The impending arrival of hurricane season is a handy reminder that preparedeness is everybody's business.
As our editorial today about Long Island MacArthur Airport says, failure to think ahead about potential disasters is a more than potentially disastrous attitude. That's why the Town of Islip is smart to work toward expanding fuel-storage capacity at the airport. In an emergency, a lot of rescue workers and materials would fly into MacArthur. But right now, there's not enough fuel stored there to make sure they could fly out again.
The expansion of fuel storage at the airport isn't the only recent sign that officials are at least thinking ahead. Earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency--yes, the same FEMA that performed so abysmally after Hurricane Katrina--did the right thing for Long Island. It took some nudging from our politicians, but FEMA is finally getting around to returning hurricane emergency supplies to Long Island. The agency brought in emergency supplies two years ago, but took them away after the season ended and didn't return them last year. The idea behind that decision was to create consolidated stockpiles in larger regions. But our officials squawked, and FEMA relented.
The other bit of welcome news is that the local chapters of the American Red Cross now say Long Island is better prepared for a hurricane than it has ever been.
But you can never be too prepared for a disaster. So these few signs of better readiness shouldn't lull us into thinking we're completely ready. We're not.