Opinion: Hurricanes and fires, apples and oranges?
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Everyone’s comparing — or at least talking about comparing — this year’s wildfires to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, especially since the federal government got involved in disaster relief.
On Tuesday, President Bush deemed the California wildfires a ‘disaster,’ following up the next day by upgrading it to ‘major disaster’ and starting the flow of federal money, supplies, and other assistance to displaced residents. Bush came to Southern California (more quickly than he ventured to New Orleans) and had this exchange:
Q Mr. President, a lot has been made about the contrast between this response and the Katrina response. Do you have any thoughts on that, and how you’re doing? THE PRESIDENT: You better ask the Governor how we’re doing. I will tell you this: On all these responses, the thing that has amazed me most is the courage of our first responders. The firefighters here in this part of the world are incredibly brave people. The police force has done a fabulous job. And same in the Katrina area. I mean, I know there was a lot of criticism of effort, but remember, there was 33,000 people pulled off roofs by brave Coast Guard men and women flying those choppers. A lot of people’s lives were saved.
LAist.com blogger Andy Sternberg noted that in both disasters, media incorrectly referred to fleeing residents as ‘refugees’:
While ‘refugee’ can be inferred to be descriptive of one who ‘takes refuge,’ the fact is that — at least since the 1951 approval of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees — the word ‘refugee’ is used in relation to persons fleeing to escape danger imposed by foreign countries or persecution. Yes, a fire is dangerous, but Mother Nature cannot be considered the sole antagonist of a refugee situation (the political implications of the word ‘refugee’ force the argument that in fact, those still displaced because of the government’s failings in the aftermath of Katrina can now be considered ‘refugees,’ but I digress).
And LAist.com editor Tony Pierce thinks Bush and Co. haven’t learned much in two years:
You’d think that two years after the slow-as-molasses response that President Bush was justly criticized for in the wake of Katrina, that he would have learned from his mistakes and treated the most recent California fires the way a leader should: quickly, decisively, and compassionately. Instead, he flew out to Cali on the fourth day of the fires (progress from the five days that it took him to set foot in the Gulf Coast in 2005), viewed some of the damage in San Diego County, hugged some Caucasians, shook some hands with some firefighters for a photo op, and then flew his ass back to DC.
Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post sees similarities, too, in the botched government responses; Editor and Publisher rounds up local papers that agree.
At Hotair.com, bloggers claim Californians are better behaved evacuees:
Remember the fiasco that was NOLA after Katrina struck? The mayor running around calling for buses when he knew he had dozens of them within a mile of the Superdome? The police chief of a partially ghost police force spreading rumors of rapes and murders in the convention center and the dome that turned out to be unfounded? The state governor blocking Red Cross aid from entering the city while conferring with Clintonistas on how to politicize the whole deal? California is dealing with an immense catastrophe right now. It’s not on the scale of Katrina and probably won’t get there, but it is a sizable disaster area. It’s the largest evacuation in state history. Are Californians running around blaming the world for the natural disaster and descending into madness? Nope.
The Rude Pundit has a response to that:
If you look closely, you can see the Superdome, with the holes in the roof, surrounded by a water-covered city, only accessible by boat or aircraft. If the people were lucky. It’s sort of like being able to deliver food, water, medicine, diapers, beds, and more by the truckload to people who are being entertained by live bands and massage therapists who can drive to the stadium in their cars. Except for the fact that it’s not.
Gordon at Alternate Brain says the comparison makes no sense:
The two disasters have nothing - I say again, nothing - in common other than bad things of wildly different severity happened to people in wildly different circumstances. The demographics, logistics, emergency response, the aftermaths - all as different as night from day.
NBC’s Martin Savidge agrees.
The biggest difference? One’s still going (and the other will be recovering for a while yet). So if there’s a comparison to be made -- if the differences in type of disaster, scale, state resources, and demographics can be ignored -- it will have to wait.