Something very interesting is happening in New Orleans that bears closer study.
That the Federal and regional government has failed egregiously is not in doubt, from about 3 days before hurricane Katrina struck, the systems that are interwoven with a modern society began to fail and continued to do so, ever more awfully over the next month and continue to do so at every level.
At a macro level, nothing is happening. I suspect that, in fact nothing ever does at a macro level. The only reason that high level decisions appear to make any difference at all is that they are already supported by the buzzing infrastructure from which they emerged. Some bigwig makes a decision, feeds the right money plus the latest business management mantra down the line and things shift, often only to shift back again the next day, but they can and do happen.
Take away that infrastructure, that constant hum of human, financial, economic, status, energy, material and god knows what other kind of transaction and the commands stop working. They stop working because they are merely another frequency of hum traveling on the wave form that is human society. Wave forms, however, are not any thing, they are derivatives, emergent characteristics that can be observed but not touched. And they can't be commanded into existence with any amount of money, power, authority or force.
So New Orleans sits there, dumb as a rock, intransigent, oblivious to all the shouting at municipal (well that hardly exists now that the tax base has vanished) state or federal levels. Which is not to say that something is NOT happening. Amid the silence, the tiniest of hums has started up again. Out through the attenuated networks, a small word started to flow, if you go to the right office, you can end run the bureaucrats.
... down a spartan corridor on the eighth floor of City Hall ... hundreds of people clutch a piece of paper inscribed with a fateful percentage that could force them to abandon their home. The number is always over 50, and it means a house was so damaged in the flooding after Hurricane Katrina — more than half-ruined — that it faces demolition, unless the owner can come up with tens of thousands of dollars to raise it several feet above the ground and any future floodwaters.
But there is a way out, and that is why so many people stand in line every day, collectively transforming this battered city. "What you need to do is talk to a building inspector and get that lowered below 50 percent," a city worker calls out to the crowd. And at the end of the line, in a large open room down the hall, that is exactly what happens, nearly 90 percent of the time, New Orleans officials say.
By agreeing so often to these appeals — more than 6,000 over the last few months — city officials are in essence allowing random redevelopment to occur throughout the city, undermining a plan by Mayor C. Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission to hold off on building permits in damaged areas for several months until more careful planning can take place. That plan, greeted by widespread opposition, including from the mayor himself, is now essentially dead.
House by house, in devastated neighborhoods across the city, homeowners are bringing back their new-minted building permits and rebuilding New Orleans. As many as 500 such permits are issued every day, said Greg Meffert, the city official in charge of the rebuilding process. And there is no particular rhyme or reason to who gets a permit, or consideration of whether their neighborhoods can really support its previous residents.
One city building inspector, Devra Goldstein, called the proceedings on the eighth floor "really fly-by-night, chaotic, Wild West, get-what-you-want." The floor, she said, represents "a plan by default."
[...] In exchange for heavily-subsidized flood insurance for residents, the program expects cities to insist on flood-resistant construction. Some cities that violate the flood rules have been ousted from the insurance program, putting thousands of residents at huge risk. "They should be suspended, absolutely," said J. Robert Hunter, a former head of the federal flood-insurance program who is now director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. "You can't fake it," he said. "I sympathize with these people. But you shouldn't say 'Well, you're poor, therefore you can build in a dangerous place where you can be flooded again, and killed.' " He added, "You can't destroy the flood program to achieve a short-term goal."
The voice of the true bureaucrat echoes in the land. Here's the news Mr Hunter, the choice is between destroying the programme of destroying the lives of people who have nowhere else to go. The government plans have universally failed, and people are being kicked out of their temporary accommodation as the money ruins out.
As you fly into Mumbai you look down at the teeming slums built on the edge of the airport, under road bridges and overpasses and in swamps, trash mountains and dung hills.
As we learned from Katrina, from preparations for economic difficulties, peak oil and avian influenza, we are on our own and, more to the point, the systems we depend on are maximal, they do not handle exceptions well, they do not degrade elegantly, they scream up to the edge and then collapse. And, while the NY Times is perfectly able to find the story, apparently the agency in charge is as blind now as oit was when Katrina came howling up the Gulf of Mexico.
FEMA officials say they are keeping a close watch on New Orleans but consider the city to be following the rules. "I understand they have a process in place," said Michael Buckley, deputy director for mitigation at FEMA. "I wouldn't characterize it as a process to change the determination." Mr. Buckley said he was "not aware" of any large-scale downsizing of damage assessments.
It appears that two major qualifications for high office, be it political or corporate, are the memory of an Alzheimers sufferer and a sunny obliviousness. Far from Total Awareness, those charged with governance at every level, Sarbanes-Oxley notwithstanding, continue to exhibit minimal, or negative awareness.
Fortunately, they don't appear to be getting too much in the way.
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