Bob McCarty Writes

Tourists walk toward Quake Lake, formed in Northwest Montant after a 1959 earthquake (National Park Service Photo, 1960).

The annual “Yellowstone is shaking and might erupt” news reports have surfaced, prompting me to ponder how the Obama Administration might respond to a natural disaster with its epicenter at the national park.

The New York Times, among others, reported today that more than 100 mostly-tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert.

Similar reports 13 months ago prompted me to publish a post in which I asked the question, Will Yellowstone Eruption Be Obama’s Katrina? In that post, I surmised (1) that then-President-Elect Barack Obama would want to avoid the kind of criticism that has haunted President George W. Bush after the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was viewed as inadequate at best and incompetent at worst and (2) that he should tell the American people how you will protect the nation from the carnage that’s certain to follow such a cataclysmic event.

Not surprisingly, President Obama has yet to share any thoughts on how his administration might deal with such a disaster, and I don’t expect he will anytime soon.  After all, he’s a reactionary, not a planner, and, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel loves to say, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.  What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”