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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! September 13, 2005 The Spin Cycle (II)By Greyhawk(Part one is here) Let's have a hurricane exercise. We'll do a bit of role playing. Here's the situation: A cat 2 hurricane is nearing the Gulf - it's possible that it might intensify and it's also possible that it might hit a city on the Gulf Coast Between Florida and Texas, or maybe Mexico (best chance seems to be west Florida through central Louisiana). You must decide now whether to evacuate several hundred miles of coast or not - preparations must begin and the evac itself must commence in no later than 24 hours or there will be little chance of success. The cost of total evacuation is immeasurable - but easily billions of dollars. You are mayor of a city that might be hit - what do you do? You are governor of the State that city is in - what do you do? There are also several other cities in your state that might be hit too. Among other considerations, should you have your neighboring governors - those whose coasts might not be threatened - activate their National Guard, just in case? This will also cost big bucks. You are president of the United States. What would you do? Now I'll even make this easy - we advance 24 hours, and the storm has in fact intensified to strong cat 4. The rest of the forecast is unchanged - it might hit your city - but landfall looks increasingly likely to be between Florida and Louisiana. But evac must begin now - or never. You make the call for the mayor, the governor, and the president. Let's add a wrinkle: This is next year's storm - and last year your city was struck by a cat 3 resulting in widespread damage from winds and floods. You can state your decision in the comments section - if you have what it takes to make the call. Update 20:30Z 13 Aug Mayor, Governor, President - here's the latest on that hurricane. It's now 24 hours out, too late to change plans, and the press is in the briefing room asking questions about your decision. TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMMWe'll update again tomorrow. Update: Part III is here. Posted by Greyhawk / September 13, 2005 8:35 PM | Permalink 15 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Scenario 1:
Nothing, Nothing, Nothing.
Scenario 2:
As Mayor - Evacuate
As Governor - Evacuate
As President - Nothing, leave it up to local authorities.
If the only forcasting I'm getting is at the level of "possible" and "might" and "maybe" (yet there is evidently some urgency in the voices of sources I'm getting this from) I would hope that in any of the three positions I would have the presense of mind to scramble my offices to get the better information that is surely available. If my office is a ruin of failed beaurocracy already, I hope I would personally think to reach out to nearby base commanders, academics, and even prominent Internet geeks to fill the information gap -- this would be a good time to spend social and political capital in a quick hurry.
If this is next year, rather than this year, I hope I would have had the forsight in the meanwhile to better prepare to fill this information gap -- is that an unfair answer?
Let's suppose we're at "24 hours later" and I'm looking at the forecasts I did, in fact, see on the net by (as I recall) friday evening. Well, this does begin to look rather serious and yet, indeed, legally problematic. The scariest models (which threaten the city in question rather directly) all agree -- but are all labeled "experimental". Meanwhile, I've got staff hollering at me about the uncertainties and certainly nots of my legal authority. I'll be lucky to get a clear legal menu with which to operate here until 24-36 hours from now. I may be pained to realize that this is the clear result of my own misplaced priorities in months and years prior but I'm here now so....
(This with hindsight of seeing what happened in NOLA. I wouldn't have thought of the following going into it. Absent the hindsight, I think I would have evacuated earlier as mayor or governer and tried to give heads up to local guard and bases about my plans --- but I would likely have been met with so much insubordination and resistence that my effort would likely have failed and the local/state government would have devolved more or less as it did but for different reasons. Of course, I'd never have been elected in the first place. But back to the hindsight....)
