John: What you describe is the response one usually sees in such crises. I witnessed it following a terrible tornado that hit Omaha in 1975; the rescue – by private ferryboat operators – of passengers following Capt. Sullenberger’s now famous emergency landing in the Hudson River; and the efforts of private parties and companies to come to the aid of people stranded by the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina come to mind. While Home Depot was opening its doors to allow persons unable to get home to stay inside their stores, the Georgia governor was holding a press conference: no mention of whether he was going to follow the example and open the governor’s mansion for victims of the storm!
The state worries about such spontaneous assistance given by ordinary people. Such examples might lead thoughtful minds to wonder if state responses serve any purpose; that the state may be totally irrelevant to social order. It wouldn’t surprise me to see FEMA come rolling into Georgia and start hindering, prohibiting, and criminalizing such private efforts, which is what that agency did in New Orleans.
12:10 pm on January 29, 2014
