Traffic Jams

This week saw historic deluges of rain on the East Coast. The flooding caused loss of life and tremendous damage. In fact, on the weekend of the nation's 230th birthday, the National Archives, home of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and a raft of other significant national documents, is closed for flooding, as is the National Gallery. Twenty feet of water rose in the basement of the IRS, closing the building for a month (to which, apparently, the nation is collectively shrugging its shoulders).

But before the memory of this latest disaster begins to fade, it's worth noting an editorial that appeared in yesterday's Washington Post. Examining the way the city reacted to the storms, the writer had to wonder, "If rain can paralyze movement in downtown Washington, are we ready for a terrorist attack?" We're coming up to five years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even the experts have no idea what would happen if there's ever another attack.

Unpowered traffic signals on Independence and Constitution avenues made for interminable waits to get out of the city center -- and that was with a normal load of commuters trying to get home. Now imagine everyone in the District frantically trying to get out at the same time. Washington area emergency officials claim that if the city ordered an evacuation, it could extend green lights and put more intersection control officers on the street to promote traffic flow out of the center. Yet they also admit that, beyond models and a trial test after last year's Fourth of July celebrations, they don't know how effective these techniques would be.

That's very heartening. The editorial does give us just a little bit of hope, though.

Homeland security gurus counter that the chances of a citywide general evacuation are small. More likely are phased evacuations or public notices telling residents to stay put.

Now that's a good answer. Maybe a paraphrase would be better: "No one could foresee that we'd have to evacuate the entire city." We've never heard an excuse like that before.