Lew Rockwell has a great essay up today questioning whether the government really knows better than individuals when it comes to planning for disaster

As a case in point, he examines the recent tornado in Enterprise, Alabama, during which a school was hit and many children died:

[I]nstead of just letting the kids go, the officials herded them all in hallways, where it was said that they would be “safe.” There they sat in crowded conditions for hours and hours, just waiting for the moment of death to come. It finally did: at 1:30pm. The twister slammed into the building, the walls caved in, and eight kids were killed, with many more injured. Parents who had come to pick up their kids at the earliest possible moment (the school announced that this was 1:00pm) sat helplessly by. They weren’t allowed in before, and when they showed up, the police demanded that they come inside and still wouldn’t let the kids go.

And did the officials in charge express regret about their stupid decision to force everyone to stay? On the contrary, they claim that if they had let the kids go, there might have been hundreds of deaths.

First, we don’t know that for sure. The main spot of death was the school, and it was precisely because so many were crowded into just a small area. A point of common sense – very much lacking in emergency management – is that wherever you are hiding, you need room to move so that you can dodge falling concrete. They were given no such room.

Second, there is a big difference between dying at the hands of the Plan and dying because of your own bad choices. It is a matter of who bears the responsibility. When you die because of the decisions of the officials, your blood is on their hands.

As Rockwell points out, the Enterprise tragedy is a reflection of the idea that the state knows better than the individual what is best for them. In that case, school officials forced kids to stay in the school rather than allowing them, or, more importantly, their families, determine what the best course of action might be. Given the outcome, one can hardly wonder how things could have been worse if the kids had been sent home.

But, as Rockwell, points out, Enterprise, Alabama is but one example of what he calls a “culture” of emergency:

The whole culture of emergency in this country seems to be predicated on the notion that people do no know what is best for them. They need authorities to tell them what to do. And whatever they do, they must do it in concert. Masses of people must be shuffled this way and that, and no one should be permitted to have any choice in the matter.

Why do we assume that the officials in charge know what is better for us than we do? It is a leap of faith. After all, everyone has access to the weather channel. Everyone can watch the radar. We don’t need nazis-on-the-spot to suddenly pop up and manage our choices on whether to evacuate or stay, to hunker down where we are or find some other spot.

The best approach to an emergency is simply to let people make their own judgments about how to stay safe. Instead, we have developed a system whereby a central plan goes into effect that applies to everyone. This is why evacuations tend to be mandatory these days, and why you are not allowed to rescue your own children from danger.

This is precisely why I fear for civil liberties in the event of a truly devastating terrorist attack or natural disaster.