Massive hurricane hits southeast Chinese coast

More than one million people were evacuated from the path of the massive hurricane that hit southeast China yesterday. The storm had already killed six in Taiwan before hitting the mainland with wind speeds of up to 78 mph. Chinese meteorologists are calling this typhoon 'Krosa'.


The Chinese government authorized 3.5 m yuan in relief funds and tens of thousands of tents, quilts, water and rice. In the end more than 1.41 million people were evacuated, a massive logistic feat which seems to have prevented many casualties from the typhoon.

Observers of this Chinese crisis can't help but compare the Chinese government's response to hurricane Krosa and the American government's relief efforts following the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. That was one of the nation's poorer cities and nearly 120,000 people lacked private transportation or the funds to travel out of the city to safety, causing thousands of U.S. deaths and massive loss of personal savings and property.

Maybe it's time to check what the American government is actually giving the taxpayer in exchange for all the tax they take every year? Ten billion in emergency funding for Katrina and 190 billion for the war? Why this strange set of priorities?

In January 2007, former FEMA director Michael D. Brown charged that partisan politics had played a role in the White House's decision to federalize emergency response to the disaster in Louisiana only rather than along the entire affected Gulf Coast region, which Brown said he had advocated. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" Brown said, speaking before a group of graduate students at the Metropolitan College of New York "'We can't do it to Haley [Mississippi governor Haley Barbour] because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" The White House denied Brown's charges through a spokeswoman.

link