Tuesday, September 06, 2005

"Cold But Effective"

Using a technique seemingly much more effective than the proposed "force em at gunpoint" rescue strategy proposed for New Orleans (honestly, are we really going to make rescue workers into murderers?) Virginia rescue workers are using the "Magic Marker Strategy."


Instead of relying on a "Good Samaritan" policy - the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors - the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.

"It's cold, but it's effective," Mr. Judkins explained.

That simple strategy could have persuaded hundreds of people to save their own lives in New Orleans. What the city needed most was coldly effective local leaders, not a president in Washington who could feel their pain. It's the same lesson we should have learned from Sept. 11 and other disasters, yet both liberals and conservatives keep ignoring it.


It's nice to see that SOMEONE put some thought into effective rescue strategy's, and the different situations that may arise.