Flynn: U.S. not prepared for the next 'big one'

[rodeodance]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/20/flynn.commentary/index.html?section=cnn_topstories&eref=yahoo

Flynn: U.S. not prepared for the next 'big one'

POSTED: 1:38 p.m. EST, February 20, 2007

More on CNN TV: Find out how the U.S. may be living on "The Edge of Disaster." A special report on "Anderson Cooper 360," at 10 p.m. Tuesday ET.
By Stephen Flynn


Editor's note: Stephen Flynn is the author of "The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation." A retired U.S. Coast Guard officer, Flynn is a homeland security expert and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Americans have failed to learn the most important lesson of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina: We need to make building resiliency from within our borders as urgent a priority as confronting dangers from without.

There would have been thousands of more victims in New York on September 11 if the city had not made significant new investments in emergency management and if the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center, had not conducted regular fire drills, improved the emergency lighting and applied photoluminescent markings on stair treads and handrails in the stairwells of the twin towers. It was New York's investment in resiliency after the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing that made that tragic day in 2001 far less tragic.

Today, New Orleans would have long ago recovered from Hurricane Katrina had the city's flood control system not been so badly neglected. But throughout the 1990s, the funds that might have been used to repair and strengthen the levees and flood walls were routinely bled off for other projects. In 2004, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asked for $22.5 million to make emergency repairs to the storm protection system in New Orleans, the White House cut that figure to $3.9 million. It was New Orleans' lack of resiliency in the face of a foreseeable natural disaster that produced a catastrophe that has practically destroyed a great American city.

Building resiliency requires three things. First, we must anticipate likely man-made or natural disasters. Second, we must be willing to take prudent actions in advance of these disasters that lower our exposure to their potentially catastrophic consequences. Third, we must be able to mobilize a speedy response and recovery after disasters occur.

[Orrex]

1. I submit that we're not ready for the previous "big one"

Or the one before that, or the one before that...