HURRICANES

We are not responsible for hurricanes. We are responsible for building our homes in areas prone to flooding.

Almost two million people were evacuated recently from the path of Hurricane Gustav. As I write this, it is too early to know the cost of this evacuation. It is certainly too early to know how much damage Gustav will cause. A lot of this uncertainty revolves around whether or not the as-yet-uncompleted levees around New Orleans will hold. When you factor in the cost to build and maintain these levees, the cost of this hurricane and the many other hurricanes that hit this area almost every year is astonishingly high.

Are all these efforts to protect New Orleans and the surrounding areas worthwhile? Of course they are. Our society has invested enormous sums into building the New Orleans area. Protecting the people and property in this area must be a high priority for our country.

But what if people had not built their homes and businesses in flood prone areas? Surely, we are obligated to protect these areas only because they are built up. If there were no homes and businesses in this area, the need to protect it would be dramatically less expensive. After Hurricane Katrina hit this area two years ago, billions of dollars were spent to rebuild and repair the damage that hurricane caused. Many of the homes and businesses that were rebuilt and repaired after Katrina are threatened once again - just three years later. How many times should these rebuilding efforts be performed before we say, "Enough! Stop building in these areas knowing full well that they may be destroyed once again in short order"?

I do not know the answer to this question. I do know that we need to anticipate the consequences of our decisions more carefully to determine what dangers they may cause.

Too often we create problems for ourselves by "building in flood prone area." I am guilty of this error in judgment as least as much as most others. For example, for many years we took a very aggressive stance when it came to opening group homes for people with serious and complex challenges. Many providers pointedly avoided moving into certain areas where neighbor problems could be anticipated. We did not. Instead, we located group homes anywhere that seemed to meet the needs of the consumers who would live there and the agency which would support them (us). After all, discrimination against people with mental retardation and/or mental illness had been found many times to be illegal. The consumers have a right to live anywhere, we argued, and we will locate them anywhere.

Clearly we were correct in terms of the law. We won almost every zoning challenge that was thrown at us, but at a terrible emotional cost to managers and consumers alike.

Am I sorry that we took such an aggressive stance to protect the rights of the people we support? Of course not! Would I have done it differently if I had known then what I know now? Yes! We could have accomplished essentially the same outcomes for the people we serve with a lot less aggravation had we been a little less aggressive. We did not need to look for trouble. It would have found us soon enough under the best of circumstances.