Katrina: cue up the happy stories, cue up the celebrities
■"In Katrina's wake, generosity: For survivors, San Antonio's response exemplifies America at its finest," by Marco R. della Cava, USA Today, 7 September 2005, p. 1A.■"Businesses step up to the plate in a big way: Technology: Free phones, buses, Web assistance; Retailers: Donate money, merchandise; Airlines: Fly out thousands of evacuees for free," by Michelle Kessler, Lorrie Grant and Roger Yu respectively, USA Today, 7 September 2005, p. 3B.
■"Across Nation, Storm Victims Crowd Schools," by Sam Dillon, New York Times, 7 September 2005, p. A1.
■"Storm giving outpaces that of 9/11, tsunami," by Wendy Koch, USA Today, 7 September 2005, p. 11A.
■"In Hurricane's Aftermath, Winfrey Calls for Apology," by Edward Wyatt, New York Times, 7 September 2005, p. B3.
We're seeing the usual disaster-donation nexus kick in: huge disaster triggers huge overflow of donated resources. Much will go wasted, and you will read many investigatory stories in coming months about swindles and diversions and embezzling and fraud. It is the typical American overreaction: beggar the infrastructure year after year, and then flood the place with disaster aid when it all comes tumbling down. We see this in overseas events all the time: America is short of official developmental aid year-in and year-out, but a clear leader in disaster relief (especially in throwing military assets at the problem).
Don't get me wrong: a lot of good stuff is being pursued. Hell, I sit here next to Steve DeAngelis and he's working his cell phone while we driving to Norfolk, seeing how Enterra might provide jobs to dislocated IT workers from the Gulf coast-affected areas. Americans have heart, no doubt about it, and business leads the way in innovation, as it should, but we have to adjust our thinking on the role of government: it shouldn't be thought of as merely the "last resort," resort resource-wise, but the first resort-temporally speaking-in those critical SysAdmin roles that the private sector simply cannot manage on its own. "Preventive diplomacy" is a chimera where resources are lacking. It works in the Core, not in the Gap-nor in New Orleans it would appear. You can't negotiate resiliency, you have to build it brick by brick. Where the private sector can't or won't out of fear for its security, there the SysAdmin must tread-24/7 and not just after the balloon has gone up.
Don't worry, we'll learn plenty about our innate resources for resiliency, like in managing all those displaced school kids. Won't be pretty, but we'll learn.
And now that we have the celebrities on the scene, we'll keep the media cameras rolling for that much longer. Here's hoping Oprah uses her pulpit to push some broader change, as well as some broader understanding, of how we need to change our approach to post-trauma stabilization and reconstruction-both at home and overseas. She can always play fairy godmother to distressed viewers and that's cool for her ego (and ratings), but imagine if she pushed for a new national debate on such SysAdmin issues, not only making us stronger at home in the process but changing the way we approached-say-Africa.
With Bono and Sachs on one side, you've half the equation, maybe with Oprah and Barnett on the other side, we'd actually have a quorum for lasting change.
Hmm. Hearst owns Esquire and Oprah!. Mark Warren's edited both Sachs and I. DeAngelis dreams of getting Bono to write the forward to our joint book. It's all coming together!.