are we prepared for the next big one?
Feb. 2007
Stephen Flynn is the author of "The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation." He is a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer and a homeland security expert. A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he wrote the following piece for CNN.com. It describes a mindset we must have if we are to achieve readiness to combat new calamities both natural and unnatural.
Resiliency can be planned
- We need to make building resiliency from within our borders as urgent a priority as confronting dangers from without.
- There would have been thousands of more victims in New York on September 11 if the city had not made significant new investments in emergency management…
- It was New York's investment in resiliency after the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing that made that tragic day in 2001 far less tragic.
- New Orleans would have long ago recovered from Hurricane Katrina had the city's flood control system not been so badly neglected. But throughout the 1990s, the funds that might have been used to repair and strengthen the levees and flood walls were routinely bled off for other projects.
- In 2004, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asked for $22.5 million to make emergency repairs to the storm protection system in New Orleans, the White House cut that figure to $3.9 million. It was New Orleans' lack of resiliency in the face of a foreseeable natural disaster that produced a catastrophe that has practically destroyed a great American city.
- Building resiliency requires anticipating likely man-made or natural disasters, a willingness to take prudent actions in advance of these disasters that lower our exposure to their potentially catastrophic consequences and ability to mobilize a speedy response.
- An estimated 90 percent of Americans now live along the coast, near flood zones and earthquake fault lines, or in other locations that are at a high or moderate risk of being hit by a major natural disaster.
- We need only look to the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, and the 2005 attack on the London subways to remind us that the al Qaeda threat is not confined to the Middle East and that all acts of terror cannot be prevented.
- Americans are far more likely to be caught in the cross hairs of a major natural disaster such as an earthquake, flood, forest fire or a hurricane than an attack by terrorists.
- No act of modern warfare, with the possible exception of a nuclear exchange between major world powers, has the potential to threaten as many lives and cause as much disruption to the global economy as the H5N1 avian influenza would if it makes the evolutionary leap that allows it to spread among humans as quickly and as lethally as it has among birds.
- Acts of terror and disasters cannot always be prevented, but they do not have to be catastrophic.
- The key is being willing to invest in things that are not particularly sexy, such as public health, emergency planning and community preparedness.
Get the full scoop
Flynn: U.S. not prepared for the next 'big one'
Our Take
Readiness is more than a mindset. It is about taking a proactive responsibility toward the next great calamity that will befall us – be it natural or unnatural. We react and adapt to the past but we can dictate how we shape our future course of action and we need to mindful of readiness at all times.
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