Katrina and the waves

Katrina and the waves. The name of this eighties band sounds today like a strange premonition, one of life’s little curiosities.

But the truth is that Hurricane Katrina has made waves.

I recently wrote that there are no natural disasters, that they are instead consequences of policy. And I also talked about global warming.

Reading the post, it actually looks as if I were drawing a direct link between global warming and Hurricane Katrina.
That was not my intention. As Carlos rightly points out, we cannot establish a direct link and say that Hurricane Katrina has anything to do with global warming. Although we can’t rule it out either.

What I wanted to highlight in that article was the political side. On the radio I heard the director of Chile’s ONEMI (the National Emergency Office) say that there really are no natural catastrophes. Of course: if nobody lived in the Mississippi delta we wouldn’t be talking about this. When a natural phenomenon coincides with human settlements in a place, that is when these misnamed natural catastrophes happen. But these catastrophes can have greater or lesser impact; it is a matter of organization, resources, early warnings, coordination, and so on. That is, the effects of these phenomena can be mitigated, or made worse, by political decisions. A good analysis of this can be read in this article from La Otra Orilla.

Update

The former director of FEMA (the agency that coordinates emergencies and disasters) and Joe Allbaugh, who ran Bush’s campaign, have already got their hands on the money that will be used for the relief and reconstruction of the areas hit by the hurricane. One of them is Halliburton Co, which still pays Vice President Dick Cheney every year for having had to leave the helm of the company to “sacrifice himself” serving as a public official for the Republicans. The other is Shaw Group Inc.

Continues at Ojo Con el Texto...