What Constitutes a National Tragedy?

[landtuna]

But I am going to offer you a contrarion view to your view that the Joplin event is nothing but local.

IMHO you are really reaching GRC. To wit:

It made national news that a 300 pound man was sucked out of an upper story hospital room window. Hospital administrators, risk managers and architects will study what went wrong at the hospital for years to make sure their own facilities are not vulnerable.

If that news was reported in Phoenix I missed it. Nevertheless, sometimes $%^*^% happens and to think that every potential mishap can be pre-engineered is folly. Yes, this event will be studied but it will only affect the national population in the same manner as standard specifications for sidewalk cement.

Joplin seems to be the home town of a lot of significant trucking companies. Supply and demand of shipped goods may be affected over much of the nation because employees of these trucking companies are unable to get to work.

Again, I have noted nothing about this particular situation in my local news. Although the tornadoes and aftereffects have been broadcast continually. My guess is that if there is a significant impact on trucking capacity I will hear about it but so far at least it is a non-event and thus not a national concern.

School administrators across the nation are going to want reports on what school officials in Joplin wish they had done differently.

Postmortems are normally the historical followup to a significant event such as this type of destruction and certainly, not only schools, but hospitals and public safety officials are all going to be studying what could have been done better. But again, this is an ongoing process. Quite normal and not anything that affects someone outside their particular specialty.

Volunteers are showing up from a large geographical area in pick-up trucks and church buses with chain saws and other tools in hand.

Yup, and so are public utility crews, Red Cross workers and construction workers too. But again, that only affects those particular skills and is a normal followup to this type of event.

I'll even go so far as to say that the knockdown of the WTC on 9-11 was not a national tragedy. It obviously affected a number of people in NYC and surrounding metro area and it did have a measure of economic impact due to the companies who lost their employees, records and offices. But other than the emotional impact of the attack it had a minimum, if any, physical impact on residents outside the Tri-State area.

What was a national tragedy was the response to it from the Bush Administration which grounded all air travel and implemented draconian security measures to prevent a reoccurrance. It almost killed the air transport industry and the hospitality industry and engaged the country in two wars that are still ongoing. The actions of our government did affect virtually every citizen of the country and are still having negative economic and personal impacts as we speak.

 

[flashback]

an enemy of america commits an act of distruction killing thousands of people and therby declaring war on the united states is not a national tragedy?

if it was a weather condition i may agree with you but that was an national tragedy.

the war was not declared by president bush like you make it sound.the war was declared.

 

[recto101]

How about the San Bruno Pipeline tragedy yes it affected all the people in the San Bruno neighborhood affected by this local tragedy and it took place on the evening rush hour the reason it was launched as a national tragedy because it took place near SFO Airport and it took place 2 days before the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 Tragedy.

How about the Corey Lidle Plane crash in NYC in 2006 the reason it was launched into a national tragedy because everybody in the apartment towers thought that the whole tower would fall the same way that World Trade Center did.

 

[landtuna]

an enemy of america commits an act of distruction killing thousands of people and therby declaring war on the united states is not a national tragedy?

I gave you my personal opinion and you may disagree with it. But at the risk of getting into a political discussion let me just ask you - were you personally physically affected by the collapse of the WTC before the post-attack fallout began? I suspect very few people outside the NYC/DC areas were. Now since then it is another story as virtually all of America was affected by the response to the attack.

the war was not declared by president bush like you make it sound.the war was declared.

You will note I said the "Bush Administration".

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I propose that this has been a healthy discussion. It is obvious we have a multitude of different criteria for deciding (in our own minds) what is "a national Tradgedy" and it is even more obvious we haven't come to a concensus.

Land Tuna: you mentioned the things you have not heard or read in the news that I listed. First, it would help if you knew that I grew up about 100 miles from Joplin and though I am not an expert on Joplin and have spent little or no time actually in the city, I have this long time observation about things that make the economy of Joplin function

I have to wonder if the 300 pound man is a bit of "folklore" but I heard that report multiple times. That one caught my attention because I recently spent a couple of days sitting in a hospital room, looking out the window while they diagnosed and treated my wife, looking at how the building was constructed and watching the workmen finish up a new addition right under my nose That one caught my attention because someone in my family does long term hospital planning and we have discussed the flood gates of a Houston hospital that were not closed when they were hit by a hurricane.... because the contractor had not officially "commissioned" the gates so some bureaucrat refused to push the button that would have possibly saved millions of dollars. We have also discussed the fact that the hospital in downtown New Orleans where people were stranded was heavily impacted by the really brilliant decision to install the Emergency Standby Generators down in the BASEMENT of the adjacent parking garage. You may have missed that report, too...

This event in Joplin will cause many people in many professions to look around the room in board meetings and ask: Where are WE vulnerable? And having once been a corporate Risk Manager, I would suggest to you that conversation will be more profound than watching the evolving formulas for concrete for sidewalks. ;D

 

[flashback]

an enemy of america commits an act of distruction killing thousands of people and therby declaring war on the united states is not a national tragedy?

I gave you my personal opinion and you may disagree with it. But at the risk of getting into a political discussion let me just ask you - were you personally physically affected by the collapse of the WTC before the post-attack fallout began? I suspect very few people outside the NYC/DC areas were. Now since then it is another story as virtually all of America was affected by the response to the attack.

the war was not declared by president bush like you make it sound.the war was declared.

You will note I said the "Bush Administration".

direct physical effect ?no.however anytime an enemy of the country does an attack like that it is an national tragedy.

whether it is bush administration or president bush that act was the decloration of war.

 

[vchimpanzee]

We've had a lot of tragedies on the scale of what happened in Joplin. It's no wonder Harold Camping thought the end was coming.

Here's one measure: there was no Chewy Chips Ahoy headline in my local paper for Joplin, though the story did make the front page.

I have a box which I got from a grocery store after someone removed packages of Chewy Chips Ahoy and although I haven't gotten around to adding recent stuff (I'm not sure whether 9-11 is in there yet). It has many of the headlines that really stood out, like when the Iraq War began and ended, the Oklahoma City bombing, the hostages in Iran being freed, etc. I did not choose to keep the Virginia Tech headline, which did qualify At some point I decided such stories were too sad to keep.

I didn't get a Bin Ladin headline since that was only in the late edition.

 

[JeeperOne]

While the Joplin Tornado was a tragedy (We shouldn't mistake that), it hardly meets the caliber of being a "National" tragedy (Obama using that word in his response was likely half-politically motivated since he's up for re-election next year & there's already a star-studded cast of REPUBLICANTS lining up to replace him)

In short, it's a short/regional tragedy. Not a national one

Cheers