No? Didn’t think so.

The (mostly) extremely poor citizens of Haiti have phenomenally fewer economic options. The idea of disaster preparedness in such a place is incongruous when you’re talking about a population that suffers from malnutrition and lack of many first-world basics. Nobody’s chastising them for not stocking up on MREs and 9-volt batteries.

I’d be fascinated to see a map of those fabled regions that don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes or tsunamis or grass fires or blizzards or floods or mudslides or plagues of locusts. Even if there are such places, I’m pretty sure that they don’t have any available water.

Where exactly do you expect people to live? Narnia?

etc. etc. etc.

Well, “bcsizemo”, I’d like to point out that a whole lot of CANADIANS turned out to give N’awlins residents a hand — indeed, a Vancouver firefighting/rescue team and some RCMP personnel from Ontario got there long BEFORE anybody from FEMA ever did — that fact made CNN national news!

So, as far as “what lessons should Americans take away from the 2010 Haiti disaster?”, I’d have to say: DON’T let George W. Bush be in charge of your disaster response team, as Obama appointed him in Haiti, and as he ultimately was during Hurricane Katrina. The man obviously couldn’t get a freaking cat out of a tree, let alone handle something of this magnitude.

Oh, and as far as “…or any other major disaster?” goes, you might not be aware, but we Canadians send firefighting teams to help out almost *every year* when you have your big annual conflagrations in California. Nice to see that our help is appreciated.

A cheap newsprint booklet, available in many languages, printed up by FEMA and local agencies and sent to EVERYBODY.

It would be 1/3 “how to prepare,” 1/3 “what to do in case of disaster” (first aid, how to shut down utilities, how to purify water), and 1/3 “where to find shelters, hospitals, and clinics in your area.”

AND an invitation to the local armory or whatever for training classes.

This could be a Stimulus thing. Employ writers, artists, local researchers (for part 3), down-on-their-luck printers, and so on.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/11/passport-to-survival.html

BTW, Mormon self-sufficiency and food storage these days is always talked about in terms of natural disasters and unemployment, not the last days.

gotta think with your wallet in this economy!

That link is to a nutjob conspiracy website.

http://solarray.blogspot.com/2008/05/solar-is-civil-defense-illustrated.html

* * *

Um. Seriously. Duh?

Stewart Brand wrote a great article about preparedness and rescue training in 1990, in the Whole Earth Review:

http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=2068

“And nobody cares more about helping you and your family in time of disaster than, well, you.”

I wish that cutesy faux-stumble would go *away*.

“The Chinese rescue team has searched some 30 buildings and retrieved 15 bodies of quake victims after they arrived at Port-Au-Prince two days after the quake.”
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-01/22/c_13146025.htm
Official press agency of the People’s Republic of China

CNN.com repeats similar claims from Xinhua, for what that’s worth:
Jan 15. “6:42 a.m. — A 60-member rescue team with three sniffer dogs arrived from China on Thursday, the official news agency Xinhua reported. Taiwan also sent a team of 23 rescuers and two dogs late Wednesday, according to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/15/haiti.updates.thursday/index.html?iref=allsearch

From Americas Program, Center for International Policy:
“In countries all over the world, search and rescue teams were ready to leave for Haiti within 12 hours of the disaster. Only a few were able to arrive without fatal delays, mainly teams — like those from Venezuela, Iceland, and China — that managed to land while Haitian staff still retained control of their airport.”
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6665

I just heard Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now talking about the huge stockpiles of fresh water stored relatively close to Haiti in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 9000 Marines are stationed. And yet they said the first ship to arrive with relief supplies was from Japan.

In Reynolds’ world, we are all Lazarus Long and Friday Jones, organizing our own aid and recovery. This would compensate for a government more to Reynolds’ liking, one in which aid never comes, except maybe in the form of subidies to mercenaries protecting uptown houses from downtown looters.

Maybe the better lesson to draw from this is that overcoming a disaster and organizing recovery requires a government too big to be “drowned in a bathtub.” The government of Haiti is what the (g)libertarian ideal can lead to, and many of Reynolds’ ideological soulmates helped it on its way there.