[lbo-talk] sociology of disaster

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Chronicle of Higher Education - September 29, 2005
>
>Disaster Sociologists Study What Went Wrong in the Response to the 
>Hurricanes, but Will Policy Makers Listen?
>
>By DAVID GLENN
>
>... A prime example of spontaneous cooperation was the extraordinarily 
>successful evacuation of Lower Manhattan during the September 11 attacks. 
>James M. Kendra, an assistant professor of emergency administration and 
>planning at the University of North Texas, estimates that nearly half a 
>million people fled Manhattan on boats -- and he emphasizes that the 
>waterborne evacuation was a self-organized volunteer process that could 
>probably never have been planned on a government official's clipboard.
>
>"Various kinds of private companies, dinner-cruise boats, people with their 
>own personal watercraft, the Coast Guard, the harbor pilots -- in very 
>short order, they managed to organize this evacuation," Mr. Kendra said.
>
>The evacuation in New Orleans, of course, was not so smooth. ...

What an absurd comparison -- egregiously apples-and-oranges.  The 9/11 
attack was confined to a small part of NYC, the World Trade Center area.  
Hurricane Katrina affected the entirety of New Orleans.

Carl