The Flood and the Poor

I guess this falls into the arguably-premature category of lessons to be drawn from Katrina, and perhaps it's obvious to all.  But watching the horrors on TV, one must be struck by a point David Brooks makes in his N.Y. Times column today:

Hurricanes come in two waves. First comes the rainstorm, and then comes what the historian John Barry calls the "human storm" - the recriminations, the political conflict and the battle over compensation. Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. . . .

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

The poor not only face more pervasive challenges in daily life; they tend to suffer more severe complications spinning out from natural disasters (as opposed to the disasters themselves, which fall upon all).  I expect there will be discussion in future days of why -- granting that all are suffering greatly in N.O. and Mississippi -- the devastation on the urban poor seems to be disproportionately spiralling out of control and leading to a life-threatening aftermath (as opposed to death from the storm itself).  The answers and the remedies will not be simple or obvious.  But as we begin to think about the meaning(s) of the hurricane and flood, one of those meanings will have a lot to do with Susan's post quoting John Paul II on the problems faced by the poor:

"It is impossible not to take into account the existence of these realities.  To ignore them would mean becoming like the 'rich man' who pretended not to know the beggar Lazarus lying at his gates."  He goes on to say that both our daily life and "our decisions in the political and economic fields must be marked by these realities."

Tom B.

UPDATE:  Jack Shafer on Slate discusses the issue, including barriers to urban poor residents evacuating the city beforehand (no car, not enough money on hand to take with them, insufficient resources to borrow during the time away, etc.).