PhilPaine.com

I just saw an old movie from the ear­ly 1980’s called Tes­ta­ment. It was an attempt to show the lives of the peo­ple of a small Amer­i­can town after a nuclear war. It’s a very sim­ple film. In it, the nuclear war hap­pens off-stage. It por­trays a Cal­i­for­nia town, far from tar­gets. As it grad­u­al­ly los­es con­tact with the rest of the world, its cit­i­zens do the best they can to main­tain their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty, while radi­a­tion sucks away their lives. The film was made with respect for its audi­ence. The peo­ple in it seem to come from anoth­er Amer­i­ca, one where you would expect that peo­ple would do their best, even in the most hope­less con­ceiv­able sit­u­a­tion. A few exploiters, a few look-out-for-num­ber-one ass­holes turn up, to be sure, but most peo­ple are ready and will­ing to behave like free and civ­i­lized men and women, even when faced with this ulti­mate test.

I rec­og­nized the film’s basic truth, because I knew those peo­ple. Decent, hard-work­ing Amer­i­cans, who gen­er­al­ly treat­ed each oth­er with mutu­al respect. There were mil­lions of them, across the coun­try. The film was set in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, a place I had lived, and knew well. A few years lat­er, there was a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake, there. Those same kind of peo­ple were every­where, behav­ing with both com­pe­tence and decency.

The part of Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, near where the most dra­mat­ic dam­age occurred, was a slum, home to low income African-Amer­i­cans liv­ing in drea­ry hous­ing projects. A long seg­ment of the dou­ble-deck­er Cypress free­way, run­ning through that neigh­bour­hood, col­lapsed. Com­muters, most­ly sub­ur­ban­ites dri­ving to a base­ball game, were crushed between the two con­crete decks. Many died, and many injured sur­vivors were trapped in cars which resem­bled so many squashed beer cans.

With­in min­utes of the quake, teams of ordi­nary cit­i­zens, who lived in the near­est hous­ing project, ran to the wrecked free­way. In the words of fire­men who arrived after­wards, “dozens of extra­or­di­nar­i­ly brave cit­i­zens climbed shat­tered sup­port columns and – hold­ing onto curled steel rein­force­ment rods that had been bent and exposed by the fear­some col­lapse – made their way along the top deck. Dust and smoke rose straight up into the warm after­noon air. These brave peo­ple cov­ered their faces with hand­ker­chiefs and rags for pro­tec­tion from cement dust and the acrid smoke of many burn­ing auto­mo­biles, and went from car to car to search for sur­vivors. Strong earth­quake after­shocks rocked the tee­ter­ing, inse­cure free­way. One of these cit­i­zen res­cuers yelled, ‘I need some­thing to pry the door open! He’s alive…alive…he heard me!’ as the first Oak­land fire­fight­ers arrived.” [1] When the respon­si­ble pub­lic author­i­ties were called upon to do their tasks, they worked with an effi­cien­cy and com­pe­tence that segued smooth­ly into the spon­ta­neous response of the ordi­nary citizens.

These were the Amer­i­cans that I knew and respect­ed, and whom I was proud to have as neigh­bours to my own coun­try, Cana­da. I under­stood how these peo­ple thought and behaved, because they were exact­ly like the peo­ple I am sur­round­ed with, here at home, in Toron­to. We, too, had our social fab­ric test­ed by a disaster.in our west­ern sub­urb of Mis­sis­sauga, a decade before.

A train car­ry­ing extreme­ly dan­ger­ous, tox­ic chem­i­cals derailed and spilled its car­go, which explod­ed and sent a mas­sive fire­ball into the air, vis­i­ble a hun­dred kilo­me­ters away, in the Unit­ed States. It was a freak dis­as­ter, work­ing out in the worst pos­si­ble way, It neces­si­tat­ed the rapid evac­u­a­tion of more than 200,000 peo­ple, with­out warn­ing. This was the largest peace­time evac­u­a­tion in North Amer­i­can his­to­ry until Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na hit New Orleans. Yet it pro­ceed­ed swift­ly and effi­cient­ly. Every cit­i­zen did their part, and every offi­cial did theirs. Police, fire­fight­ers, med­ical experts, and polit­i­cal office hold­ers quick­ly arrived to meet with tech­ni­cal experts. The pres­ence of large tankers of chlo­rine gas, col­lapsed into mate­r­i­al that was poten­tial­ly explo­sive, meant that an entire city would have to be evac­u­at­ed imme­di­ate­ly. Chlo­rine gas was seep­ing every­where, and col­lect­ing into pock­ets that crawled through the streets like dead­ly slugs. As fire­fight­ers bat­tled the fire, a vio­lent explo­sion, caused by a propane tanker blow­ing up, show­ered the sur­round­ing area with large chunks of met­al. Two more explo­sions occurred with­in 15 min­utes. Both were BLEVES (boil­ing liq­uid expand­ing vapor explosions).

