What? A killer hurricane in Florida? A twister tearing through Topeka? Earthquake in Northridge? Sparrow in a tree in Vermont? Avalanche in Deadwood? Windstorm in Muleshoe? Wildfire in Los Alamos?

It seems that every year it's time for one section or another of our nation to get pounded by some sort of cataclysm that includes as one of its more notable facets the loss of electrical power to a large number of residences, businesses, and vital services. And you know what the school solution to the situation is? Why even ask? It's dig out, send for FEMA's trainload of money bags, let the local politicians make with some reassuring words, drag the rubble out of sight, and hope that another disaster happens somewhere else to take the heat of the local mess.

I'm sick of institutions and their resident bureaucracies returning to the same old failed solutions to disasters as if they think they're dealing with some sort of freak situation.

It's the senselessness of this spring-loaded response to what amounts to a predictable loss of critical services that begins to rouse my latent curmudgeonly proclivities, but the real wake-up call comes in the recognition that with all the largesse we're dispensing to the victims of events such as Charley, we've managed to paste a veneer over the underlying issues of public health and safety in order to avoid asking ourselves, "Could we have been better prepared?" and its logical follow-up, "Is there anything we can do to prepare for the next disaster?" If you have to ask, "What next disaster?" and you're not working for some governmental agency involved in disaster relief, you've missed your calling.

What is truly impressive in the disaster-relief effort taking place in Florida is the dedication of those directly involved in picking up the pieces, whether they are local residents pitching in to help, area emergency-services and utility-systems workers, or, most especially, professionals who have come hundreds or even thousands of miles to help the cause.

What is less impressive is the ability of the various public bodies to address the needs of citizens put at risk by the loss of services, especially when so many of them are elderly and in need of special care. It is understandable that the headlines go to the immediate victims of a disaster, but rarely does the long-term toll come in for much attention … and that's a shame. Part of the problem lies in trying to separate out the affects of the disaster, particularly when what you're talking about is—as in Charley's case—a large body of what might be rightly regarded as the "aged and infirm."

It is precisely this lack of awareness or concern—take your pick—that stokes my curmudgeonly flames to incandescence. Who among those responsible for public health and welfare does not know that Florida is a Mecca for the elderly … that sector of society most dependent on the availability of uninterrupted services, chief among which is electrical power? Knowing this, who among those responsible should not bend every effort to reduce the risk inherent in such events?

If ever there was a situation crying out for secure electrical power in the wake of disaster, it is right there in the path of Charley, but you know what? For all of the expenditures in time, money, effort, and rhetoric, I don't hear any mainstream call for change in the power-delivery system, and I have to ask myself, "Why not?" What makes the idea of distributed energy so difficult to grasp that it doesn't boil to the surface even as work crews run themselves ragged restoring power to the truly needy? Maybe the better question is, "What makes a monolithic and highly vulnerable grid system so desirable even when its saviors are tromping around the boonies picking up the remnants of its failure?"

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DE - September/October 2004