My city and state are caught with their pants down. My legal options are unclear. The forcast is grim the but the forcasters are covering their bets. It's time to activate the social connections that got me into office. It's time to call precinct loyalists and have them call church leaders and others and give the heads up that evacuation is almost certainly going to happen within hours. It's time to have a conference call with these folks and explain that we have shelters of last resort but that they are ill-supplied for the 3-5 days expected from a federal response. With any luck, I can get base commanders or some of their staff to participate in these calls. It's time for people in precincts to start knocking on doors and getting some buzz going. It's time to promise handsome overtime pay to bus drivers just for coming to the yard, gassing up, and being ready to roll. It's time to promise some new squad cars to the sherrifs, and overtime pay, for getting ready to manage the highway. Lower level staff can start calling around to local retailers and seeing what supplies we can lay in at last resort shelters in a big hurry -- not necessarilly to getting those rolling but to finding out where they are and how hard it will be to lay hands on them (day late and a buck short anyway, but better than nothing). It's also time make short-notice continuity-of-operations plans with local law enforcement, the guard, and staff --- the radio analog of a phone tree can be quickly assembled, if nothing else. When I'm served by a midnight injunction from a judge invoked by some local rich asshole -- it's time to stall him or enlighten him by getting him the phone with, say, the highest place coast guard guy I can find. Also time to make sure I have some loyal cops around the office along with a bullhorn or two.
After a few hours of that, if the forcasts are continuing from where they were -- it's time to go on tv (prior to getting legal clearance) and call for a voluntary evacuation: emphasizing the seriousness by pointing out all of the prior steps taken.
Hopefully I'll have impressed and made friends well enough with local guard and base commanders -- whose alarms are independently going off -- that a little creative lattitude may be taken to accelerate the mobilization process.
At these timescales, turning to neighboring states at this early stage for other than a brief heads up is premature -- we should be able to get through an initial period on our own, I hope.
If the above just isn't working out at the time the presidential staff suggests federalizing the guard: just say "yes".
From my comfortable *armchair*,
-t
The cost of the National Guard is not a State cost. The Naional Guard is funded through the Federal Government.
If I was Governor I would activate the National Guard. This is a no brainer.
I'd hire Sandy Bergler to stuff all existing copies of the "Evacuation Plan" down his pants so I'll have plausible deniability when the Media shows up. Then blame it all on Bush.
"The cost of the National Guard is not a State cost"
Actually, the "training costs" of the national guard is a federal cost(The one weekend a month, 2 weeks in the summer). If they are federalized, the federal government pays them, otherwise the state government pays.
If I'm the mayor, I call for early mandatory evac, saying the Gov. told me to do it.
If I'm the Gov. I call for early mandatory evac. and say the Pres. told me to do it.
Then I plan with my cronies how we are going to shift all the blame for not having a working disaster plan blamed on the Prez.
I know that I will have all the help I need from the MSM and the liberal left.
I'm Covered !!
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
While I know it's impolite to answer a question with a question, it's too imponerable to say.
For instance, am I a Democrat Mayor? If so I do nothing extraordnary and lay blame on the POTUS if all goes wrong, and pat myself on the back for doing so.
If I am a Democrat governor I do as my mayorial friend.
If I'm a republican I bend over and kiss my own arse goodbye because there's nothing I could do right no matter what the circumstance.
Note: Reading above comments should come with the obligatory " don't eat or drink anything while reading this "
Not me , I'd just panic and sit and figure out how to make the situation worse after it hits.
I'd make sure I didn't prepare anything making my city dependent on others. Then keep them out when they came to help.
After all I was just trying to comply with the POTUS's order to evacuate everyone. It's still Potus's fault.
See it's easy.
Cancel vacation and days off for all city employees. All drivers and mechanics report to transportation hubs. All national guard vehicles/equipment in city relocate to outside potential strike zone. Activate all local shelters. Distribute stocks of food and water. Force evac on all non critical patients in all hospitals. Consolidate remaining patients at pre-determined centralized hospital. Force evac all nursing homes. Contact all home care agencies for lists of all homebound patients in need of evac. Call in all civic and local religious leaders for assistance in evac of all members plus their non driving neighbors. Alert inland cities of influx of evacuees. Coordinate prestock of food/water at all evac centers in inland cities. Stage all city tow trucks and repair trucks on routes out of city. Activate reserve police officers/volunteer firemen. Await next forecast.
"I dont know. That is question for somebody else."
Mayor Nagin
Hurricanes don't work like that. The US is too far removed from the equator for a tropical depression to form, turn into a hurricane, and make landfall within a 24 hour period.