Chem­i­cal experts were pulled out from indus­tries and uni­ver­si­ties to devise ways of elim­i­nat­ing the chlo­rine threat. Police, fire­men, and politi­cians, all on the spot, worked out the evac­u­a­tion plan, which had to be revised and refined dur­ing the course the dis­as­ter, as the pre­vail­ing wind shift­ed. Those liv­ing clos­est to the cen­ter of dan­ger were evac­u­at­ed first, and plans were for­mu­lat­ed to move, house and feed them. Police and vol­un­teers sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly combed the streets, mak­ing sure every cit­i­zen was wak­ened and alert­ed. Peo­ple were sort­ed by whether they had their own trans­porta­tion or not, and whether they had friends or rel­a­tives that could put them up. For those who didn’t, vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions in near­by towns set up recep­tion cen­ters, beds, hot foods, care for babies and small chil­dren, which were ready by the time they got there. The provin­cial Ambu­lance Co-ordi­nat­ing Cen­tre sent a gen­er­al call for ambu­lances in the sur­round­ing area. One hun­dred and thir­ty-nine ambu­lances and 300 ambu­lance work­ers arrived in the area with­in six hours of the acci­dent from as far south as Nia­gara Falls (130 km) and as far east as Kingston (275 km). They were need­ed pri­mar­i­ly to move hos­pi­tal patients. Three urban tran­sit sys­tems had bus­es oper­a­tional to move peo­ple with­in min­utes. Cit­i­zens left their hous­es and apart­ments, in full con­fi­dence that there would be no loot­ing, and that their pos­ses­sions would be pro­tect­ed. Mer­chants left with­out any fear for their stores. There was no looting.

There was, in fact, no crime at all, as most of the city’s habit­u­al crim­i­nals were engaged, like every­one else, in being evac­u­at­ed, or doing vol­un­teer work. Only one sin­gle human being was injured. The city’s may­or, Hazel McCal­lion, sprained her ankle while super­vis­ing oper­a­tions. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, she is still the city’s may­or, three decades later.

The fires were out in three days, but chlo­rine pock­ets remained a dan­ger, and it was near­ly a week before every­one could return to their homes. When it became clear that the evac­u­a­tion cen­ters were stress­ful places for many peo­ple, local busi­ness­es rent­ed and donat­ed thou­sands of hotel and motel rooms to take the pres­sure off them.

While the armed forces always stood at the ready, they were not deployed. Ordi­nary civ­il orga­ni­za­tion and resources, and ordi­nary good­will and com­pe­tence among the cit­i­zen­ry were all that was nec­es­sary to deal with the crisis.

So you see, I know how my neigh­bours will respond when they are con­front­ed with dis­as­ter, and I sleep sound­ly in my lit­tle inner-city apart­ment, con­fi­dent that in an emer­gency, rea­son and com­mon sense will pre­vail. Minor cri­sis, such as the big north­east­ern black­out of 2003, con­firmed this (At most inter­sec­tions, civil­ians spon­ta­neous­ly vol­un­teered to direct traf­fic. Since police know this will hap­pen, they keep a sup­ply of flu­o­res­cent jack­ets and hand-held stop signs to give to them, then make sure they are relieved by oth­er vol­un­teers after an hour. I learned this, because I was one of the spon­ta­neous vol­un­teers). For the most part, I am sur­round­ed by fair and com­pe­tent peo­ple. I know, from day-to-day knowl­edge and inquiry, that these co-oper­a­tive and ratio­nal cus­toms and val­ues are here for me, ready to spring into action when they are need­ed. These are the val­ues of free human beings.

That’s why the dis­as­ter of Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na, which required the first North Amer­i­can evac­u­a­tion to exceed the Mis­sis­sauga one in scale, both dis­gust­ed and fright­ened me. Those ratio­nal cus­toms and val­ues were not there. Where were the Amer­i­cans that I had known and respect­ed? The com­pe­tent, resilient, co-oper­a­tive and irre­press­ibly opti­mistic Amer­i­cans that all of us in Cana­da had known, and some­times envied, for the cen­tu­ry and a half of our his­to­ry, seemed to have van­ished. What hap­pened to them?

The chaos and incom­pe­tence that char­ac­ter­ized the Kat­ri­na dis­as­ter was more than just a demon­stra­tion of the per­fidy of George W. Bush, Jr.’s pres­i­den­cy. That aspect of it is well doc­u­ment­ed. We all know that the Unit­ed States is ruled by a nest of cock­roach­es, with George W. Bush as Chief Cock­roach. They not only neglect­ed, but vir­tu­al­ly dis­man­tled the city’s civ­il defens­es, sab­o­tag­ing efforts to main­tain the lev­ees, in order to sat­is­fy patron­age inter­ests. They turned FEMA into a use­less orga­ni­za­tion, by destroy­ing its admin­is­tra­tive auton­o­my and then pack­ing it with incom­pe­tent polit­i­cal hacks. They dis­missed the dis­as­ter, of which they had received ample warn­ing from pro­fes­sion­als, as unim­por­tant, until pub­lic anger forced them to give it atten­tion. But why did this come as a sur­prise to any­one? We’re talk­ing about the hood­lums who attempt­ed to sell con­trol of America’s port facil­i­ties to the Per­sian Gulf princes who financed and shel­tered the 9/11 ter­ror­ists. We’re talk­ing about the same hood­lums who had already hand­ed over most of America’s wealth to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Bei­jing, and the hood­lums who had come to pow­er by sub­vert­ing America’s democ­ra­cy. Why would any­one imag­ine that such crea­tures would take care of them in an emergency?