Letter: No match for force of nature

Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

Why weren't we ready? That is more of a rhetorical question than one of substance. Katrina was a natural disaster, unpredictable both in time and extent of devastation. Even with our most sophisticated scientific equipment, we are little better off in predicting time, place and destructive capability than we were 40 years ago. Mother Nature is capricious, fickle and treacherous and not within the control of man.

Certainly more federal and state money could have gone into strengthening the levees to withstand a Category 5 storm. Certainly the Barrier Islands could have been fortified. Certainly structures in the path of this storm could have met a different building code. Certainly an evacuation plan could have been in place.

And, most certainly, U.S. citizens could have settled in other areas out of harm's way long before this and other storms hit. The real and honest issue is just how much we are willing to expend in federal and state tax revenues on protection from these natural phenomena, when we don't even understand the power of the adversary.

Where is the rationality of living on a below-sea-level coast line, which is the natural target of hurricanes? This has to be answered prior to the expenditure of billions in rebuilding the devastated areas. No amount of federal and state dollars can change the force of nature, and given this fact, at what point do we admit that even if we had prepared for this storm, with all of the costly plans that the armchair pundits are now extolling, the end result would have been any different?

If the pundits want to blame anyone for the mass destruction and loss of humanity, then they have to look to a higher level than their state and federal governments.

JACK L. KANE