Real national disaster is lack of preparation | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Real national disaster is lack of preparation | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "Even after Sept. 11, 2001, even after Hurricane Katrina, a Red Cross survey last year found that 93 percent of Americans aren't prepared for a major calamity — a natural disaster, a pandemic or a terrorist attack. This is troubling, because the more prepared a population is, the more effective the response to and recovery from a catastrophe will be.

In the weeks after 9/11, my worried wife asked me, 'What should we be doing?' We lived directly across the street from the Manhattan hospital where a woman had just died from anthrax exposure; I worked only a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center.

Initially, I thought that the answer to her question would be pretty straightforward. But 6 and 1/2 years later, I'm still trying to pin it down.

Readying the public for the likely eme"