Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Hurricane Katrina (not webMethods)

I usually write about webMethods related topics, but this blog is about the occasional musings of a consultant. I've been thinking a lot about the destruction left behind by Katrina. I find it interesting that there is no more focus on Miami, where over 1.1 million people lost power and where flooding was rampant. I can hardly blame the news teams for focusing on what everyone wants to see: Someone else's problem.

I don't watch a lot of television because I don't believe in the sensationalism of other people's plights. Looking at the footage from New Orleans really brought me back to 1992, when Andrew hit Miami.

I worked in South Florida from 1988 until 2001. In 1992, I was just out of college and working for a large service firm in Ft. Lauderdale. Our area reached from the tip of Florida to Jupiter (N. or West Palm Beach.)

When Andrew hit, a good majority of our service personnel lived in affected areas. Some lost homes, some did not. No one had electricity for a long long time.

Looting was rampant and even the military experienced robberies from street thugs. For the first time ever, a US Military unit was activated for a National Cause. The 82nd Airborne Corp deployed to South Florida. The active military was not allowed to carry bullets and as a result, they experienced the loss of several automatic weapons. The National Guard on the other hand, had bullets and were not accosted.

Some of my Army Reserve buddies lived in the Homestead area and told me about arming themselves to keep others from robbing and looting.

Once things became orderly, it was a matter of rebuilding. Some of my employees paid deposits to crafty con artists and never saw any work performed. These devils passed themselves off as contractors or handymen.

BearingPoint had their global employee call and it was refreshing to hear that the company immediately deployed resources to the area to physically track down each and every employee in the New Orleans office.

This tragedy is going to mirror the grief produced by the world trade center. Many many lives have been lost. No one can even count those in New Orleans because the city is underwater.

On the economic side, the city will lose substantial conference revenue. Mississippi will lose untold millions in taxes paid through casino operations. I can't even think of how many people have no place of employment to go to. Additionally, the hurricane knocked out eight petroleum refineries which had the capability to produce about 1.5 million gallons of gas per day. Across the nation, we will all feel this.

What I like to focus on is the sensational acts of bravery that somehow make it through the news wringer. On the front page of the Wallstreet journal, an article talked about how a "Mr. Cooks" commandered an abandoned boat, put his family in it and then went house to house looking for people. He spent untold amounts of time kicking his way through rooftops freeing people. One particular person he freed had been standing up all night with her head in a little hole in the attic trying to breathe as the water crept up higher. If he hadn't of found her when he did, she would have drowned.

I will continue to sift through the wreckage of news reporting to look for the positive signs from Katrina. It'll be a difficult task.

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