I am completely amazed at the lack of recognition of the magnitude of the systemic impact this hurricane is having and will have. Many of my friends and colleagues here in the Pacific Northwest simply haven’t registered this event as relevant to their lives (yet).
Well, there is no time like the present to start to pay attention. Here are a few of the impacts this storm is having and will have:
- Fuel prices: 80% of our national oil pumping and refining capacity has been wiped out. We don’t yet know for how long. Gasoline prices may go as high as $5/gallon (they’re already above $3/gallon in my neighborhood, 2700 miles away). President Bush’s decision to release crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will not have a near-term impact since that oil needs to be refined and our existing refineries are already working at near 100% capacity. This will likely result in a renewed call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling.
- New Orleans has a poverty rate of 30-40%. That’s a huge part of the population that is dependent on the welfare system… and this storm hit at the end of the month, a time when many poor people don’t have a dime in their pockets. Many people were not able to leave the city because of their financial reality.
- People who can afford to leave the area and were not blocked by flood waters or debris have done so. Many of these are likely to choose not to return to an area that could experience the same kind of storm next week, next month or next year. Decisions of this sort will further erode the economic base of the area and will likely result in additional violence aggravated by an increasingly impoverished population. What’s going to happen to all these people? Where will they work without tourists or jobs or houses? We may need to look very closely at how we offer and manage social services in this country.
- Rate of rescue: One news story I heard said the Coast Guard rescued 1100 people over the course of a day. There are potentially hundreds of thousands stranded by this storm. If you were waiting to be rescued, didn’t know when or if it would happen and had the opportunity to step into a vacant store for critical supplies, would you? I’d sure be tempted.
- There have been several reports of relief planes and trucks encountering armed hijackers when attempting to deliver supplies. Surely FEMA, which practiced a worse-than-Katrina scenario just last year, was aware of this possibility. Could it be that the National Guard is indeed over-extended in Iraq and Afganistan and is not capable of responding to domestic needs? Washington State is sending Guard troops to New Orleans to help. What happens if we have major forest fires in this part of the country? (Firefighting is a task the Guard takes on every year. In WA, when we sent our Guard troops to the Persian Gulf, we were told that Southern National Gardsmen and women would help to cover for us in the event of major forest fires.)
This is only the beginning. It will take years to understand the ripple effects of this storm and the other decisions we have made and will make as a nation.
