Disasters and Personal Responsibility

Well I now have had enough time to process Ike and all of the aftermath, and I've taken a deep breath and counted to ten before starting this post. So here it goes...

As I watched the drama that was Ike unfold in the Houston area in the week or two after the storm, I was struck with the victim mentality that has infected so many of my fellow Houstonians. I was surprised that within 24 hours of Ike clearing our area, we had news reporters and citizens complaining that FEMA and our local officials hadn't managed to get ice, water, and MRE's to everyone impacted by the storm. The mentality seemed to be that if one didn't emerge from their home Saturday morning to find a FEMA rep in their front yard with coffee and a doughnut there was a significant breakdown in the system. UNBELIEVABLE!

How many times have we been told to be prepared to survive for 72 hours without assistance...72 hours...not 4 hours, not 12 hours, not 36, but 72 hours. Every hurricane tracking chart that the news stations distribute, every Red Cross handout, all of the disaster preparedness advice...everything says 72 hours worth of water, food, batteries, clothes, etc. Why do we expect our government to provide for us immediately after a storm of this severity? What happened to the American Spirit? Where is our grit and determination?

Although it sounds cold-hearted, just because someone didn't take the time, expend the effort, or care enough about their family to be prepared, doesn't mean that it's the government's (taxpayers, all of us, everyone else's) responsibility to spend millions of dollars, use thousands of man-hours, hundreds of gallons of fuel, etc to bring them daily deliveries of ice, water, and food until they have power and fuel again.

What about those of us that planned ahead, headed the warnings, prepared food and water for our families?? Year after year we prepare, quietly and dutifully, sometimes without incident, sometimes -as with Ike- for good reason, where's the reward for proper preparation? It only exists in forums like this where a fellow responsible citizen takes the time to say "Thank You" for lessening the burden on the system by stepping up to the plate and doing your part.

The responsible ones don't get their 30 seconds on TV to chastise FEMA for not getting them Ice quickly enough, they don't get boxes of free food and cases of free water...they stay at home and help their neighbors, they go to work as firefighters, paramedics and police officers, they quietly go about the business of recovery.

What would Ike have been like if all of us were properly prepared?? How much money and effort could have been diverted to recovery in the hardest-hit areas? How much less financial stress would there have been on our local food banks, the Salvation Army, and the American Red Cross? What a great success story it could have been , and what a shining example we could have set for the rest of the country. Instead, we seemed to have confused "survival" with "convenience" and "comfort". Consider this...Survival is just that...keeping yourself from being dead. In situations like Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, terrorist attacks, etc...we must focus on, and be prepared to, survive for 72 hours. It will neither be convenient, nor comfortable, but with proper preparation, it is certainly possible.