Planning for disasters
It only took a couple of questions to cut to the chase during a panel discussion on preparedness for national disasters. “Are we ready today for a really large-scale event, bigger than any of those we have contemplated?” asked Herman “Dutch” Leonard, the George F. Baker Jr. Professor of Public Management and moderator of “Oil Spills, Earthquakes, Tsunamis & Meltdowns: Acting In Time Against the Next Disaster” held on Thursday (April 28) as part of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. Leonard was not idly posing a hypothetical question. He was querying a panel that included some of the top leaders in American homeland security and the military, including representatives from the National Guard, the Coast Guard, and the Navy. These were the very people responsible for coordinating a national response to a crisis, or as Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Dean David T. Ellwood put it, “If all of their phones start...