Sheri Fink Quotes

There could have been more planning in New Orleans, but you look at all the devastation that happened there - have we gotten to 3,000 deaths yet? For that magnitude of a disaster, that's not all that bad.

I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis?

During a large disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, warnings get hopelessly jumbled. The truth is that, for warnings to work, it's not enough for them to be delivered. They must also overcome that human tendency to pause; they must trigger a series of effective actions, mobilizing the informal networks that we depend on in a crisis.

A disaster like a hurricane is like a football game. You are going to lose the first quarter. There is no way you will win that quarter. The question is how ugly you will lose that quarter. Then you go into the second quarter – the search and rescue.

In a disaster you have to have speed. In order to have speed, you have to have trust. And in order to have trust, you have to have people organized and planning before the disaster.

Assure personal survival in any kind of disaster.

They are spinning and people are dying.

What we need as much as money is consensus about how we live [with fire] in that countryside [prone to forest fires] or at least agreement about how to decide…. More than 72,000 communities are at risk and only 20% have a plan for protection.

Houston's been getting flooded for a very long time. We always have to prepare for disasters and we have to do this in a very bipartisan way.

Security and safety are very important for us.

In life, you don't really know what's coming at you. Like a firefighter, or police officer, or anyone else working in the emergency field, they don't know what's going to come at them. You gotta be ready for anything.

Public health and safety are my highest priorities.

The health and safety of the residents of our region continues to be my highest priority.

I was living out on Long Island in Baldwin, New York when Hurricane Sandy hit. With the storm surge, the whole first floor of our house was under about three feet of water. We lost a lot of valuable stuff - sentimental stuff like pictures and Christmas ornaments. Nobody expected flooding that bad.

The health and safety of our neighbors and our communities should be our top priority - nothing is more important.

My highest priority is the safety of all Oregonians and their communities.

We've had a history of hurricanes, but none of them of the magnitude that we're seeing Irma turn out to be.

Whether it was the Alaskan pipeline disaster or the Texas City refinery fire where 15 people died, time after time it's been shown that BP chooses expediency over safety.

You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.

What we found out with Katrina is that the country is still unable to deal with disaster. God forbid this happens in San Francisco.

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.

This idea of having back-up plans is ingrained into us to make us believe that that's the smart thing to do.

Do the math. Expect catastrophes. Whatever happens, stay the course.