gustav rouses social activists and republicans
Posted by admin | Filed under Uncategorized, politics, twitter
While Hurricane Gustav may not have been the second coming of Katrina, it was a remarkable event nonetheless. Millions of people were affected by the hurricane, and millions The degree of internet based discussion and coordination of relief efforts and information flow was remarkable, as any twitter user saw who was paying attention to gustav. Ning networks were setup. The publisher of iProng Complaints were twittered and a letter was written when it was noticed that some people were following the wrong version of a Rick Sanchez twitter feed. It was good to see the Twitter community step up to make sure people were getting the right information.
I wish there had been some more national TV coverage on the use of internet based disaster coordination services.
The political impact was, and will likely continue to be notable. The republicans delayed their convention, although it might not do them much good as Hurricane Hanna and Ike are already on their way westward. McCain’s speech is scheduled for Thursday, just in time for Hanna to potentially make landfall near Savannah, GA, although there is still so much uncertainly in the path that landfall could occur anywhere from Miami to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Evacuations could start as soon as Wednesday - it seems like the RNC will be slightly stymied by this throughout the convention - but perhaps they can put some positive spin on it by showing Gustav as a sign that we can learn from our mistakes.
Chris Matthews seemed to be irked by the degree to which, in his words, weather was distracting from politics. In his conversation with Keith Olbermann, he said that politics is “more important than weather reports” because the election will determine the course of our country for the next four to eight years. That may be true, but the role of the media in national disasters can be critical to how emergency crews and aid workers respond to disasters. The media also bears the responsibility of raising awareness to mistakes in disaster response, as we so clearly saw after Katrina. Regardless of whether publicizing political discussions does more to further the political process, how can you expect the media not to cover the disaster over the convention?
The BBC said the hurricane had “spoiled” the republican national convention, but to me, it only seems to have delayed it. They will work out the timing issues with Hanna and Ike, barring a major disaster, which admittedly is still possible. In addition to that, the republicans would be stupid not to attempt to leverage the apparent success of disaster preparation plans for political gain. Its only a crisis if they fail to leverage the opportunity for their gain. I
Other things that don’t sit right with me:
Apparently, the Dutch have the world’s best levee system and have offered to share the blueprints with us, but we haven’t exactly taken them up on it. They came here after Katrina to learn from our mistakes and offered to help us and we turned them down.
Did anyone else notice how Gustav, a Category 2 storm which made landfill some 50 odd miles away from New Orleans, had the water levels splashing up to the tops of the levees? What if the storm had strengthened and made a direct hit - this very easily could have been another Katrina. We got lucky here. The whole levy system isn’t going to be fixed until 2011 - how is this acceptable?
