Many years ago, my national guard unit was activated to help deal with some really serious flooding after a hurricane. In a town with 5500 homes, all but 2 had been flooded with many being totally submerged. By the time my unit got to the town, two days had passed since the end of the storm; the waters had mostly receded. We spent days going house to house helping homeowners cart all of their belongings as well as waterlogged parts of their houses onto huge trucks. The refuse was then taken to a nearby deep mine where it was dumped. It was a terrible tragedy to watch all these people lose everything, but at least we were helping.
I mention this story because the biggest problem we faced during the clean up effort came from disaster tourists. These were people who lived in other areas who were coming to see how badly the flood had affected areas that had been hit. Within a day or so after we got started with the cleanup effort, the problem of disaster tourists got so bad that we set up roadblocks outside town and stopped anyone who was not a resident from entering. After a few days, we took down the roadblocks, but the disaster tourists came flocking back and we had to shut down entry again.
I was reminded of this problem of disaster tourism by a story I just heard on the news. New York's governor Andrew Cuomo is on a trip to the US Virgin Islands to survey the damage from Hurricane Irma. Why did he go? Think about it. The governor of NY has nothing to do with the Virgin Islands except for the possible occasional vacation there. New York will not take any actions with regard to dealing with the disaster. On top of that, having the governor of NY in the Virgin Islands will distract the relief teams from their efforts on the islands. Do the people in Charlotte Amalie really need to have a motorcade for Cuomo breeze through their city and interrupt the relief effort just so that Cuomo can see the damage first hand?
Even worse, we all know that the only reason that Cuomo is going to the islands is because he wants to run for president in 2020. This trip is meant to portray Cuomo as a caring individual; it's a long photo-op in anticipation of the campaign. It's a rather cynical move in which Cuomo gets positive press despite the fact that he disrupts the ongoing clean up work.
Someone should have told Cuomo to stay home. It might not help the islanders, but at least it wouldn't add to their problems.
I mention this story because the biggest problem we faced during the clean up effort came from disaster tourists. These were people who lived in other areas who were coming to see how badly the flood had affected areas that had been hit. Within a day or so after we got started with the cleanup effort, the problem of disaster tourists got so bad that we set up roadblocks outside town and stopped anyone who was not a resident from entering. After a few days, we took down the roadblocks, but the disaster tourists came flocking back and we had to shut down entry again.
I was reminded of this problem of disaster tourism by a story I just heard on the news. New York's governor Andrew Cuomo is on a trip to the US Virgin Islands to survey the damage from Hurricane Irma. Why did he go? Think about it. The governor of NY has nothing to do with the Virgin Islands except for the possible occasional vacation there. New York will not take any actions with regard to dealing with the disaster. On top of that, having the governor of NY in the Virgin Islands will distract the relief teams from their efforts on the islands. Do the people in Charlotte Amalie really need to have a motorcade for Cuomo breeze through their city and interrupt the relief effort just so that Cuomo can see the damage first hand?
Even worse, we all know that the only reason that Cuomo is going to the islands is because he wants to run for president in 2020. This trip is meant to portray Cuomo as a caring individual; it's a long photo-op in anticipation of the campaign. It's a rather cynical move in which Cuomo gets positive press despite the fact that he disrupts the ongoing clean up work.
Someone should have told Cuomo to stay home. It might not help the islanders, but at least it wouldn't add to their problems.
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