Compulsory reading

I used to think that every civil servant should be made to visit the Millennium Dome - to make sure they realised that it was not enough to hope that a misconceived project would suddenly come right and that things could go horribly wrong.  My latest candidate for the mandatory list is to read "The Great Deluge" by Douglas Brinkley (recommended in my appeal for reading suggestions by Tom Burke of E3G) -- about the week of Hurricane Katrina. 
When I lived in California I was always a bit sceptical about the handy earthquake advice in the yellow pages suggesting that every home should have three days of supplies available in case of a major disaster.  After all this was America -- a first world not a third world country and surely it was inconceivable that the USA could leave any of its citizens needing basic supplies for three whole days.  Against that complacent background, GD is a stunning wake-up call showing how badly bureaucracies can screw up.  Its a great antidote against the muddling through thesis.There are many villains of the piece.  First of all years and years of development which eroded the Louisiana coastline -- seemingly no politician since Theodore Roosevelt understood the role of the wetlands in protecting the cities.  All compounded by a rush to develop and a failure to maintain. Sustainable development anyone?
The second villain is corruption and cronyism.  I had been about to blog earlier on the massive tax that corruption imposes on poor countries after reading a book on India which suggested that only 30% of any funds made it through to intended recipient after everyone in government had taken their cut.  But GD shows that corruption can expose the poor and vulnerable even in the richest of countries - corruption as a reason why money voted for maintenance of the levees was not spent and they were hopelessly undermaintained at the time of Katrina hit; in the New Orleans Police department and cronyism in the appointment of the wrong person to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency (the infamous Brownie); in letting contracts to contributors not the those best qualified to meet needs.  But of all these the most pernicious impact was the Mayor of New Orleans concern at the impact of requiring what might prove to be an unnecessary mandatory evacuation on his business backers when there was still time to get the old, sick and poor out of the city -- and these were overwhelmimingly Katrina's victims.
The third villain is focus.  The absorption of FEMA into the department of Homeland Security meant that the big boss was only really interested in terrorism - a second 9/11  not a big storm.  And FEMA could cope with hurricanes -- and recover from wind damage -- but not flooding following a hurricane. FEMA was complacent because it had done well with the last four Florida hurricanes but those were ordinary hurricanes......and in a Republican state in an election year....
The fourth villain is a failure of political leadership - compounded by the intrusion of partisan politics in the struggle between the Democrat governor of Louisiana and the Republican president. And a Mayor holed up in  a hotel determined to put his own safety above any sign of caring about the plight of his citizens - a failure to be there.
But all that was made much worse by incompetence before the event - lack of preparation (buses standing in flood zones; failure to have any lists of vulnerable people; failure to have any plans to evacuate in many public facilities; a failure to think about how to contact people not tracking the eye of the storm through the internet or on TV and a failure to learn any lessons from a simulation exercise of just such a catastrophe a couple of years before - and then unconscionable bureaucracy after the event -- stopping help that was being offered getting through, compounded by a lack of imagination... about what people might need; how they might react. and one of the most bizarre lessons to come out of Katrina is how many people refused evacuation because they did not want to be separated from their pets -- misery compounded by pets not being allowed on the buses which finally arrived.
And throw into the mix the more peculiarly US factors of segregated neighbourhoods and an awful lot of weapons around which means when law and order began to break down it did so with potentially very deadly consequences.Lest this all sounds dire, it is -- but it is leavened by huge numbers of stories of amazing individual heroism, some real corporate social responsibility showing up the leaden footed Feds = Wal Mart. American Airlines and Coca Cola to name but three and some stunning acts of individual generosity which I think no other country would ever match.
So it might never happen here on this scale and in this way - but after reading this I will never treat our business continuity planning as a boring compliance chore - and we might want to send it to everyone we are asking to draw up an adaptation plan = and a good Christmas present for many of our friends in the Treasury.