Our Fragile Infrastructure

Verne Kopytoff’s article on The Importance of Disaster Plans highlights the reactive nature of people and business to disaster preparedness. One Florida hospital decided to start making plans for the likely disasters in their area: “In 2004 we had what we called the hurricane trifecta—Charlie, Francis, and Jeanne,” says Robert Goodman, disaster recovery coordinator for Florida Hospital. “The hurricanes got our management’s attention.” The take home message should be that it took not one or two, but three hurricanes in a season before they decided to react to the dangers and get ready. Since this is how some the businesses that we rely on handle disaster planning, we have to make sure that we’re ready to take up the slack. This basic readiness should start with our own families at the very least and then spread into our communities.