’Tell the truth to citizens in disaster’

By Kang Hyun-kyung

When unprecedented disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the monster floods that paralyzed southern Seoul earlier this month occur, the best thing politicians can do is tell the truth.

“I think that politicians oftentimes think that the citizens can’t handle the truth. That’s wrong,” Michael Brown, former first undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response of the U.S. Homeland Security, said last week.

“People want to know. Even if the story is bad, they want to hear the bad story. ‘Tell me what’s really happening, so I can plan accordingly and so I can react accordingly.’”

Brown was in charge of responding to an unprecedented disaster in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated the southeast region of the United States. One of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history, the storm took the lives of more than 1,800 people.

Brown resigned in September 2005 after coming under fire for what critics called a bungled response to Katrina’s destruction.

Currently the host of a radio talk show on NewsRadio 850 KOA in Denver, Brown arrived in Seoul Wednesday for a five-day seminar on global cooperation for disaster management, nuclear safety and pandemic diseases held at a Seoul hotel. The seminar was hosted by the Korea Foundation.

Some parts of southern Seoul were ravaged after the record rainfall that hit the nation from July to early August. The region was flooded, leaving some residents displaced as their homes were severely damaged and their property washed away. People lived in fear as landslides in Mt. Woomyeon threatened their lives.

In the wake of the monster flood, second thoughts have mushroomed over whether safety measures taken by city authorities earlier were appropriate.

Victims of the disaster blamed Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, as well as other city authorities, for what they saw as a lack of preparation and slow response to such a tragedy.

Brown, who faced a similar experience in Katrina six years ago, said criticism can often be unfair.

“This is because no matter how prepared you are for the disaster, there are some things that you cannot control,” he said.

“(But) it’s a natural human tendency to lash out at the top guy. That’s fine. That’s politics,” he said.

Being a top person in charge of managing an unprecedented disaster required him to weather tremendous pressure from people from all walks of life, he said.

“It was an incredible amount of pressure because you have all the different interests involved in the disaster. You have politicians, you have the media, you have the victims and all the rescue workers,” he said.

“You have all the constituencies that you need to address. And if any one of those doesn’t do what they were supposed to do, that will have dominant effects.”

Because of the tremendous pressure, Brown recalled his job in the wake of Katrina “the biggest challenge” of his life.

“What happened in Katrina was that, figuratively speaking, I pushed the buttons to make something happen, but nothing happened,” he said.

“Of course when you are the guy in charge when all things are going on, the pressure is absolutely tremendous. ... You just can’t control what happens in the middle of the disaster,” he said.