Sorry for posting twice on the same subject, within such a short time...
On Sep 11, 2005, at 0:19, Carol Melton wrote:
When calling up the National Guard, the troops have 72 hours to get their personal affairs in order BEFORE they are deployed.
Sounds a bit...relaxed? to me in emergency situation, but no worse than the instructions I received as a 15yr old in the "military preparedness" class back in Poland. "In case you see a mushroom-shaped cloud, locate the the nearest cemetery, drop down low and start moving in that direction. It will help the survivors to dispose of the radioactive remains faster"
OTOH... When all the relief agencies descended - helter-skelter, without co-orddination -on the tsunami-affected areas, they were as much help as hindrance precisely because they were un-coordinated. On the one hand you had tons of underwear, on the other not enough drinking water...
the disaster covers an area approximately the size of Great Britain. Three states, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
The size of the affected area alone is enough to boggle one's mind (a lot of cities which had been only partially wiped out were taking in refugees from the areas totally wiped out, thus straining their resources to the utmost), esp if one is from Europe... And then you have to add in all the piddling jealousies about who lifts their leg over which territory...
I read a lot of mysteries, among them Brit ones. From them, I get an idea that the local police hate it like poison when the Scotland Yard (or other national force) is called in over their heads. In US, you multiply it and multiply it and multiply it - the bigger the community, the more layers of toes which one needs to be careful about stepping on. Lexington - 4.5 thousand population plus ca 2.5 thou between the two institutions of higher learning (Washington and Lee University and Virginia Militaty Institute) has a police force, and each of the above-mentioned institutions has its own security force. Additionaly, the county (17 thousand population) has property in the city, so its not uncommon to see the sheriff's cars in the city and, certainly, the prospective sheriffs come to our door (within the city limit) come election time...
Bureaucracy is necessary and it may have been created to make things easier for me and thee (you don't have to think, you don't have to make - responsible - decisions) but it tends to flourish like a weed in times of comfort, and gets bogged down in times of crisis...
As we say in Poland, "this is bad, and that's no good" and I'd personally contribute to a Nobel prize for anyone who comes up with a perfect social model which *works* :)
For those not familiar with who Jefferson Davis was, he was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America during the civil war era.
And, reputedly, a nice guy, even to his slaves. Of course, we bombed the hell out of the national museum in Baghdad, where history of thousands of years was lost too.... Hard to apply a scale to calamities...
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
