Waiting to Be Rescued

Most people mistakenly expect that the government will quickly rescue them during an emergency. But a new study of Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart Way in Disaster Preparedness/Response: Policy Implication, states that,

"the temptation will always be for [bureaucratic] government agencies to want to be overly involved so that they can continue to justify their current budgets. Although agencies wish to avoid errors of commission, they want to remain involved to justify their existence. Thus, [government] agencies often move in after the fact in the most conservative ways possible." – (economist Steven Horwitz, Ph.D).

Slow moving, regulated, and bureaucratic agencies are the exact opposite of what people want and need during a crisis. The FEMA joint field office to coordinate the federal, state and local response was finally established 12 days after Katrina hit. In contrast, “Within 48 hours of Katrina’s landfall only 56 [out of 176 affected] Wal-Mart facilities were still closed.” With no power, Wal-Marts were accepting hand written IOUs for payment or giving away supplies for free.

Lack of government coordination was endemic for the first two weeks following Katrina. Wal-Mart tried to cooperate with the government in delivering supplies (Wal-Mart has one of the world’s best logistics and supply system). BUT the Wal-Mart’s Emergency Director, Jason Jackson, says he couldn’t identify who was in charge. “There was a lot of adversarialism among the governments. Louisiana wasn’t playing nice with New Orleans, who wasn’t playing nice with the feds. FEMA was in there saying one thing and the state was saying another thing and the county parishes were saying something else.”

Who should Wal-Mart work with asks Jackson, “Is it the city? Is it the state? Is it the DOD? We found ourselves trying to make inroads into a lot of different organizations.”

In some cases local government, in the form of police, had failed completely. Immediately after Katrina, Wal-Mart managers found stores being looted while police looked on unconcerned or sometimes joining the looting.

Bottom Line

The Horwitz study on Wal-Mart vs Government concludes, "Within the political process, … government agencies are more often concerned with pleasing other political actors and finding ways to expand their budgets and power. This often makes them less sensitive to the direct needs of the people who rely on them to get specific tasks accomplished."

See also To Rescue Our Economy Obama Should Follow Wal-Mart’s Example

This same theme of bureaucratic empire building was echoed recently in a story about Government budget bubbles bursting,

“As history has shown repeatedly, budget surpluses pile up in good times, allowing politicians to spend freely. They create new social programs and expand existing ones. They pad public payrolls, build more government edifices and otherwise squander the people's hard-earned money. But they dismiss talk of returning the surpluses to taxpayers because it's contrary to their philosophy of, to borrow a phrase, spreading the wealth around.

Since this government growth is incremental, its ruinous cumulative effect isn't fully apparent until the economy goes south and government revenues plummet. But in bad times, politicians vigorously defend their empire as more necessary than ever and argue further expansion is imperative if they are to help the people hurt by recession. This inevitably leads to tax increases that, to borrow a phrase, fan the flames of recession. But after the economy rebounds and surpluses return, the tax increases remain because politicians need the revenues to scratch their insatiable spending itch.”

So what is the answer? Two things – accountability and decentralization.

1. People must hold politicians accountable for good government – not handouts but wise investments of the people’s money in infrastructure and emergency services.
2. Disaster response works best from the bottom up. You should prepare your family as best you can. Then rely on and work with a neighborhood CERT team. The team will coordinate with the Town or City. The City will get help from the State. The State will receive assistance from the Feds. As you move up the chain of command, response time will get slower and slower and less and less reliable.
3. Very few things work better from the top-down. FEMA is great for training and setting standards BEFORE disasters occur. It should establish universal communication frequencies. FEMA has selected the Incident Command System (ICS) as the national standard for emergency management.
4. BUT during the emergency, the central coordinators need to let the ground troops respond and make choices as local situations dictate. Before Katrina hit, Wal-Mart told its managers, “A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that’s available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing.”
5. Ideally the highest level in charge would coordinate resources and supplies but this failed miserably during Katrina. The Horwitz Wal-Mart study has recommendations for decentralized supply management.