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I suspect that there is a direct connection between this phenomenon and the US being a nation that despite all of its resources and know-how was not only unprep

I suspect that there is a direct connection between this phenomenon and the US being a nation that despite all of its resources and know-how was not only unprepared but apparently fundamentally unwilling to handle a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. (Americans have apparently already forgotten, or maybe never even realised, what an enormous international embarrassment that was.)

greedo 11y ago
Sure. Just like France, despite all of its resources and know how has a heatwave in 2003 that kills over 14 thousand people. Europeans have apparently already forgotten, or maybe never even realized, what an enormous embarrassment that was for a "modern" country in the 21st Century.
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  It's a little more complex than that. The French (European) heatwave had a lot of long held social and family structures that contributed to it, from a tendency of the elderly to live by themselves, often disconnected to one degree or another from family, most of the country was in 'holiday' mode in August, and other things. The embarrassing thing about Katrina wasn't that it happened (though the flooding was preventable), or the deaths. It was that -the agency specifically designed to deal with the AFTERMATH, and given billions of dollars to do so- was so spectacularly incompetent, from the top down (Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown, a lawyer friend of Bush's put in charge of FEMA who by the time of Katrina had no more emergency management experience than the NIMS course you and I can take online for free), that they actively made things worse in many cases, not better.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Then they spent billions on loans to rebuild - and no rebuilding was done, and nobody paid back the loans.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Well yes, that was an embarrassment for France. The only mitigating factor was that such a heat wave was a virtually unknown phenomenon, whereas hurricanes are well-understood and by contrast.

greedo 11y ago

Sure. Just like France, despite all of its resources and know how has a heatwave in 2003 that kills over 14 thousand people. Europeans have apparently already forgotten, or maybe never even realized, what an enormous embarrassment that was for a "modern" country in the 21st Century.

FireBeyond 11y ago
It's a little more complex than that. The French (European) heatwave had a lot of long held social and family structures that contributed to it, from a tendency of the elderly to live by themselves, often disconnected to one degree or another from family, most of the country was in 'holiday' mode in August, and other things. The embarrassing thing about Katrina wasn't that it happened (though the flooding was preventable), or the deaths. It was that -the agency specifically designed to deal with the AFTERMATH, and given billions of dollars to do so- was so spectacularly incompetent, from the top down (Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown, a lawyer friend of Bush's put in charge of FEMA who by the time of Katrina had no more emergency management experience than the NIMS course you and I can take online for free), that they actively made things worse in many cases, not better.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Then they spent billions on loans to rebuild - and no rebuilding was done, and nobody paid back the loans.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Well yes, that was an embarrassment for France. The only mitigating factor was that such a heat wave was a virtually unknown phenomenon, whereas hurricanes are well-understood and by contrast.