Philanthropy - Hurricane Katrina - Mike Kunath
9/12/2005
Quiet Katrina effort offers lesson
Puget Sound Business Journal by Mike Flynn
September 12, 2005
While it turns out that the Seattle area and Washington state may not be needed as hosts for large numbers of evacuees from the Gulf Coast hurricane disaster, a lot of the backroom discussion and planning for the welcome of Hurricane Katrina victims could have some local benefit in the future.
And part of that local benefit could be a greater focus on the fact that this area is ill-prepared to experience a disaster of the scope of Hurricane Katrina -- and that the earthquake on which disaster would ride into this state, rather than a hurricane, "wouldn't offer us three days notice," as one official put it.
Certainly the dollars being committed by businesses and individuals, as well as by the state with its "Washington Cares" fund established in partnership with Washington Mutual Inc., will certainly help make a difference. As Gov. Christine Gregoire noted, "money is the primary need."
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency advised the state Sept. 7, after the state had revved up plans to host up to 2,000 evacuees, that evacuees would not be coming to Washington in significant numbers, all the plans for handling the personal needs of storm victims were put on hold.
Little noted but important closed-door meetings took place last weekend among business people and executives of city departments and the staff of Mayor Greg Nickels. The aim was to map out an ambitious Seattle response, but this was before the state asked the mayor to set aside any local planning for evacuees in the face of a coordinated state effort.
In acquiescing to Gregoire's request, we hope Nickels doesn't forego the opportunity to use the effort on behalf of the evacuees of the Gulf Coast to focus attention on the fact the Seattle area needs to draw a lesson from New Orleans in terms of being prepared for a natural disaster.
"We're no better prepared than New Orleans was, in many ways," one local official told us.
Mike Kunath, principal with the investment counseling firm Kunath Karren Rinne & Atkin, whose efforts to spur a Seattle response to the personal needs of evacuees led to the series of weekend meetings, noted that "there was value, even if was merely understanding the need for a citizens' organization that could help us better respond to our own potential catastrophes."
In addition, there's an opportunity for the mayor and elected officials to help frame the reality by reminding voters that if the effort to repeal the gasoline tax enacted by the 2005 Legislature succeeds in November, we could be helping to set up Seattle for a disaster like New Orleans, should the seawall and Alaskan Way Viaduct collapse in an earthquake.
Part of the rationale that Kunath brought to his effort was pragmatic. His intention was to induce the public and private sectors to join in mounting what he described in his working document as "a prepared response organizational structure" to the needs of the evacuees, who he envisioned would be living in Seattle in large numbers.
He suggested the need for both the public and private sector leadership to "recognize that the Puget Sound area may have a need for such assistance in the future" and that thus caring for the victims by hosting them here might have a very practical, as well as humanitarian, value.
It turned out the outreach by Seattle to host up to 5,000 evacuees didn't congeal into a plan to host those Gulf Coast homeless, first because the state asked Seattle to step aside, and second, because FEMA turned out not to need this state as a large-scale host.
But the need to examine our own abilities to cope with a future natural disaster here remains.
To read this story on the web, visit: http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2005/09/12/editorial2.html?surround=etf