Lessons Learned

Many lessons will be learned from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but I suspect some will be missed. Here are a few examples.

Corpus Christie: Don't get too far ahead of the game. Some evacuation, such as the islands, was prudent, but mandatory evacuation of the entire city was overkill.

Houston: Even the best plans aren't good enough when you keep having to shift gears.
I would say they did a good job overall.

Galveston and other coastal areas: As the hurricane begins to land, KILL THE ELECTRIC GRID. Didn't we learn this from Florida last year? Are we dense?

All affected areas: Civil defense needs hardened communications. And that includes media. It does no good to plan to provide news and information if you don't have stations on the air. And tell them which stations will be on the air for them. Tell them before the storm.

Plan for returns. Don't just tell people they can't go back home. Tell them the roads into those areas are closed. And make sure it is true.

Military in route to Paperless operations

Those of you who subscribe to the Military.Com newsletter got notice a couple of days ago that the military pay system is trying to end the use of snail mail for earnings statements and other paperwork that includes SSAN. They will be sending it over the Internet instead.

If you visit your MyPay site after Sept 1st (good of them to tell us almost two weeks AFTER it goes into effect) you will sign up for online documents automatically (if you are on active duty).

Those of us who have been around computers for more than 20 years thought we would never see the day when the Net was considered secure and Snail Mail was considered insecure.