|
On my arrival at the mayor’s office, he handed me a sheet of paper. Written on it was a street address and the message “Go to this shelter. People need you."
At the shelter I found 2,000 people, many who were in serious need of immediate medical care. One was a diabetic woman who had no supply of vital insulin.
I asked one of the volunteers where the
medical supplies were. “There are none,” was the answer.
In the 40 years that have elapsed since Hurricane Betsy not much has changed in the city’s ability to respond effectively in a major disaster.
Among the many serious deficiencies exposed by Katrina was the lack of an adequate communications system, which is indispensable in post-hurricane operations — this despite the amazing technological strides made in recent years in communications.
During Katrina and its aftermath members of my family kept in touch with little trouble, despite being widely scattered throughout the United States. We had expected the loss of electrical power and were prepared, with such devices as multi-functional Blackberry devices that provided e-mail, text messaging and walkie-talkie capabilities, and mobile phones to transmit text messages, which take little space compared to voice messages and are functional when voice messaging fails.
I delivered multiple such communicators to key doctors working in the heart of New Orleans post-Katrina as well as the New Orleans coroner, the coroner in neighboring Jefferson Parish coroner and the leadership of the Louisiana State Medical Society. I called a private donor, The Doctors Company in Napa, Calif., which bought the communicators and sent them to me without hesitation.
Government and disaster-relief agencies have even wider choices in the form of short-wave radios, satellite phones and devices to recharge or substitute power supplies with hand-crank generators, spare batteries or solar panels.
All emergency communications mechanisms should be tested in advance. That lesson was learned when the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals experienced a flood of telephone calls and e-mail messages in the weeks after Katrina, jamming the communications system while volunteer physicians were trying to come to the state to help.
Anyone can pass for a leader in times of plenty. True leaders emerge in a crisis, assess the problem, and act decisively for the public good. False leaders come on like gangbusters during times of calm, then are inept and indecisive in an emergency.
It is time for those who call themselves
leaders to walk the halls, get in the trenches and not only find out what
the real problems are, but to approach them with workable solutions,
decisive action and a sense of vision. They can start by making plans
for emergency communications the next time disaster strikes. |