911 changed everything? Where were the Emergency Communication Services

[elehhhhna]

for this g-damn disaster?

DID THEY LEARN NOTHING?

[wakeme2008]

1. Shipped to iraq

:grr:

[elehhhhna]

2. my rage is boiling

despite all my rage i am still just a rat in a cage.

billy corgan

[SheilaT]

3. When all the power goes out,

when the cell phone towers collapse, I'm not sure what else can be done.

Perhaps more satellite phones, but I'm not certain what else could have been done.

If you read disaster novels, scenarios of total destruction are a lot like what's happening in New Orleans. Keep in mind that virtually all of our services and infrastructure in every aspect of this country are based on things going along as normal virtually all the time. Hospitals are quickly overwhelmed if a plane crash produces as many as fifty or sixty badly injured survivors. When bad weather forces mass flight cancellations, there are not enough employees at the airport to deal with the passengers in a timely manner. And that situation isn't helped by the fact that airlines have gone to the kiosk check-in rather than using as many live employees as they ought to have even for normal operations.

The tendency to do nothing is powerful. New Orleans has dodged the bullet so many times over the years, that even though some people understood that some day this could happen, hardly anyone could really imagine it.

[elehhhhna]

4. Fire & police have been complaining about lack of backup comm. systems

and it was a big problem in NYC on 9/11.

Do we have no backup system that can be brought IN to manage a disaster? Surely we have. Where is it?