Disasters Waiting to Happen: An American Tradition Repeats Itself in Lahaina
Once again, the warning signs for a tragedy were clear for all to see; once again, our leaders fiddled and chose to wait for death and destruction to descend, because it's just plain easier that way.
Pearl Harbor. 9/11. Katrina. Sandy Hook. Paradise. COVID-19. Now Lahaina.
The more things change in America, the more one thing stays the same. Those entrusted with the most sacred of responsibilities — to keep us and our loved ones safe — too often fail miserably.
It doesn’t matter if the cause of the disaster is man or nature, or a combination thereof. Doesn’t matter if it’s war, terrorism, hurricanes, mass shootings, a pandemic or wildfires. Time again, America refuses to act to prevent disaster from striking, preferring to wait until after innocent lives are lost (and sometimes not even then) to take actions that should have been obvious all along.
All because we live in a society that never rewards those who prevent the disasters that we never learn of; it’s so much easier to test fate, and often nature, hope for the best, and accept the worst. And when the worst comes, as it so often does, the finger pointing begins.
The wildfire that destroyed Lahaina on the island of Maui last week was entirely preventable. Just as the destruction of the California wildfires was entirely preventable. The facts trickling out of Hawaii make that all so clear: an electric utility that, like PG&E in California before it, failed to harden its system, underground its lines and shut off power when the the threat of disaster grew ever greater. The decision long ago to cover the island with non-native grasses and vegetation that easily dried out and fanned the flames once the match, or electrical transformer, was lit. An emergency warning system that was supposed to be state of the art, and able to handle any contingency, from war to volcanic eruptions, that proved inadequate to the task of sounding the alarm (literally, the sirens didn’t go off) and giving people the time they needed to escape the flames.
And yes, climate change, too, but that’s the easy cop-out by those who want to distract and deflect from their own roles in causing this disaster. The fact human-induced climate change makes natural disasters more likely should be all the more reason to act preemptively to protect people when they occur. Just as our gun-obsessed culture should make us more vigilant about using the limited tools at our disposal to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, and prevent them from acting when they do.
But in our politically polarized culture, too often the decision is between either or, instead of all of the above. Climate change or forest management. Tougher gun laws or tighter security. Holding government accountable or holding industry accountable. People may be able to walk and chew gum at the same times, but acknowledging that complex problems have complex causes and complex solutions is just too much for too many of us to process.
So don’t let those in charge in Hawaii get away with pinning this all on climate change, just as we can’t let the climate denialists get away with arguing that what we’ve done to the climate has nothing to do with once-in-a-century natural disasters that now seem to happen every year (I don’t care if they’re Democrats or Republicans).
Yes, just as with past preventable disasters, in this case there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Justifiably blaming the Japanese military for Pearl Harbor couldn’t obscure the failures of American officials to protect Oahu from attack in 1941, when, as the definitive accounting of the disaster made clear, “at dawn we slept.”
When it comes to preventing preventable disasters, America never seems to have woken up in the 80 years since.
The responsibility of Islamic terrorism for 9/11 doesn’t change the fact that American officials, no one else, were responsible for the porous airport security, and multiple intelligence failures, that made it possible for such a disaster to occur. The warning signs were clear as day for years leading up to that fateful day.
Hurricane Katrina never would have been the storm of the century had it not been for the fatal flaws in the levees and human engineering of the Mississippi River that wiped out wetlands and created the conditions for New Orleans to flood catastrophically.
The fact that COVID-19 originated in China doesn’t excuse the fact that our supplies of personal protective equipment and contact tracing capabilities were woefully inadequate when the virus landed here. We knew for decades that it wasn’t a matter of whether another Spanish flu-type pandemic would arrive; it was only when.
And while most other advanced nations take preemptive actions to prevent mass shootings the likes of which we have seen over and over in our country, and respond swiftly with new measures when they do occur to address the conditions that led to them, America can’t get beyond “thoughts and prayers.”
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those were our foundational principles. But our commitment to those pillars, starting with “life,” has proven time and again to be a sturdy as the New Orleans levees before Katrina, as robust as our airport security before 9/11, and as shaky as an above-ground power line subjected to hurricane-force winds.
Time and again, we wait for people to die horrific deaths rather than heed the warning signs and do what needs to be done to maximize the chances of preventing a disaster in the first place. And we all know why. It’s simple. It’s just plain easier that way, and the odds are always in our favor that we won’t be the unlucky one in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No, not all disasters can be prevented with vigilance and preemptive action; and surely some have been that we’ll never know about. There are some in positions of power who do truly care about saving lives, and doing whatever needs to be done to accomplish that, politics or bottom lines be damned. But far too often, they are the exception rather than the rule.
Disasters waiting to happen while leaders fiddle like Nero in Rome. It’s the American way.