Cascade

     Hurricane Sandy is long since gone. The damage to New York City and the rest of New England is enormous, but slowly but surely they are rebuilding. The devastation is over, right?

     Wrong.

     Disasters in man-made areas such as large cities are prone to an effect called the cascade by scientists. Simply phrased, the aftershocks of a destructive event can be, and usually are, the parts that authorities are hardest-pressed to combat. In this case, there are those who would take advantage of the chaos:

     Unethical hotel and gas station owners are facing charges of price gouging, or increasing prices to an extreme degree, in order to make of profit from people's desperation. Last year, after Irene, while gouging was present, it was present to a much lesser degree. Why is it so severe this time?

     

Federal efforts towards rebuilding could result in problems with fraud, similarly to the aftermath of Katrina, where unscrupulous individuals siphoned off "at least $600 million". While no evidence of theft from Sandy relief funds has surfaced, the government's necessarily increased caution has slowed progress.

     Even more horrifyingly, a murderer or murderers unknown are making use of the ruin to hide their victims' bodies. At least two have been found, and park district workers are carefully checking for more corpses hidden in the debris.

     It appalls me how some people feed off catastrophe. Do they have no empathy, or what? You can't convince me that a quarter of the hotel, gas station, and grocery store owners in the area are a bunch of sociopaths. More importantly, though, why can't the government prevent these things? What can, and should, our leaders be doing differently to limit the cascade?

Forecast Grim for NYC Marathon

     Over the past weeks, I have noticed a number of blog posts concerning sports. Which makes sense - athletics are a significant part of any culture - but I had been at a loss as to how to join in, not being involved in any school sports or analogous activities. Then I found this New York Times article about the NYC marathon. The marathon is an event that draws a massive crowd from across the globe, or rather it was; this year's race has been canceled in order to direct more forces towards repairing the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.

     This is a historic occurrence, marking the first time that New York City has canceled the marathon since its beginning in 1970. The event has persevered through heat, humidity, and freezing rain. Even the 2001 race, two months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, went ahead in the kind of we're-still-here response that the War on Terror group discussed in class on Friday. Local authorities say that holding the race would be detrimental to aiding those hit hardest by the storm, but others state that now, as eleven years ago, the race would be a morale boost to the entire city. NYC responds to this by saying the marathon has divided the city already, contrary to its purpose. Then beyond the morale and morality arguments are the economic ones. Thousands of people flew to New York expecting a marathon; how are they to be reimbursed?
     It is my opinion that the race should go forward, as a demonstration that even the power of Mother Nature can't stop the city that never sleeps. There ought to be a way to have the race without interfering with disaster relief, and that the city of New York's motivation is simply that it wishes to deal with one crisis at a time. While prioritization is a wonderful tool, couldn't they just delay the race, instead of immediately resorting to such a drastic step as cancellation? Feel free to comment with any ideas you have.