There's No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster

Back to me. I suppose this is my closing argument, and I'm pretty sure I've pushed the text limits in the debate, so I'll keep it as concise as possible. As to the detail of my arguments not being addressed for time constraints: good. They were mostly just supporting logic and etc, had no direct attack on your case but rather supported mine. We'll consider them moot and go back to square one as was done by you refuting the summary. "Preparedness can help save lives, as seen in the tornado of '54, central Kansas. Two hundred residents knew that there was going to be a tornado and gathered in the community center's basment and gathered all the local animals in a safe location. They saved every person in that town, all because of preparedness. This was not what happened in New Orleans, as they had not prepared for a Disaster of great magnitude." I would like to reiterate that this whole argument does not refute the existence of natural disasters. It states that being prepared for them is the best policy, and provides an example of a time when a community was prepared versus when it was not. Two points: first, that as has been repeated and repeated "probably too much" by me, being prepared does not stop the tornado from happening. It may lessen the loss of life and property, but the fact is the disaster still happened. Nature still drove it and thus it was still a disaster caused by nature. Mankind may have exacerbated the situation, but that, again, does not mean that the disaster did not occur in its own right. Second: moving 200 people and their livestock out of the path of a tornado is significantly easier than moving 2,000,000ish people out of the way of a storm, no matter how you look at it. The logistics would stagger most supercomputers. Now to the first part of the next paragraph and I promise I'm almost done. "After causes and vulnerability comes preparedness. The incompetence of preparations for Katrina, especially at the federal level, is well known. As soon as the hurricane hit Florida, almost three days before New Orleans, it was evident that this storm was far more dangerous than its wind speeds and intensity suggested. Meteorologists knew it would hit a multi-state region but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), overseen by a political appointee with no relevant experience and recently subordinated to the Homeland Security Administration, assumed business as usual." So? Had we, somehow, moved the thousands if not millions of people out of harms way in 3 days "considering these people are civilians, not ready to move at a moments notice, not inclined to move at that, and on regular transport methods this would be nothing short of an act of God", the loss to property which would have to have been abandoned would have been enormous, well qualifying Katrina as a natural disaster. And I would like to reiterate that this is merely one example of how government readiness would have helped. As to "They sent only a quarter of available search and rescue teams to the region and no personnel to New Orleans until after the storm had passed". Yes. Of course. Does the proposition of sending people INTO the hurricane make sense to anyone? By sending in one quarter of the available resources they were taking a pretty hefty gamble as it is, to ask more is lunacy. Finally the last part, and now I really am almost done, "Yet more than a day before it hit, Katrina was described by the National Weather Service as a "hurricane with unprecedented strength" likely to make the targeted area "uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer" (NYT 2005). Days afterward, as the President hopped from photo-op to photo-op the White House, not given to listening to its scientists, seemed still not to understand the prescience of that warning or the dimensions of the disaster." First: this is primarily a jab at the President and FEMA, who, I'll grant, deserve more of a haymaker for this blunder. However, this in no way makes Katrina a social disaster. Yes, human unpreparedness contributed to the disaster, but without the previously mentioned 100 mph winds and millions of gallons of sea water nothing would have happened. The true disaster was spawned by natural means, thus making it a natural disaster. Second: again, what more could they have done? As this point has been stated many times, I leave it at that. And now I'm done. Wait, no now I'm done. K for reals, this time I'm seriously done. Cheerio and I now rest my case.