Et tu FEMA?
Having a couple of days off has allowed me to spend some time watching the various news channels where, of course, Katrina is the story. I don’t have words to describe some of the images of destruction from the Gulf Coast - it is just tragic. I was initially stunned by what I perceived as a lack of preparedness but then what do you do to get ready for a storm of that magnitude? I will admit, I was critical of the initial response but then Nick Faldo put it in perspective during last weekend’s coverage of the Deutsche Bank - the area affected by Katrina is around 90,000 square miles which is roughly the size of Great Britain. This isn’t like a tornado that destroys a few cities, this is country sized. How the heck do you prepare for that?
Anyway, I was pretty surprised that the U.S. Copyright Office was requiring IE 6 but I was flabbergasted to hear that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was requiring Katrina survivors to use IE 6 to apply for aid online! Wow, what the heck is going on here? I can see something like “must use modern browsers” but you *must* use IE 6? Here’s the Computerworld article on it as well as some responses from Paul Murphy and a somewhat related piece by David Berlind. Frankly, FEMA is pretty busy these days so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were just trying to get something up fast so people could start applying for the aid they desperately need. Of course with the general lack of power in that area, I suspect most people will use other means to contact FEMA…
It’s very encouraging to see the outpouring of support from across the nation and the world - if you haven’t given yet, here’s a link to the Red Cross. I pray we learn from this disaster but I’m dismayed by all the political chatter over assigning blame and independent investigations. I know this is naive but I hope the pols don’t turn this into some kind of wedge issue in the next set of elections.
Update: here’s some more commentary.