Sagepaper

In a time like this, it probably seems inappropriate to be critical of heroes saving lives. In fact, I don't criticize them, but I do have one major complaint about the Coast Guard's search and rescue efforts.

They are trained to rescue individuals from all sorts of hazardous places. Sometimes, there are many individuals to rescue. They have rescued over a thousand individuals on Monday. I'm grateful and impressed.

The problem is that a population needs to be saved, not individuals. A reporter asked a Coast Guard officer how they decide who lives and who dies, since it will not be possible to rescue most of the remaining survivors. With a sorrowful burden in his voice, he said they go around looking for signs of life, and save the ones that come to their attention.

During that interview, the most sickening thing was the discussion of people who have been in unventilated attics long enough that they are running out of air and suffocating. They know this from ones they reached just in time. When they find a family in an unventilated attic, they do what they are trained to do. They chop a large hole in the roof, and begin bringing people out of the hole, carefully, and then securing them in some manner to a line on the helicopter. When they are safely in the chopper, they lower the line for the next person.

It takes a long time to rescue a family of four. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are many other families like the one above. Emergency workers know that people are still dying, and little can be done against this magnitude of cataclysm. They haven't started thinking outside the box, yet, though. Standard Operating Procedures are not fully applicable.

In the time it took to do a photo-op rescue at one house, many families could have been saved. Mind you, I am not accusing anyone there, journalists included, of trying to turn search and rescue into a photo-op. You can see from aerial photography that it is easy to tell roofs which have no ventilation from those that do.

I think the Coast Guard should lower a man onto a roof, have him chop a hole, then raise him and MOVE ON. Ventilate as many insufficient shelters as possible. That buys time. When they chop the holes, or at some later time, they can drop-off water and rations. That buys lots of time!

I know it is not normal for us to consider it acceptable for a family to remain in a half-flooded attic with scant provisions. Our normal, wealthy, inclination is to take them somewhere that they can shower, put on fresh clothes, and call their out-of-state relatives. This is not a normal situation. I do not consider it acceptable to do a full, civilized rescue airlift while families who have survived so much, for so long, suffocate.

I have emailed everyone I can think of about this. I hope someone knows someone, who knows someone. Rescue operations have been suspended during the dark. It is too dangerous to move around in pitch black with the entire utility infrastructure in chaos. It is my hope that, if this is a good idea, it could save people tomorrow. Many who were suffocating today might have already perished.

Water is rising in New Orleans. That means there are structures which are ventilated now, but won't be tomorrow. Some people now even have top floor windows open and are not yet in attics. I truly hope they will be able to save a higher percentage of survivors starting in the morning than was possible today.

If this sounds to you like an idea that might be worth the attention of some extremely busy people, please try to get the message through. I know I am not the only second-guesser in the country, and they don't have time to waste listening to every suggestion thought-up across this great and troubled land.

I have a lot of education about emergency management, at all scales. The real take-home message here is they must think outside the box. They are thinking at too low a scale. Some are thinking at too high a scale. You cannot save lives one grateful girl with a teddy-bear at a time. You cannot save lives if you are thinking about oil production.

Don't get me wrong on that. I certainly hope people are thinking about it. More to the point, we have just lost one of our high-value strategic cities. Because it is a port, it is a target accessible to some of our less well-equipped enemies. I fully expect that the Pentagon has a complete plan on the shelf for dealing with the loss of New Orleans. (They have complex plans for the loss of each strategic city, and for every combination of strategic cities.)