Inquirer Editorial

Editorial : Exposed and humbled

IT WAS a surprising sight on television -- the spectacle of the world's mightiest power laid low and humbled by the elemental forces of nature. The winds and rain of Hurricane Katrina killed thousands of people, devastated about $100 billion in public and private property and flooded a vast area of the American South.

What has been called America's deadliest natural disaster in a century also brought out the lack of preparedness of a superpower that could invade and overrun another country thousands of miles away in a matter of days. Food, water and medicines were unavailable for days for tens of thousands of evacuees in crowded, sweltering evacuation centers. Law and order broke down, and looters, killers and rapists, particularly in New Orleans, roamed and operated at will until the National Guard belatedly stepped in and restored some semblance of order. The entire debacle saw the United States failing its first major test after putting up new security arrangements since 9/11.

What are the lessons of Katrina? The first is environmental: One cannot fool around with the environment and not expect it to hit back with destructive fury. It's the law of ecological karma. American columnist Ross Gelbspan said, "The hurricane that struck Louisiana and Mississippi was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service [but] its real name was global warming."

The unabated use of polluting fossil fuels has caused global warming and many scientists fear that the world may have entered a period of irreversible climate change. We can feel it here in the Philippines where typhoons have become stronger and more destructive, where the level of floodwaters is constantly rising and where sometimes the weather is reversed, with rains falling in usually dry months and drought occurring in usually wet months.

The second lesson is the need for preparedness. It cannot be said that the US was not warned about the coming of Katrina. Days before it finally struck land, TV stations were running hourly bulletins about Katrina. In the meantime, very little was done to shore up installations or board up buildings. Ultimately, in some areas in the direct path of the hurricane, boarding up would have done little to mitigate the damage. The hurricane was so fierce and powerful that it mowed down everything in its path. But the death of thousands could have been prevented had they been evacuated before the hurricane. Some people thought evacuation was not necessary. In the face of an impending natural disaster, it is always better to err on the side of caution.

The US government should have been prepared to cope with the logistical nightmare of moving tens of thousands of people, feeding them, providing them with clean water, clothing them, giving them temporary shelter and ministering to their medical and health needs. New Orleans pointed up the lack of preparedness of the government.

The third lesson of Katrina is the need to study scenarios of the aftermath of a disaster, prepare for the relocation of people and the reconstruction of their homes and infrastructure. In this regard, American and Philippine officials (for the Philippines is a disaster-prone country) would do well to study the rehabilitation and reconstruction work being done by Indonesia in Aceh and Nias, two of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami last December.

The rehabilitation and reconstruction program was discussed last week in a session of the Asian-European Editors' Forum held in Jakarta under the auspices of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The program is based on "the principles of transparency, accountability, participation and responsibility by giving preference to wider community interest and [is] free from corruption, collusion and nepotism." That part about corruption and collusion should be noted by Philippine government officials, for it will be recalled that billions of pesos were lost to corruption in the relief and reconstruction work for the victims of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.

The Indonesian program keeps government participation to a minimum; nongovernmental organizations bear the brunt of the work. About $6 billion to $8 billion is being allocated for the rehabilitation and reconstruction program, and of this about half will come from the government and half from international donors and NGOs.

Right now, nothing can be done to reduce the force and destructiveness of hurricanes and typhoons, but people and government can always do something to prepare for their coming, mitigate the damage they inflict and avoid the deaths that they cause.