of success in any
number of U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, sites of
potential multiple hazards. In Mexico, the National Disaster Prevention Center monitors
potential natural disasters that might affect the cities, and Mexico City school students drill for
both fires and earthquakes. While most U.S. schools focus almost exclusively on fire drills, the
drill system in Mexico City creates a “culture of preparedness that promotes an “all-hazard”
perspective” (214). However, all of these solutions are merely the tip of the iceberg if we are to
truly be prepared for any future disasters that may occur.
As Senator Kennedy perceives, “we…cannot delay the process of determining…how to
fix [the disaster preparedness program]” (Kennedy 1). With the shock from 9/11 still fresh in
America’s mind, the country is currently caught up in a swirl of counter terrorism affairs. The
government itself is placing terrorism as the higher risk and concentrating mostly on that with
natural disasters in second place. However, natural disasters could possibly cause more damage
than a terrorist attack, and, “given our finite resources and our finite imagination, we have to…
focus[e] our prevention and preparedness efforts on…those…threats that…would have the
gravest consequences in terms of death, injury, and economic damage” (Ervin 182). Disaster
preparedness is a matter of domestic security, and needs to be treated as such. The current faulty
system must, without further postponement, be addressed and fixed.
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