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2005-09-03 - 9:34 a.m.

I�ve been trying to figure out how people with disabilities managed at all in Hurricane Katrina. I haven�t found a clear report on the Web about the fate of people with physical impairments or in nursing homes or hospitals. I�ve found some typically dramatic news stories that refer to flooded hospitals with the power cut off and the doctors resorting to pumping respirators manually as �absolute disaster areas�, but this isn�t particularly enlightening.

I see pictures of people climbing to their roof for helicopter rescue and it occurs to me that I just can�t do that anymore. I told N. I felt like I would have ended up dead and I�m not even as disabled as some people. She said that wouldn�t happen, that we�d have left town a long time before the storm when they said it maybe might not be safe. But feeling that planning ahead for the worst is the best protection seems a bit like blaming the victim.

I�ve come to realize that spontaneity is no longer a luxury I�m allowed. I can�t just go off somewhere spur-of-the-moment. I always leave a big cushion of travel time. I double-check train schedules obsessively. But what happens when the trains stop running? What happens if you can�t afford a car (like many people in New Orleans)? What happens if you�re too old or disabled to drive and you can�t get a ride?

There�s all this too-late, after-the-fact disaster relief effort now. But why isn�t FEMA the Federal Emergency Pro-action Agency? Perhaps evacuating people before disaster strikes doesn�t look as �heroic� on camera and doesn�t mesh as well with W�s desire to project a �manly� image. Maybe it�s politically dicier to allocate money for evacuation efforts where politicians in non-affected areas can claim that nothing would have happened anyway. It sure seems cheaper and more life-saving. But maybe the storm would have just stopped and there�d have been no need. What a shameless waste of taxpayer money that would have been.

Using my extensive knowledge of introductory statistics (yes, I took no less than three intro stats courses and dropped 2 at the last minute), this seems a question of Type I vs. Type II error. These are the chances of incorrectly accepting or rejecting the �null hypothesis�, the default assumption that things are okay � the presumption of innocence in the criminal justice system, your smoke detector not going off because it decides your house isn�t on fire.

A Type I error incorrectly rejects the null. This can be just annoying � your smoke detector blares because it incorrectly decided your house is on fire, when actually someone�s just smoking � or a travesty � a jury incorrectly decides an innocent man did the crime and sends him to jail. A Type II error incorrectly does not reject the null. This can be devastating � your smoke detector doesn�t go off, even though your house is on fire � or creepy � a jury incorrectly finds someone who actually did it not guilty.

Okay, I was going somewhere with this. Oh yeah. Usually, the null hypothesis is that natural disasters are not imminent. But FEMA (or FEPA or whatever) should be set to a high alertness, like an oversensitive smoke detector. Better that pro-active evacuation efforts are made unnecessarily than the house burn down and people die, as happened. This might be annoying and cost money, but I think it�s better than the alternative. But perhaps lives in New Orleans weren�t judged cost-effective to save. Perhaps a city where many citizens are poor and/or black doesn�t rank very highly in W�s estimation.

Does this make any sense? Have I lapsed into political blathering like so many blogs?

� 2005 Geoff Gladstone

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