Preparing for the worst

Paul Wells takes a look at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, and notes that Canada's preparations for weather disasters may not be that much better than those in the U.S.:

McBean says the new federal Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is far more concerned with guarding against the long-shot danger of a terrorist attack than with the more mundane menaces of wind, rain, fire and disease. There's very little thought in federal infrastructure programs given to ensuring that infrastructure can survive a natural catastrophe. But even as he decries this, McBean says it's easy to understand. Disaster relief is bold work for politicians: swoop into the disaster zone, hug the bereaved, distribute largesse. Disaster prevention could hardly be more mundane. "What you're actually trying do to is create a situation where, when the hazard happens, nothing happens," he says.

Levees hold. Sewers don't overflow. Tornadoes fail to blow the roofs off houses that were designed to avoid such a fate. Power lines fall under the weight of ice and are reinstalled within hours, instead of transmission towers crumpling and taking weeks to rebuild. "What's the benefit of that?" McBean asks. It's obvious, of course, but hard to tally. Every dollar that could go to safeguarding against a vague threat is a dollar that can be spent today on health care or tax cuts or a war on terrorism. Today's needs are pressing; tomorrow's dangers are hard to see until it's far too late. Which is why specialists in disaster reduction live in a world of we-should and why-don't-they, while the victims of catastrophe are trapped in a world of should-have and why-didn't-they.

In that dichotomy lies precisely the reason why politicians' feet should be held to the fire in response to situations such as the aftermath of Katrina. If the political fallout from a poor response doesn't outweigh both the benefits of disaster-relief photo-ops and of spending the money on other projects, then there'll always be an incentive for governments to put their money into more visible projects.

As pointed out by McBean, the surest sign of a great prevention program is that potential crises never become severe. It's difficult to guess whether we've avoided Katrina-like disasters out of sheer luck or as the result of luck than of substantially better planning. But either way, now should be the time to demand a full explanation of what our governments have planned in case of a similar scenario - and to ensure that we're putting in a due amount of preparation against natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks.