National Guard disasters

Following Andrew in 1992, social service agencies - along with FEMA and the National Guard - fed, clothed, and sheltered the victims. The Guard from several states evacuated victims and policed against looters; it provided tents, water, and food; military trucks hauled debris cleared by Guardsmen, and carried workers and materials to rebuild Florida.

Social service agencies provided emergency food, clothing, and shelter - often as far as 100 miles away from the destruction since utilities were non-existent in the hurricane areas. Although FEMA was slow to react under the Bush I Administration, it eventually provided significant assistance, and then was reorganised under the Clinton Administration to provide a more efficient response. Under Bush II, its efficiency is much less.

The Pennsylvania National Guard has enough manpower, according to Lieutenant Colonel Chris Cleaver, with only 3,000 of its 20,000 member force currently deployed. However, most Guard units in other states have manpower and equipment shortages because of overseas deployment. Most state Guard units should be able to handle the immediate evacuation and recovery according to Guard officers in several states. However, long term recovery will probably be a problem.

Because of deployments not only to Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to Bosnia, Kosovo and Guantánamo Bay, the South Carolina National Guard is “short-handed”, according to Lieutenant Colonel Pete Brooks. That state’s Guard is operating with less than 75 per cent strength. Most of the Guard’s trucks, bulldozers, and heavy equipment are in Iraq, according to Brooks.

Because of current overseas deployment, with much of the remaining Guardsmen on active alert, the North Carolina National Guard is at half-strength, according to Senior Airman Lyndsey Leffel, the Guard’s public affairs specialist.

Senior officers in the New Jersey, Virginia, and North Carolina National Guards agree their manpower and equipment can handle the initial problems. Long-term recovery will drain their states’ resources.

More than one-third of all combat forces in Iraq are the citizen-soldiers of the National Guard. With increasing demands in a war that doesn’t seem to have any conclusion, the demands upon the Reserves and Guard are likely to increase significantly.

Governors can request assistance from Guard units in other states. But, with wide-spread destruction expected, states will have to hire private companies. The cost to do the work the National Guard could be several hundred million dollars.

The Red Cross disaster relief fund is in “a very precarious situation,” according to Kelly Donaghy, Red Cross spokesman. “We like to have at least US$56 million on hand,” she says. “We have almost nothing.” The Red Cross estimates it would need “at least US$100 million” for recovery from Isabel.

Funds donated to the Red Cross for the 9-11 Fund may not be spent on anything but 9-11 victims. All social service agencies which normally would be involved with disaster relief have had to do with less as unemployment and a declining economy under the current administration, combined with the largest national deficit in more than a decade, has affected charitable contributions.

When a substantial minority of Americans opposed sending several hundred thousand soldiers to Iraq and argued that the costs of war would haunt us for decades, they were branded unpatriotic. When they argued that the Department of Homeland Security was more of a public relations ploy than any serious attempt to co-ordinate homeland security, they were branded traitors.

Iraq, as we now know, even under a ruthless thug, didn’t harbour the terrorists the President claimed, it had no weapons of mass destruction, and it posed no imminent threat to the security of the American people.

But, a Category 3 hurricane does pose an imminent threat, as do forest fires, blizzards, and floods. Local and state emergency management agencies, under influence by the federal government, and with significant financial incentive, have redirected much of their focus to anti-terrorism training and prevention. The Department of Homeland Security, instead of concentrating its resources upon a disaster that can kill several thousand Americans and leave several hundred thousand injured and homeless, is still trying to figure out why it can’t stop people with box cutters from boarding airplanes in America.

While we can’t put natural disasters into the same category as an al-Qaida attack, they both present imminent dangers. Death and destruction by a Category 3-4 hurricane is more imminent than an attack by Iraq ever was and could leave more death and destruction than 9-11.