BEST DIASASTER RESOURCE IS ONE PROVIDED ALONE

Southern Florida continues today and for many days to come picking up the pieces of life that were scattered by Hurricane Andrew. It's easy enough to view this circumstance with detachment, regarding the storm as the Floridians' lot in life, what ~comes of living at the tip of a peninsula. However, destruction by natural force is not limited to southern seashores, and the lessons of preparation and survival now being tendered in the Miami area could serve other Americans as well.

President Bush has been unfairly criticized for not acting quickly enough in directing relief to the people of southern Florida. In fact, forces at the president's command were on alert before Andrew made its landfall in south Miami and were mobilized almost immediately after the storm passed. If there was a miscalculation, it was in projecting the strength of the storm and the enormous damage it was capable of, forecasts that the vagaries of nature make perpetually difficult. Those who accuse the nation's chief executive of indifference in the ~face of a region's catastrophe should properly be exposed for their cynicism in making political hay of human suffering.

Beyond this, though, the relief effort to hurricane survivors (massive in both public and private expressions) provides an interesting education. Federal assistance, in the form of supplies and personnel, were rushed to the Miami area almost immediately after Andrew raced into the Gulf of Mexico. The logistical problems of providing aid to a metropolitan area of more than 3 million people can't be underestimated, particularly when normal infrastructure has been unsettled and emotions are running high. The project is considerable.

Compare it, however, to what could happen in the Midwest if a major earthquake would occur along the New Madrid Fault. Unlike Hurricane Andrew, there would be no warning of a pending earthquake. It is likely that infrastructure damage (particularly buried utility lines) would be more extensive than what high winds could cause, and fatalities would be greater. When relief commodities finally arrived in Southeast Missouri, their distribution would be more difficult than in the Miami instance for reasons of geography: the population is more rural, spread farther apart.

Therefore, the advice inherent to earthquake preparation (and bolstered by the hurricane example) holds true: people should be ready to survive on their own for two or more days. In the case of a widespread natural disaster, food, water, shelter and medical care will not be immediately available by a government. Survivors should not expect them. While there is ample disagreement concerning federal response to this most recent calamity, it should be noted that the best resource for survival in such a circumstance is the one you provide yourself.