Re: MD Katrina - Thousands Dead ?

From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 22:46:30 BST

  • Next message: Robin: "united british smokers"

    Dear Platt,

    You invoked 4 Sep 15:54 -0400 my response with:
    "A city (community) below sea level whose existence depends on keeping water
    out has a moral responsibility to prepare for a predictable calamity, just
    as the Dutch do in Holland. I would like to know from Wim Nusselder or
    anyone else familiar with the Netherlands what their plans are in case of
    breaches of their dikes and if those plans are widely known and understood
    by the populace.."

    In my understanding (but I don't remember learning al lot about it in
    school) Dutch government concentrates on preventing calamities rather than
    on planning how to act when they occur.
    At least since the 'Watersnood' in 1954 when half a province rather than
    half the country was flooded (the province of Zeeland, one of our 12
    provinces) dikes are built to withstand calamities that don't occur more
    often than once in a 1000 years (or something in that order of magnitude). I
    heard that the dikes protecting New Orleans were not strong enough to
    withstand calamities that occur on evarage once in 30 years.
    Dutch government does make calamity plans, but doesn't give its population a
    lot of information about it. We usually trust our government, so we don't
    care much (and don't live in fear). Now New Orleans is flooded, our
    government has publicly stated that they will check again whether 1) our
    dikes and 2) our calamity plans are adequate and so we go on trusting that
    they are doing what they should do (which they undoubtedly do not always
    do).
    Whether it is a moral responsibility may not be the most relevant.Whether
    voters accept politicians who do not seem to care enough about such risks in
    one or the other way is.

    With friendly greetings,

    Wim

    MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
    Mail Archives:
    Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
    Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
    MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net

    To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
    http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Sep 06 2005 - 00:04:55 BST