Irene in New York

Each summer we see images of hurricanes battering the Caribbean Islands. Pictures of citizens protecting their windows with boards, windswept palm trees or alarming cloud formations getting near a neighborhood already swept by the rain make an impression on TV viewers across the world. In this sense, the summer of 2011 has been different: Hurricane Irene has traveled from south to north along the East Coast of the United States. This strip of land, with its 65 million inhabitants, is the most populous in the U.S. and houses power centers like Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. And also New York, which has faced Irene with a great preventative operation: 370,000 people were evacuated from its flood zones and public transport was shut down for the weekend; the threat of the hurricane hovered over the big city.

On Sunday, Irene passed through New York without causing predicted damage. Friday, Obama had even warned that it would be a historical phenomenon. But when it reached the city of skyscrapers, it had been degraded to a tropical storm. Yesterday the city started to return to normal. Certainly, Irene has not been harmless: It caused 41 deaths* and tens of millions of dollars in losses, forced the cancellation of about 10,000 flights and deprived some five million homes of electricity.

But fortunately, the damages caused were less that feared. And immediately, questions started to form. Had the authorities been over cautious? Had they — President Obama and the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg — taken advantage of the opportunity to exhibit, at low political cost, their leadership abilities?

Before answering these questions, two facts should be considered. The first reminds us that Hurricane Katrina left over 1,800 dead in 2005 and devastated New Orleans while, incidentally, damaging President Bush’s reputation. The second tells us that Irene has found powerful speakers in some forms of communication very sensitive to such disturbances, above all, the new social networks, in which information is transmitted quickly.

That said, it is necessary to conclude that before a natural disaster like Irene seemed to be, all precautions are still too little. The criticisms that a politician can receive for being extremely cautious are soon forgotten. Instead, those that deserve the foresight — with its trail of forgotten people and materials — are very unfortunate and live on in popular memory.

*Editor’s Note: This is the current figure to the time of the article’s translation, August 30.