Category 5: The Story of Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America's Most Violent Hurricane

14. Reconnecting

CHAPTER 14 Reconnecting Ahurricane, in and of itself, may or may not be a disaster. The same goes for avalanches, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or blizzards. Mother Nature often unleashes violence that does not undermine society (a ›ash ›ood in an uninhabited canyon, for instance, or a typhoon over the ocean). Even an airplane crash that claims dozens of lives can more properly be described as an accident than a disaster. An essential characteristic of a disaster is its social disruption—the inability of the affected society to continue on as before. The ‹rst thing that usually fails is communications. When Camille threatened Louisiana and Mississippi—which were both slow-onset disasters—the half day’s warning gave police and ‹re departments time to test emergency generators, change batteries in radios, alert emergency workers about rendezvous sites, and so on. In the rapidonset disaster in Virginia, no warning or no preparation was possible. In all three places, however, the ability of relevant social units to perform was undermined almost immediately by the arrival of the storm. Several days would pass before communications would be reestablished among the critical public agencies, and many of the victims would be lucky to have their phone service restored even a month after the disruption. Even as communication is failing, its importance is increasing. Word needs to reach the right people about a wide variety of unanticipated collateral effects of the crisis: ‹res, escaped animals, victims trapped in strange places, chemical spills—and the list of possible bad surprises grows with the severity of the event. The more urgent the need for communications, however, the more likely it is that the communications infrastructure itself has been wrecked. 194 The second thing disrupted is transportation. Louisiana and Mississippi had the bene‹t of enough advance warning to organize an evacuation, and their local leaders knew, at least in general, what problems to expect in keeping traf‹c ›owing. In Virginia, there was no evacuation because there was no warning. Road and bridge failures during the storm trapped and isolated survivors in all three regions, but it was in rural Virginia that the destruction of the transportation infrastructure had the most severe social impacts. Louisiana and Mississippi were accessible by sea, so heavy equipment and supplies could eventually arrive that way; Mississippi had several airports that were relatively undamaged; and most of the road blockages near the Gulf Coast were due to trees and other debris, which, albeit with dif‹culty, could at least be bulldozed aside. In Nelson County and neighboring parts of Virginia, however, complete infrastructural failures were more widespread and more severe, with more than two hundred miles of roads and ninety-‹ve bridges washed out or heavily damaged. Without functional roads, the delivery of essentials such as health care and safe water was seriously hampered. All three regions had to cope with additional hazards in the aftermath of the storm. The coastal victims were plagued by mosquitoes, snakes, and ‹re ants. Sanitation was a major issue (as Jackson Balch indelicately testi‹ed at the hearings, what goes in one end eventually comes out the other). Failures of the levees in Louisiana left victims vulnerable to a follow-up ›ood should another hurricane happen along. Nelson County lay exposed to a similar risk: with its streams clogged with debris and many silted up and wandering out of their natural channels, even a modest follow-up rainstorm might cause serious ›ooding. Compounding matters, all three disaster zones had chemical hazards that needed to be addressed: leaking drums of toxic fertilizers, petrochemical tanks, and so on. Although water was everywhere , virtually none of it was safe to drink. The most emotionally dif‹cult task in the aftermath of any disaster is the recovery and identi‹cation of the dead. When, in normal times, authorities are noti‹ed of an accidental death or a missing person, search and recovery responsibilities fall under the of‹cial duties of institutionalized police and ‹re units. In a disaster, however, where hundreds of people die simultaneously and collateral infrastructure failures confound the searches, there is no way to accomplish the 195 Reconnecting grim task of hunting for bodies without teams of volunteers. Formal administrative structures give way to ad hoc groups whose coordination presents novel problems and whose effectiveness can be highly variable. In Mississippi, the availability of the Seabee base was a big advantage , as was the fortuitous presence...