Full Circle Associates

"In an emergency, think: Cheap. Simple. Ubiquitous.

Perhaps cellphone SMS messages that go directly to a central wiki that is hosted by an large easy-to-remember-even-if-I-never-imagined-I-would-be-in-a-major-disaster organization whether it is Red Cross or Google?

What would have been helpful in the tsunami was a central phone number everyone has memorized to call in case of emergencies. I don't know if they have 911 in other countries. After the tsunami, people (those on boats, and high ground) still had cellphones. But no one knew who to call.

When countries make war, whether against regimes, leaders, behaviors, or belief systems (usually isms), it is always against something other than ourselves.

As a country we rebounded from 9/11 with a War on Terror. How will we rebound from Katrina, a tragedy the depths of which we have barely begun to plumb?

9/11 killed thousands in an instant. We also knew quickly who was lost and who wasn't. With Katrina, we're barely beginning to know who's missing and who isn't. Our federal government, near as I can tell, had no plan to match loved ones separated in a disaster. The federal response to Katrina was (and in many ways remains) as disastrous as the hurricane and the flooding that drowned New Orleans. Citizens in numbers beyond counting are still waiting for help. And dying.

When we drain the drowned districts, we won't bulldoze them, damaged beyond recovery as they may be. Not right away. First we will need to search for the dead, finding hundreds, or perhaps thousands, who died in a nightmare of unrequited longing for help, praying to God for his able children to aid his unable ones.

Katrina was what we are sure to avoid calling an 'act of God'. Yesterday my eight year old son asked how God could make something like Katrina happen. Not 'let.' Make.

Good question.

Ever notice that's how people answer questions they're not prepared to answer? Good Question, they say.

While we're not answering that one, we will face the question New Orleans' survivors will ask, over and over again. Why weren't we prepared? Why didn't we do more?

Thus will begin our War on Error.

Whatever else it causes, this war will change national priorities. Also social and personal ones.

With nobody but God and ourselves to blame, and with nobody but ourselves to help, we will put people first. And we will do our best to protect our civilization from acts of God for which people must be prepared.

The next hard question is, Which 'we'? Our federal, state and local governments? Or ourselves? Or both, together, in some new way?

Back during the last presidential campaign, Phil Windley made a useful distinction between the politics of elections and the politics of governance. The latter, he told me, was what mattered most. In governance, he said, the distinctions between parties are, while important, also irrelevant to the most basic concerns of citizens, which are about making sure the water runs and the roads get fixed.

Phil also told me about the emerging Net-based ecosystem of governance, in which government organizations were developing fresh and highly symbiotic relationships with Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGOs. In fact, some NGOs were one-person operations — individuals obsessed with, say, auto safety or water quality.

When the blaming stops and the fixing truly begins, we'll need more than our government organizations to step forward. As citizens, and as groups of citizens, will need to do what government simply can't do.

Yes, we need bureaucracies. But bureaucracies can't imagine anything. Including predictable acts of God.

People, on the other hand, can.

In the War on Error, people will need to take the lead. Governments will need to follow or get out of the way."

."There are a few association blogs (as in formally affiliated with an organization, as opposed to the rabble of association staffers/consultants/writers who blog, me included) who are writing substantially about their members’ experience with and reaction to the Katrina disaster. Here are the ones I have spotted so far. (See the post for the listing).

"Helping people one at a time.By sending donations directly to the families that need them, where they’re living. Right now. That’s the goal. In the last 18 hours, people across the country have pledged to send hundreds of donations immediately and directly, to Katrina victims at their temporary housing. If this is your first time here: we’ve set up a clearinghouse to connect the people who want to make donations with the people in need at their temporary housing.We want to avoid what happened in 9/11, where there was an abundance of donations bottle-necked in distribution centers."