Irene, Goodnight....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/earthquake-shows-gaps-in-disaster-planning/2011/08/24/gIQAQDAFcJ_story.html
And now we have to worry about Hurricane Irene, and the panic is already setting in here. The above article is yet one more mewling piece from the Post about the complete lack of any type of plan or coordination around DC in case of a large emergency, (To be read: terrorist setting off a nuclear device on the Mall). Their solution is to create yet another office/agency/bureaucracy to somehow make everything better, because lord knows there just don't seem to be enough offices/agencies/bureaucracies crammed in here already.
As I have stated in the past: All of this jawing is doomed to failure. Every day we have a practice mass evacuation around here. It is done calmly, it is done with everyone knowing the time, where they are going, and how they are going to try and get there. And we fail - EVERY time. It is called 'Rush Hour'. A real emergency with the resulting panic will be twenty times worse. The fact of the matter is that this area grew up, (exploded, really) over the past 40 years with little thought to things like urban planning, transportation needs, and particularly - evacuation plans. Depending how you want to count it, the DC area now includes between three and five million people scattered over at least a couple thousand square miles. The road and rail systems were built to accommodate, at best, a third of that number. In addition, the center of gravity has splintered. Not everyone works and shops within about 3 square miles of DC like they did when I was a child. Everybody goes everywhere, now. The road network was built to where we were around 1980. The Metro was built for 1965. YOU SIMPLY CANNOT MOVE PEOPLE AROUND HERE QUICKLY - talking like you can is just wasting time and (eventually) money. We are stuck. There are no solutions, unless and until you start moving vast swathes of the Federal government (and the Beltway Bandits that go with it) elsewhere and set up draconian centralized planning for development - neither of which are even fever dreams on the horizon. So, give up. Stop fantasizing. Recognize reality - we are fucking doomed if anything really happens here. We will just have to sit tight, and stick it out, come hell or high water - just like what happened during the Air Florida accident, or this earthquake, or 9/11, or every single time someone reports a god damned snowflake falling somewhere. We fall apart, and that's not going to change. As for needing to pay government employees to tell us which roads are blocked (a childishly simple job, since most of them always are) - we've already got such an agency - it's the small army and air force of traffic reporters for all the news stations in town, including radio, TV and Internet; all rushing out to gleefully tell us how colossally miserable we're going to be for the next 2-24 hours, and why. This is all just silly talk from the Post, (who probably wants to get the government contract to supply the 'emergency coordinator' with traffic info....)
And now we have to worry about Hurricane Irene, and the panic is already setting in here. The above article is yet one more mewling piece from the Post about the complete lack of any type of plan or coordination around DC in case of a large emergency, (To be read: terrorist setting off a nuclear device on the Mall). Their solution is to create yet another office/agency/bureaucracy to somehow make everything better, because lord knows there just don't seem to be enough offices/agencies/bureaucracies crammed in here already.
As I have stated in the past: All of this jawing is doomed to failure. Every day we have a practice mass evacuation around here. It is done calmly, it is done with everyone knowing the time, where they are going, and how they are going to try and get there. And we fail - EVERY time. It is called 'Rush Hour'. A real emergency with the resulting panic will be twenty times worse. The fact of the matter is that this area grew up, (exploded, really) over the past 40 years with little thought to things like urban planning, transportation needs, and particularly - evacuation plans. Depending how you want to count it, the DC area now includes between three and five million people scattered over at least a couple thousand square miles. The road and rail systems were built to accommodate, at best, a third of that number. In addition, the center of gravity has splintered. Not everyone works and shops within about 3 square miles of DC like they did when I was a child. Everybody goes everywhere, now. The road network was built to where we were around 1980. The Metro was built for 1965. YOU SIMPLY CANNOT MOVE PEOPLE AROUND HERE QUICKLY - talking like you can is just wasting time and (eventually) money. We are stuck. There are no solutions, unless and until you start moving vast swathes of the Federal government (and the Beltway Bandits that go with it) elsewhere and set up draconian centralized planning for development - neither of which are even fever dreams on the horizon. So, give up. Stop fantasizing. Recognize reality - we are fucking doomed if anything really happens here. We will just have to sit tight, and stick it out, come hell or high water - just like what happened during the Air Florida accident, or this earthquake, or 9/11, or every single time someone reports a god damned snowflake falling somewhere. We fall apart, and that's not going to change. As for needing to pay government employees to tell us which roads are blocked (a childishly simple job, since most of them always are) - we've already got such an agency - it's the small army and air force of traffic reporters for all the news stations in town, including radio, TV and Internet; all rushing out to gleefully tell us how colossally miserable we're going to be for the next 2-24 hours, and why. This is all just silly talk from the Post, (who probably wants to get the government contract to supply the 'emergency coordinator' with traffic info....)
posted by mendip at
2:30 PM
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