EDITORIAL : USA TODAY, U.S.A

Japanese earthquake sends sobering message for USA

Of all the disasters that can wreak havoc, earthquakes stand out for not being entirely natural. To a farmer in a field, a quake is a strange and frightening occurrence, but probably not life threatening. In cities, however, the man-made structures that provide shelter from other disasters can turn into a lethal enemy. Add a tsunami, and farmer and city dweller alike could be swamped.

If any country understands this interplay of earthquakes, waves and buildings it is Japan, which has developed stringent building codes and well-rehearsed evacuation plans. Having lived for centuries in such close proximity to one another and facing a common threat, the Japanese have evolved into a much more communitarian and ordered society than ours. And yet, as the continuing stream of bad news from Friday's quake indicates, even the Japanese couldn't save themselves from a temblor of such magnitude so close to shore.

Here in the USA, this should be sobering. When the capital of Haiti was leveled by a quake last year, Americans could at least take comfort from the fact that buildings here are much stronger and safer. The Japanese quake sends the opposite message.

Earthquake-prone areas here are pockmarked with schools and other facilities built decades ago that don't meet earthquake safety standards. The Utah Seismic Safety Commission recently concluded that 60% of a sampling of 128 schools did not meet federal guidelines. A 2007 study in Oregon found that roughly 1,000 schools, or 46% of the state's total, had a high or very-high risk of failure during a temblor.

The list of vulnerable infrastructure is long: dams, bridges, pipelines, nuclear plants and more. And outside of Hawaii and Alaska, who has even thought about a tsunami threat?

Given the severe financial difficulties many states and localities are facing, retrofitting tens of thousands of buildings will not happen quickly. But the Japanese temblor should serve as a clarion call to start chipping away at the problem because preparing a secure future is a priority America has wholly devalued. Earthquake-proof schools, dams and nuclear plants take a back seat to more immediate indulgences in the same way that the nation's economic security is sacrificed to tax cuts and entitlement spending.

At all levels, government is expected to be limited and to tax little. At the same time, it is expected to make benefits appear out of thin air and come to the rescue when disaster strikes. An event as minor as a snowstorm can send people into a rage about the inability of local government to respond. Hurricane Katrina exposed the lack of focus on disaster at the city, state and federal levels. And still preparation is lacking.

If an earthquake like the one in Japan struck in a similarly populated area in America, it would be an utter calamity. