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Wow.

On Morning Edition they've been discussing how prepared we are for disaster as a nation. In a series of interviews this week Stephen Flynn, a security expert basically said that we haven't learned anything from September 11th and Katrina: That there are clear and obvious weaknesses in our port security, the levee systems and our medical system. Flynn discussed reasonably possible events that we can anticipate right now that we could prepare for in advance, but for which we have no real infrastructure in place to handle.

We hear these things all the time, so it doesn't surprise us that DHS isn't quite on top of things. But the idea is that they plan to be, hopefully before the next 'event' occurs.

Today they gave George Foresman from Homeland Security a chance to respond. Much of it is to be expected, he played down some of the risks still present and he played up the degree to which the government could actually handle these situations.

But an underlying theme that was repeated a few times was this: the American people have to manage their expectations. So, if an earthquake or bomb results in seawater contaminating the water supply in California, the people need to know that they aren't going to have water for a while. If there is a pandemic or a biological attack, people need to understand that they may not be able to get medical care.

Flynn pointed to economic forces for our poor preparedness. The medical industry in particular has been cutting back staff and resources for over a decade. The result is a health care system that has the single goal of maintaining the status quo. It hires just enough staff and maintains enough space to handle an average load. Sometimes less, but never more. It's not economical otherwise.

In response to this, Foresman pretty much agrees. He says the American people are not willing to pay the cost to keep the reserves necessary to provide the support services that might be needed.

Think about that.

Someone from the agency that is supposed to keep us safe and secure is saying that our safety is prohibitively expensive, so we need to lower our expectations.

That's frightening.

::c::

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