FEMA

It’s hard to look away from natural disasters. We wonder why, after so many years of studying them, their impact has not lessened, and their restoration time has not shortened. The few minutes of attention we give them from the morning newspapers or the evening news is but one type of traumatic information we absorb on a regular basis. It is painful and stress-provoking to take it all in -- school shootings, assaults, property damage, homelessness, and a general uneasiness that we are not safe in public places. Some of our anxiety is surely left over from the worst of pandemic times.

We need to stop repeating old, costly, and deadly mistakes.  Will we ever learn? To borrow a line from America’s baseball-player philosopher, Yogi Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again. America has once again done it wrong (on the whole), with tragic consequences.  There are models in other countries for how to do it right.