Canada must do more!
To those stunned at the inability of the USA to respond to the needs of their citizens in the recent hurricane disaster, please don’t forget, the hurricane was expected, the failure of the levees was not.
When you give an evacuation notice, you must also follow it up with the tools and aid for those that cannot just pick up and leave. 40% of the people in the affected area were below the poverty line and had not the ability to pick up and leave. They had no where to go, no way to go, and when they got where that place might be, no way of renting a room, buy food, or such.
Consider the fact that all of the infrastructure of a modern large city was gone as well. No phone, no water, no electricity and no hope.
Our government should order a train CPR to travel across Canada picking up the goods and supplies that will be needed for the refugees of the hurricane and deliver it to the nearest shipping dock to New Orleans and unload it. At no cost. That can be water, food stuffs, plywood, portable housing, solar powered water purifiers, blankets, canned meat, canned or fresh fruit, mobile hospitals, and all of the rest of the normal things a person with nothing needs.
Canada should do this because we can, we must and not because it is good PR.
After providing whatever the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, or Georgia need, we must watch. We need to watch and learn.
Our large major urban centres may not fare much better in a major civil disaster. After all, when was the last time any city practiced an evacuation?
When did we put our system to the test? Could Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, or Toronto evacuate 1,000,000 people?
Yours truly,
Norman Greenfield
Calgary, Alberta
