If you are looking at driving into New York’s Manhattan, you may have to wait till Saturday, or at least wait till Cinderella’s coach turns into a pumpkin; when the clock strikes midnight. Alternatively, you may get to be an extra passenger if its a cab, or two if you are driving. With massive traffic snarl ups into Manhattan in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the New York’s mayor has announced that vehicles with less than three occupants wouldn’t be let into Manhattan between 6am and midnight.
Hurricane Sandy might not have been the most powerful hurricane to hit the Americas (Central and North America), but it was after its own records. It was the largest hurricane by diameter, covering 1,800 kilometres. That’s the distance from Mombasa to Kigali, through Kampala, with 200 kilometres to spare, all under one storm. It would take you 2 hours to cover the same in a commercial plane, or 25 hours non-stop in a bus. If it were East Africa, most of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and a good portion of Tanzania parts of Eastern DRC would all be complaining of the same storm at the same instance.
When it comes to economic damage, Sandy came with a $55.4 billion invoice. The Kenya Revenue authority is enquiring about whether the invoice had an attached electronic tax register slip, though we shall ignore them for now. In Kenya shillings, that’s about KES 4.725 trillion, or about 4 times Kenya’s KES 1.425 trillion 2012/2013 budget. By country, the United States was handed a $ 55 billion invoice, with the remaining $ 0.4 billion being divided between Cuba, Bahamas and Jamaica. Bermuda, Haiti, Canada and the Dominican Republic are still counting their losses.
The US, in comparison, is spending about $ 3.79 trillion this year as part of it’s budget , or slightly more than twice what Kenya spends if you swap the $ sign for the Ksh. one and fail to convert the currency.
When it comes to death tolls, The Guardian reports a toll of 133 by Thursday. Broken down to countries, the US has 55 , Haiti 52 , Cuba 11, Bahamas 2, Puerto Rico 2, Dominican Republic 2 , Canada 1 and Jamaica 1.
However, The Guardian flips the charts when it calculates Hurricane Sandy’s death rates per 1 million people in affected countries. Bahamas and Cuba lead with more than 5 deaths per 1 million population while Cuba and Puerto Rico have between 0.5 and 1 for each million. The US has 0.18 just ahead of last placed Canada with 0.03 deaths per 1 million population.
Haiti still can’t find 21 people. You might also like to know that Haiti, still struggling with the massive effects of a 2010 earthquake, was only hit by rains and was not directly hit by the hurricane like other countries.
However, no one felt the power of the hurricane than power companies in Eastern United States. 6 million customers were left without power and 50,000 power company workers from all over the US and Canada have convened in these states to help in restoration of power.
In comparison, Kenya Power has 1.8 million customers (serving 8 million people). Uganda reinforces that number with 0.5 million users, Rwanda 280,000 and Tanzania 950,000. The number of customers left without power by Hurricane Sandy are twice the number of total power customers in East Africa, where outages are an everyday occurrence.
As you read this, many affected areas in the US are already recovering from the effects of Sandy, and many of those without electricity will have it back.
Meanwhile, in Kenya, 50 people died in normal flooding in the long rains that hit this year between March and May.
Why are developed countries better at handling such big disasters compared to developing countries? Does this reinforce the theory that developed countries are as a result of harsh climatic conditions, where the country had to adapt, or dies? The theory explains that harsh winters in the Northern hemisphere meant that those living there had to organise themselves to survive the winters, hence ending up developed.
Meanwhile, around the Equator, the weather has tended to be generous, not varying much all year round. Here, humans in their primitive form could basically make it throughout the year. Death rates were still high hence high birth rates (8 births per woman), but these were far low compared to hazards such as winter which could wipe out an entire village.
Is planning a culture ingrained in the West and lacking in Africa? The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA), a government agency, will pay out insurance to most of those affected by Hurricane Sandy. In Kenya, flood prone areas such as Budalangi are a perennial news item, with little indications of planning here.
Planning itself is also absent in a personal level. There is the case of guests who always turned up for meals unannounced, or households where the kids make several trips to the shop, returning with a single item each. Salt and onions are discovered to have run out in the midst of cooking, despite cooking been a constant process with 100 percent chance of occurrence.
Do Africa’s unplanned settlements, unplanned populations and unplanned roads start with a childhood with little planning? Does Africa need winters and hurricanes to develop?
At work, you may find that colleagues hadn’t planned for lunch, and they would like to share yours. Do not share, let them learn to plan.
(More images of Hurricane Sandy from Boston’s The Big Picture )