SPECIAL EU-DIGEST REPORT: WILMA HIGHLIGHTS POOR US INFRASTRUCTURE
Airports were shut down. Hotels are still cleaning up glass from blown out windows. Cruise lines jigger their itineraries because of closed ports. Over the past few years this has become a familiar drill for Florida's tourism industry.
Hit by eight hurricanes in 15 months, Florida's $55 billion tourism sector could certainly use a public relations makeover. Unfortunately the Public Relations Society of America canceled its annual conference in Miami Beach this week because of Hurricane Wilma.
"Our main concern was for the safety of our members," said Cedric Bess, a spokesman in New York for the association, which had planned to have 2,500 conferees at the Fontainebleau Hotel.
But all the blame should not go to Mother Nature.
As Wilma approached last week, Florida officials repeatedly insisted they were ready and assured they would avoid the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Jeb Bush, a Republican who is President Bush's brother, said his state had a "unified command" that would contrast with the sluggish state and federal response in Louisiana.
After Katrina, thousands of people waited for days in New Orleans before food, water and other relief reached them. When Rita threatened the Gulf Coast weeks later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had already stockpiled hundreds of truckloads of ice, food and water in forward positions in Texas and Louisiana.
Florida government officials bragged they could do better as Wilma approached. They did not.
Gov. Bush said Florida had 200 tractor-trailers in pre-staged areas loaded with ice and 225 loaded with water that were ready to be deployed right after Wilma swept through the state. There were 3,100 National Guard troops at the ready, with truckloads of tarps to cover roofs and more carrying ready-to-eat meals. The goal, virtually unprecedented in U.S. disasters, was to speed relief supplies to people within 24 hours of Wilma's landfall. Officials now say that schedule was wildly optimistic and probably contributed to a number of other communication problems in getting assistance to long, angry lines of people. It is remarkable, however, that Florida which frequently experiences hurricanes, does not have a well coordinated plan to avoid the situation South Florida finds itself in today. The electric power supply is another disaster. A variety of experts have recommended in the past that power lines be burried underground to avoid the massive power outages Florida experiences when the wind felocity barely exceeds 45 miles per hour or if it rains more than half a day. Florida officials have brushed this aside as being too costly.
Regardless, Wilma and Katrina have highlighted the poor shape in which the US infrastructure finds itself.
Crowded schools, traffic-choked roads and transit cutbacks are eroding the quality of American life, according to an analysis of the ASCE by civil engineers that recently gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of D.
The overall grade slipped from the D+ given in 2001 and 2003. Conditions remained the same for bridges, dams and solid waste, the group said, and worsened in roads, drinking water, transit, wastewater, hazard waste, navigable waterways and energy.
Of the 12 infrastructure categories, none have improved since 2001. Three new categories were added for the 2005 report. Most Americans haven’t a clue how clean drinking water is delivered to their faucets or sufficient electrical energy moves through an aging grid or how, when the flush the toilet, waste is transported away. And every day, six billion gallons of clean, treated drinking water disappears mostly due to old, leaky pipes and water mains. That’s enough to serve the population of California.
It is not much better on the US highways. People grumble as they drive over highways that are increasingly filled with potholes and cracks, or a lack of streets add up to 3.5 billion hours of people stuck in traffic. Many still hope that public transit will help relieve this problem, but many transit services are borrowing funds just to maintain operations as they raise fares and cut back service. The funds for long-term transportation programs haven’t been authorized since they expired on September 30, 2003, although Congress seems close to passing funds for highway improvement.
For the first time since World War II, rail capacity has reached a point that has created choke points and delays likely, says the ASCE report, to increase the cost of freight rail 50 percent by 2020.
Everyone pays for such failure by not tending to critical elements of the infrastructure. Trucks deliver the bulk of all goods moved in the US. They need good roads. Food, chemicals, coal and a host of other goods move by rail. The ASCE report estimates that $12 to $13 billion per year needs to be spent to maintain existing rail infrastructure for future growth. It is not happening.
Mother nature's fury and US political leaders failure to fix the US infrastructure could very well also start blowing tourists away from Florida.
Hotel tax collections in vacation hotspots Orange County and Panama City Beach both dropped in August compared to last year, a potentially bad sign amid an otherwise strong recovery from a post-Sept. 11 freefall that trimmed 20% of the state's $57 billion tourism industry.
In general, hurricane Wilma, or for that matter the poor shape of the US infrastructure, didn't cause any major damage to hotels and other parts of Florida's tourism industry, but there's nothing like eight hurricanes in 15 months to get people thinking about visiting Hawaii or some other place instead of the Sunshine State.
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