McJoan notes on the front page that "House Republicans today blocked funding for port security and disaster preparedness." Just by coincidence, I have just finished writing an email to the Emergency Preparedness Coordinator of my county. The thought occurs to me that we could deviously hit the Bushites on an unexpected flank by beginning to query our local officials responsible for emergency preparedness on the actual state of things, and prefacing our queries with a profession of our reasons for no longer trusting the competence or integrity of the Bush administration. See my letter to the Loudoun County Emergency Preparedness Coordinator below the fold to see what I mean.
Here's the email I just sent to my local official responsible for emergency preparedness of my local area:
Let me preface my request by being perfectly frank about my thinking that gives rise to it. Late last year, the 9-11 Commission gave both the Bush administration and the Congress flunking grades in its review of what had been accomplished in preparing the U.S. for another major terrorist attack. Then there was the shocking incompetence of the response to Katrina. That was followed by the failure of the Rita evacuation, in which I've read that 30% of the population in the Galveston-Houston evacuation zone used all the available gasoline within 36 hours, leaving four million people who were not evacuated, and that all the water and food was consumed along the evacuation routes in a similar period of time. Finally, the Bush administration's support for the Dubai ports deal, when the Coast Guard and the American Association of Ports Authorities have been warning for four years now about the serious under-funding of port security, proves in my eyes that the Bush administration is never, simply never, going to get serious about actually preparing the country for another disaster or terrorist attack.
Now, the way I figure it, Loudoun County itself is not in much danger of a terrorist attack. The major problem Loudoun has to face is the likelihood that it will be flooded by hundreds of thousands of evacuees fleeing the District and the immediate areas around it, especially Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax.
So, my questions for you are:
What preparations have been made to accommodate a potential flood of refugees from a total evacuation of D.C.?
Are there designated evacuation routes through, or out of, Loudoun County, particularly heading westward?
In the Rita evacuation, authorities forced local residents off of secondary and feeder roads, and onto the primary evacuation routes, with the (hopefully) unintended effect of exacerbating traffic congestion, lengthening evacuation times, and increasing the load on supplies of water and food along the evacuation routes. In Loudoun, are there similar plans to close local roads, such as 699 (Dry Mill Road) or 698 (Old Waterford Road) out of Leesburg?
I think it grand fun to see what sort of local political fireworks we might set off, if, over the next few days, thousands of local officials were bombarded by similar letters. It's such a wonderfully sneaky way to bash Bush! Do you think it might create a little buzz locally?
And, you have the added benefit of possibly obtaining information that could save yours and others' lives and perhaps even spurring a few local officials to action. I was very shocked at the paucity of web information available on evacuating Washington DC. In fact, a national study to "evaluate the role that the public transportation systems serving the 38 largest urbanized areas in the United States could play in the nation's security, and ...assess the ability of such systems to accommodate the evacuation... from critical locations in times of emergency," to be conducted by the Transportation Research Board of the National Research Council, is still awaiting final approval to proceed.
http://www4.trb.org/...
I would have thought that such a study was conducted within months of 9/11! Yet another little bit of evidence that the Bushites really don't care about homeland security, except for the potential talking points.
Obviously, your letter of inquiry to your own local Emergency Preparedness Coordinator (or other responsible official) could include my opening paragraph verbatim, but the remainder of the email you will have to change to reflect the area in which you live (unless, of course, you also live in Loudoun County, Virginia!).
Details on the Rita evacuation of Galveston and Houston are at http://independencejournal.com/...
To find out who your local emergency preparedness official is, do a Google or web search for the phrase "Community Emergency Response Teams" followed by the name of your county, town, or city.
Back in September 2005, AlphaGeek, who apparently is a private consultant on emergency preparedness in the San Francisco Bay area, wrote an absolutely excellent series of five diaries providing guidance for preparing yourself and your household for emergencies. One thing that never occurred to me was how disruptive could be the loss of electric power or natural gas for heat for a period of days during severe weather. AlphaGeek's series is well worth the look: http://www.dailykos.com/...