We Knew It Was Coming

Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest and the costliest hurricanes in the history of North America. Nearly 2,000 people lost their lives and damage topped $80 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. More than one million people from the central Gulf coast have been redistributed elsewhere across the country in displacement greater than that of the civil war or any other single event.

Business came to a sudden halt as the storm made landfall on the Louisiana coast and more than 40% of the businesses in New Orleans and the surrounding area closed, never to reopen again.

For more than a century, it was known that New Orleans faced catastrophic flooding in the event of a large hurricane. Governments have planned, exercised, budgeted, and staffed for catastrophic flooding. The question still being asked today is: in the face of certain knowledge that New Orleans would be flooded by a hurricane, where was the plan to deal with it?

But, let’s look closer to home.

At 5:40 on the afternoon of June 4th, William Macdonald boarded a bus at the corner of Spring Garden Rd. and Barrington, in Halifax, on his way home from his job at the naval dockyard. The bus proceeded toward the terminal at Mumford Road, picking up and discharging passengers on the way. When the bus arrived at the terminal, all passengers disembarked – all but Bill Macdonald. He remained in his seat, his dead body propped against the window.

The year was 1918. Halifax was still reeling from the explosion that had devastated a major portion of the city and left 2,000 dead, more than 9,000 injured, 6,000 homeless and another 25,000 without adequate shelter. Government officials were loath to compound Halifax’s problems by imposing quarantine or a ban on public gatherings. The flu – misnamed the Spanish Influenza – spread in the city virtually unchecked.

Worldwide, the three waves of influenza of 1918-1919 were responsible for between 50 million to 100 million deaths – 2.5% to 5% of the entire human population.

In Canada, more than 50,000 people died as a result of the influenza virus.

The 1918 Influenza was the first of three pandemics in the last century. There will be other influenza pandemics, perhaps soon. They are recurrent events but the timing and severity of influenza pandemics are unpredictable.

Will our lack of preparation for a pandemic that can be foreseen today, have others our competence? Will our businesses be among those that close, never to reopen?

Governments – in particular, the infection control officials of Health departments both federally and provincially – have been preparing for such a pandemic. They have stepped up planning and response capability since the SARS outbreak in Toronto.

But what about private industry? What about your company? What about your family?