The Coast Isn't Clear

The deadly hurricane season continues. Rita is on her way to the Gulf Coast, and will possibly hit Texas with an intensity more severe than even Katrina. Galveston, once the crown jewel of the South, is right in the crosshairs as it was in 1900. Large segments of Houston are being evacuated - including some of the displaced New Orleans residents. And Louisiana might be in for another hit as well.

The only good news about this is that the experience of Katrina opened a lot of people's eyes about the damage that can be done by this kind of storm, so there will be less resistance to evacuate. Even still, there are a few people who are stubbornly making the decision to ride out the storm in their homes. But the lessons learned from Katrina have also helped to prepare local, state and federal authorities to better facilitate the evacuation and respond to the aftermath of this latest storm.

In an ideal world, natural disasters would not be political. Katrina sparked a nasty wave of partisan grandstanding. To be sure, there was plenty of blame to go around for the inadequate preparation and response to that storm. But the discourse should never have come down to an "us vs. them" exchange between supporters of the two parties. Individuals should be held accountable for their failures, but not assigned or absolved of blame based solely on the parenthesized letter next to their names. I am hopeful, first off, that this storm won't hit as severly as predicted. Regardless, I hope that there will be minimal casualties from Rita, and that the people evacuated from the storm won't have to endure anything like the scenes at the Superdome or N.O. Convention Center. And Governor Perry, FEMA and local authorities should be praised if that happens. But I can also see the blogs brimming with Republicans gloating about how their leaders are better at handling these disasters, without considering the benefit of hindsight. There have been plenty of comparisons between how Ray Nagin and Rudy Giuliani handled their city's tragedies, even though there was no similarity whatsoever between the challenges each had to face. Politics will always be politics. The main thing is I hope those in charge will use the hindsight of Katrina and be successful in minimizing the human tragedy. And lets all dig deep once again and give what we can, because the effort won't be cheap and people will still need our help. That's something all sides can agree on.