Planning for Disaster Was Itself Disastrous

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "The most critical problems related to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina are related less to the lack of technological solutions than to the absence of a sound national policy for dealing with such events," says Shahin Vassigh, associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, where she co-directs the Center for Virtual Architecture.

Vassigh, an award-winning architect, urban planner and civil engineer, has worked on structural, hydraulic and transportation-related engineering projects throughout New York State, and devised an internationally recognized application of digital media to structural pedagogy.

She says, "Long-term planning to prevent situations like this has been seriously deficient. As has been revealed, the Army Corps of Engineer knew for years that the levees in and around New Orleans were insufficient to resist a major hurricane.

"This disaster could be neither prevented nor controlled, however, because of major cuts in the Corp's budget and the reallocation of its funds to other national priorities.

"One engineering solution that was never even seriously examined, for instance," says Shahin, "was the construction of a tall, gated barrier that would block a storm surge from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain.

"We realize more and more each day how poor was even the short-term planning for such a disaster. After all, unlike earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes are predictable and give us advance warning that permits prior evacuation," she says.

"Planning for such an evacuation involves much more than asking people to leave, however."

Vassigh agrees that those who had to stay behind because they did not have the means to leave expose our nation's divisions along income lines.

"In this area of the country," she points out, "the incomes of 27 percent of the population are below poverty level. It should have been clear to anyone confronting this situation, and certainly to elected officials and emergency managers, that a hurricane warning without a massive effort by the authorities to transport such people to safety would be meaningless and that many thousands of poor people, most of them black, elderly or sick, could die.

"I hope that as we reassess our national priorities, values and budget allocations, we will come to understand how, over the long term, this terrible situation could have been prevented, and over the short term, better mediated," says Vassigh.

"This should be the first step in the reconstruction process, because one thing of which we can be certain is that many more natural and man-made disasters are in our future. How well we deal with their aftermaths will determine whether or not they become catastrophes."

Shahin Vassigh
Associate Professor of Architecture
716-829-3485 ext. 315
vassigh@ap.buffalo.edu