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Hurricane Katrina vs. Hurricane Helene (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Individual choices are different from government incompetence resulting in mass casualties. You understand that, right?

If lightning strikes a skyscraper that doesn't have sprinklers, causing it to burn down and kill 100 people- did the lightning kill those people or was it the lack of sprinklers?

[-] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

Individual choices are different from government incompetence resulting in mass casualties.

There's a systemic criticism here; people not evacuating Helene properly demonstrates we don't have proper systems in place to facilitate evacuations in the case of a hurricane.

Someone who chooses not to evacuate because they didn't understand the severity or don't have a car or anywhere to go isn't an individual choice.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago

I notice you didn't answer my question. I will ask it again:

If lightning strikes a skyscraper that doesn’t have sprinklers, causing it to burn down and kill 100 people- did the lightning kill those people or was it the lack of sprinklers?

[-] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago

The lack of regulations requiring sprinklers of course.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Right. Which is why it would be a man-made disaster and not a natural disaster. The same with Katrina and the levees. Katrina was a natural disaster, but what killed the people in New Orleans was the levees not getting repaired when they needed to be.

And it's different from people refusing to evacuate since that's on them, it's not an issue of other people's incompetence being the cause of mass casualties.

[-] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

it’s different from people refusing to evacuate since that’s on them

It isn't though, you need to examine why those people were unwilling or unable to evacuate.

This is a systemic failure; our systems failed to adequately enable and incentivize people to evacuate. Do you judge a country's covid response by the number of people killed by covid, or just chalk that up to people's individual choices too?