There simply is no such thing as a US hurricane with 24 hour notice. In the case of Katrina, the hurricane center was saying that conditions for strengthening were perfect, that there was almost no variation between forecast models, and that NOLA was in the middle of the cone. All of this by 08/26. Most of the variables that cause uncertainties such as jetstreams and developing highs were not present. NOLA had far more than the average amount of warning with far greater than average certainty that she would be hit by a very powerful hurricane. On the one hand, I sympathise with the people of NOLA. On the other hand, part of me thinks that you'd have to be one of the stupidest people on the planet to have a) stayed in the city b)stayed but not gone to a shelter c)work for the city and not make sure shelters were stocked with adequate supplies and personel d)expected helicopters to drop food or pluck you from a roof before fixing broken levees
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/archive/2005/storms/katrina/katrina.html
My biggest problem with this whole thing about Katrina is that I think the federal government did the right thing. As I watched the situation unfold, their priority was fixing the levee. I think it was the right priority even if it didn't look good on TV. IMO, it was not the federal government's responsibility to provide evacuation, shelter management, or short term supplies. Their first job is to secure the area with national guards and neutralize ongoing physical threats to life such as collapsing buildings, bridges, or levees. It is the city and county's job to provide first response and immediate assistance.
but ....
In your scenario it's August 13. Which means that the gulf is still warm. Mary will be a cat3/4/5 by the time she hits. The first thing I would do is call the meteorologist and find out better information. Is there wind sheer that might knock the top off Mary and keep her down to three? How wide is the variation between forecast models? Are we in the middle or edge of the probability cone?
Depending on these answers I would call all my directors and volunteer coordinators and have them make sure, at a minimum, that the shelters, emergency supplies, handicapped assistance, road clearing equipment, structural engineers, firemen, police, etc are all fully prepared and equipped. Depending upon the threat level, I would make sure that every individual was contacted and reminded of their responsibilities before/during/after.
Since the hurricane is still near the keys and my city is on the northern gulf, the strike is still three days away. I would not issue any evac orders, but I would make sure that local media was participating in hurricane awareness and preparedness. The change in path is usually significant over three days. Issuing false evac orders sets the people up for future failure. Even if there was unprecedented forecast agreement, such as with Katrina, I still would not issue evac orders three days in advance. I would however, order all city employees to assume that emergency evacuation was eminent and to prepare their stations. If there was tight forecast agreement I would announce school closings so that the people would know that it was a serious threat. I would also contact county, state, and federal agencies and verify that our existing lines of communication and emergaency plans are valid. Then I'd go eat at my favorite restaraunt. Once I got home, I'd put gallon jugs of water and in the freezer and check the chainsaw blade.
Scenario 1 & 2, as the Mayor, I would treat exactly the same:
"I'M THE MAYOR, GET THE HELL OUTTA MY WAY! FEET DON'T FAIL ME NOW!"
The Nagin Response.
What you are describing is exactly what happened in my city just 2 months ago with Hurricane Dennis. Our wise Governor decided to err on the side of caution and called for the mandatory evacuation of the entire county and had the southbound lanes of the interestate reversed to northbound to accomodate the traffic. At the time, I thought the man had lost his mind. Nobody had ever called for a mandatory evacuation, but we were facing a Cat. 4 hurricane and we were dead in it's tracks. By the time Hurricane Dennis reached land, it had lost much of it's punch and did little damage. More than a few people were sore with the Governor for costing them time and money. But since Hurricane Katrina hit, our governor is beginning to look like a very wise man. I tell you what...I will never again ignore a mandatory evacuation order.
I think that the Fed Govt should bring charges against the LA Governor and the NO Mayor and see that they go to court before any Care Center owners. What they did in (not) carrying out their duties as elected officials is criminal.
Next I would ask the President to spend no tax money to rebuild the City of New Orleans. He can spend tax money to rebuild only the Federal Facilities which have been destroyed. Let the rest be rebuilt with insurance proceeds or not be rebuilt. The Federal Government should then get out of the Flood Insurance Business and not wait for NO to be destroyed again (or any other parts of the country).