Cheryl,
Guess I just can't help myself. The more you read of Koskinen, the stranger it gets:
Koskinen: "If we have more outages than any evidence now suggest, the problem at that point won't be overreaction by the public. The problem then will be, in fact, dealing with whatever the emergency is, because the nature of the failure will be obvious.
"The problem with overreaction is the problem before you get to that time, where you can aggravate or create problems. You can create spot shortages or other difficulties in advance, as people get more anxious."
Now lessee, if you have a problem (e.g., "no power") the problem is how to react on a local level to "no power"; the problem is not the public's reaction to "no power". (Might want to re-think that analysis if "no power" lasts a couple of weeks <no g>.)
According to Koskinen's semantics, "overreaction" can only occur in advance of a problem ... creating difficulties like "spot shortages" (e.g. of money? water? food?). If we do have "more outages than any evidence now suggest" I would propose that the problem will be under-preparation, not "overreaction".
Interesting to note that -- although a "national" breakdown is not expected (by Koskinen) -- he does seem to be predicting a sufficient number of "local" breakdowns that FEMA and the feds won't be able to handle the load. Neither will the states or counties be able to cope, so we're left with the cities bearing the brunt of the problem(s)? Hmmmm.... Thirty-six hours without power and we're (my city) out of water according to the Municipal Water Department. Wonder how the city is going to distribute drinking water to the citizens? Wonder where we're going to get the trucks and the tanks (and the water)? Clearly not from FEMA. Wonder how many water tankers the OKlahoma NG has standing by?
O. H. |
