Failure has a hundred fathers, too

[muckefuck]

So far, mollpeartree has the best take I've seen on the Katrina blame game. I'll echo what she quotes systems management as saying about the way catastrophes happen. Even with events like Chernobyl, most of the process of fucking up consists of people making what seem to be the best decisions given the information available at the time. It's only in retrospect, with full awareness of what the consequences will be, that they take on the appearance of utter moronity.

Comments

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

Of course, it will remain the "best take you've seen" that I haven't, since it's a friends-only entry. But it makes sense about the process of fucking up - people usually try to make the best decisions possible. It's not like the current inhabitant of the White House is likely to wake up on a given morning and decide "It's probably not a good idea, but I think I'm going to just screw a bunch of folks in southeast Louisiana because they're poor & black and didn't vote for me anyway." Chernobyl, however, is a bad example - they tested safety systems to failure after removing other controls - any engineer who actually sat down and thought about it beforehand would have come to the conclusion that what they were about to do was a bad idea.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Whoops, my bad for not noticing the friend-locking. The summary, in few words, is "He can be blamed for not managing the response better, but focusing on earlier funding cuts is probably barking up the wrong tree." I agree, since (as bunj has pointed out in comments), flood control just isn't a short-term project.

Chernobyl was her example of case where it wasn't a series of understandable blunders but a situation where the big mistake was obvious from the onset. But, even there, most of the people involved weren't aware of it and followed steps that seemed reasonable to them.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

This analysis baffles me. My understanding was that efforts to improve the levees to withstand Category 5 storms have been attempted repeatedly over the last ten years but have been stymied by repeated funding cuts (by both the Clinton and Bush administrations). What is that if not an attempt at a long-term solution fucked up by short-sighted budgetary concerns?

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

But at some point, people also decide that certain risks are enough of a long-shot that it's a waste of time and resources dealing with them. I don't have enough data to make an informed decision, but given that there have only been three Category 5 hurricanes that have made landfall in the United States, it might not be a worthwhile expenditure of resources to improve the levees to withstand a Cat 5 storm. If you can make evacuation plans that will be valid for a Cat 3 or 4, they'll also be valid for a Cat 5. And given the devastation that a Cat 5 hurricane will bring with it, it's probably not worthwhile trying to "protect" New Orleans from a Cat 5 - no other coastal city is prepared to withstand a Cat 5 either.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

If you can make evacuation plans that will be valid for a Cat 3 or 4, they'll also be valid for a Cat 5.

If NOLA had such an evacuation plan in place then I would grant this point. But, evidently, they didn't. That's what we're witnessing right now: the failure to provide the ability to evacuate 100,000 citizens or more. That brings us back to the original issue: why were the city, the state and the nation not prepared to deal with an event that almost everyone agreed was inevitable on the long term?

I just don't think that the "blame game," as they put it, is without merit. At some point, someone made a decision that was badly, badly wrong. A lot of someones and a lot of decisions, in fact. I agree that there appears to have been a massive systemic failure that led to the present tragedy, but I reject the suggestion that there is no individual culpability at all, no one to be held accountable for making a terrible mistake that contributed to the thousands of deaths we see now.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I just don't think that the "blame game," as they put it, is without merit. At some point, someone made a decision that was badly, badly wrong. A lot of someones and a lot of decisions, in fact. I agree that there appears to have been a massive systemic failure that led to the present tragedy, but I reject the suggestion that there is no individual culpability at all, no one to be held accountable for making a terrible mistake that contributed to the thousands of deaths we see now

As a matter of justice, you're right. Practically, though, I wonder how likely it is that the search for responsibility will alight on the people actually responsible, rather than the least politically skilled. (How likely is it that there'll even be widespread agreement as to who's responsible when the dust clears?)

More to the point, I wonder how likely it is that such a process will produce better-qualified successors, rather than a new face with the same basic capabilities dealing with the same problems, hoping (as is likely) that there won't be another hundred-year flood during his tenure. twoeleven writes "i know a little about how industrial and aviation boo-boos are investigated and prevented. one thing folks emphasize is that if the investigators are believed to be looking for people to punish, it will be impossible to figure out what happened, and therefore difficult to prevent a repeat." I don't have his experience, but if he's right, then there may be a conflict between the pursuit of justice (assuming you can even get justice) and dealing effectively with the problems in the system.

(Of course, you could figure the latter's a lost cause anyway, and so it's worth at least exacting retribution. Given my current estimation of the likelihood of effective reform, I don't have a terribly strong argument against that position.)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I agree with pretty much everything you say, and think that twoeleven's argument is particularly well phrased. It's not so much that I think retribution is the next best thing; I just don't see that not trying to find out who (and what) are responsible for the disaster is any alternative at all. I don't have a good answer for how to ensure that the process targets the guilty rather than the politically unskilled.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

The original Times-Picayune editorial only mentions the last four years, and that was the position I was questioning. I also question how long-term a solution the levees are. Levees seem particularly stupid in Louisiana, where they continuously sink. Meanwhile, for decades marshland has been disappearing along the gulf coast and Lake Pontchartrain. When levees break, they do so dramatically (as we have seen) and are difficult to repair. But many people have a vested interest in the levee system, going back over a century. It's not about spending the money, it's about spending the money in the right areas. Sadly, as other comments have suggested, any rational rethinking of policy has a good chance of being drowned out by a flood of partisan blame.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I've unlocked the entry.

(I'm sort of questioning the whole friends-locking thing anyway, might drop it.)