Historically, humans get serious about avoiding disasters only after one has just struck them. On that logic, 2006 should have been a breakthrough year for rational behavior. With the memory of ⁹⁄₁₁ still【C1】_____in their minds, Americans watched hurricane Katrina, the most expensive disaster in U. S. history, on live TV. Anyone who didn’t know it before should have learned that bad things can happen. And they are made【C2】_____worse by our willful blindness to risk as much as our reluctance to work together before everything goes to hell.

Granted, some amount of delusion is probably part of the【C3】_____condition. In A. D. 63, Pompeii was seriously damaged by an earthquake, and the locals immediately went to work【C4】__, in the same spot— until they were buried altogether by a volcano eruption 16 years later. But a review of the past year in disaster history suggests that modem Americans are particularly bad at【C5】__themselves from guaranteed threats. We know more than we ever did about the dangers we face. But it turns【C6】_____that in times of cri-sis, our greatest enemy is rarely the storm, the quake or the surge itself. More often, it is ourselves.

So what has happened in the year that【C7】_____the disaster on the Gulf Coast? In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has worked day and night to rebuild the flood walls. They have got the walls to where they were before Katrina, more or less. That’s not【C8】_____, we can now say with confidence. But it may be all that can be expected from one year of hustle.

Meanwhile, New Orleans officials have crafted a plan to use buses and trains to【C9】_____the sick and the dis-abled. The city estimates that 15,000 people will need a ride out. However, state officials have not yet deter-mined where these people will be taken. The【C10】_____ with neighboring communities are ongoing and difficult.

【C3】