Posted September 29, 2005

     Hurricane Rita became a Category Two storm before making landfall on the Texas-Louisiana border.  Even at that, Rita dumped a foot of rain, causing $6 billion in damages.  That is, of course, on top of everything that Katrina dealt us.  It would have been much worse if Rita had kept its Category Five intensity or had hit Houston dead center, as originally predicted.

     The stock markets are actually stable.  Gasoline has dropped about 20 cents per gallon.  Locally, regular gasoline is just under the $3 mark at this writing.  For some reason, everyone seems to be breathing a sigh of relief.  But there is a long, hard, expensive winter facing us; we still have eight weeks left in a very bruising hurricane season.  With an exciting Boston sports season taking place in beautiful fall weather, our built-in “forgetters” seem to be kicking in.  The Gulf Coast seems remote.

     But consider this: a major U.S. city - New Orleans – has been totally wiped out.  The surrounding areas, especially in southern Mississippi, have suffered even more, if that’s possible.  We are continuing to tap into our strategic petroleum reserve.  That’s what it’s for, of course, but Rita is the second storm this year that has triggered that response.  What would the right response be if that much destruction had been caused by an enemy attack?  Shouldn’t we demand a similar response when a force of nature causes such destruction?  Instead, it looks like “politics as usual”.

     In the opinion of South Boston Online, Americans and their elected officials just aren’t getting it.  Do you remember President Carter’s call to conserve energy?  “The moral equivalent of war”, he named it.  Whatever you thought of Carter, his energy program worked.  We conserved perhaps 5 or 10% compared to previous years.  And the world and its oil-producing nations noticed.

     At the federal level, except for Michael Brown’s resignation from FEMA, nothing seems to have changed.  Why hasn’t Michael Chertoff, the Home Security chief, been called on the carpet for allowing Brown to stay on at FEMA?  And where are the calls to conserve energy?

     We are preparing to spend what has now become countless billions of dollars on Gulf Coast recovery.  Are you comfortable with how it’ll be spent?  Already, a repaired levee in New Orleans’ Ninth District gave out again when the rains from Rita hit it.  What’s next?  And consider some arithmetic:  recovery from Katrina and Rita will cost ten times as much as that model of bureaucratic efficiency, our own Big Dig.

     South Boston Online is normally very optimistic, even upbeat, in our editorial positions.  But after Katrina and Rita, it is obvious our bureaucracies have let American down.  In our opinion, we are in a national emergency.  Where is the sense of urgency – the leadership and the mobilization – that we used to have?

     In the mean time, have you, as a private citizen, begun conserving energy?  At the rate we’re going, 2005 will see double-named hurricanes – Abigail Adams and Bill Bailey, followed by Charlie Chan – along with permanent $3 heating oil and gasoline.