“Taiwan’s Katrina moment”
Like Hurricane Katrina, Typhoon Morakot brought flooding that local infrastructure could not withstand, while the aftermath was beyond the local capacity for disaster relief.
Tax revenue and power are largely in the hands of the central government, at the cost of effective administration of local affairs by local governments. The central government is responsible for managing major rivers and their upstream areas. It is therefore imperative that the central government take charge of disaster mitigation efforts, especially when dealing with a disaster of this scale.
In spite of this, what angered many people more than incompetent emergency management by the central government before, during and after Morakot was the leadership’s lack of understanding about the scale of the disaster and their appalling inaction in contrast to what is in their power to do.
The central leadership has come across as uninformed of the situation and unconcerned.
A week after Morakot hit Taiwan, an unknown number of people scattered in towns and villages across the south and east are still waiting for helicopters to rescue them.
There are potentially thousands still waiting for rescue, yet the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined disaster relief offers from the US, Japan and other countries, claiming that Taiwan had the capacity to deal with the disaster itself.
The irony is that the government doesn’t even know how many people are missing, how many are waiting for helicopters or where they are, and that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) admitted on Wednesday that a lack of helicopters was hampering rescue efforts.
Just how efficient has the disaster response been? One soldier went public with his frustration, saying his unit was the only one in the south with heavy equipment needed for relief efforts after a disaster of this nature, yet four days after Morakot struck, his unit had yet to set to work. The soldiers wanted desperately to help the victims of this disaster, but were still awaiting orders.
In response, the Ministry of National Defense said procedures must be followed, adding that it was waiting for dispatch requests from the central government’s emergency management authority.
The chain of command doesn’t seem to be working very well.
On the evening of Morakot’s approach, Ma spent an hour and a half at a wedding banquet in Taipei. While he was busy mingling, did he know or care that disastrous torrential rains had begun pummeling the south? His administration was ill-prepared.
This “don’t-know-don’t-care” mentality is not new. When Ma was mayor of Taipei, his administration was infamous for its handling of a typical typhoon that led to unprecedented flooding in Taipei.
Unfortunately, Morakot has shown that his poor understanding of disaster relief and poor emergency management skills have carried over to the central government.
But this time, the scale of the disaster is much larger.
The Ma administration’s actions in the wake of Morakot reflect indifference toward protecting its own people from natural disasters.
Regardless of whether the Ma administration learns its lesson, it has certainly been an eye-opener for the public.
