Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kneeland, Timothy W

Titel

Without Warning and Defenseless

Ist Teil von

• Playing Politics with Natural Disaster, 2020

Ort / Verlag

Cornell University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter describes how the public also vented anger and frustration at agents of government whose job it was to protect people before a natural disaster occurred. The public was incensed at having received no warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS) and demanded to know why their local civil defense organizations had failed in the midst of the crisis. The public expected to hold someone responsible for the death and the destruction of property. Assigning blame is an integral component of American democracy; in order for change to occur, the electorate must assign responsibility when the government fails so they can pressure officials into improving public policy. In response to the public outrage, elected officials conducted a series of hearings into what went wrong before and during the Hurricane Agnes disaster. State senator Bill Smith, who was unable to get Governor Nelson Rockefeller to agree to a special legislative session, teamed up with Senate majority leader Warren Anderson to hold special hearings into government failures during the disaster. These investigations would show just how tattered the disaster safety net had become in the days before Hurricane Agnes.