THE AMERICAN WAY OF war is well known and extensively written about; it's that of massing tremendous amounts of logistical material and aiming for a crushing, annihilating, victory. In the 20th and 21st centuries that's involved an emphasis, even a dependence, on air power. There's a curious symmetry I think, between that well observed fact, with the obvious emphasis on air power in American disaster response.

The firefighting in Los Angeles seems to involve extensive use of firefighting aircraft, for spotting and for dropping water; by comparison the RFS in NSW has less than a dozen aircraft, and there is a combined Australian 'fleet' of suitable aircraft of somewhere around a hundred. It's curious how different societies and different cultures approach disasters.

The basic economics problem is that it's impossible to retain, all the time, enough people to respond to a disaster. The Americans approach fires, characteristically, both with high technology and also through the use of inmate labour. Other countries, such as China, which have access to large numbers of conscripted people in the PLA, simply accept the opportunity cost of not having large numbers of people in the workforce, and can throw troops at any problem. The Australian approach depends instead on the time of very large numbers of volunteers, who undertake their own training and respond unpaid---and we accept the risk that those volunteers may, if they feel the social bargain isn't a good one, or the local management of the units poor, walk away.

It's characteristic of all disasters that they expose real faultlines in societies, such as lack of preparation, but especially inequality. They can also shift societies, even if temporarily, into new and extraordinary configurations of help and care, as Rebecca Solnit has written. It's characteristic also of those disasters that they reveal the real strengths of societies.

Los Angeles must be one of the most air-minded places in the world, so it's no surprise that the Californian response would involve such concentrated use of aircraft. It is something no other society could realistically achieve, and in the sense of the cliche, it's shocking, and awing---for good! I prefer my own society's approach that builds communities of disaster-mindedness in the everyday; but of course that's just a reflection that I happen to like the society of which I'm a member.

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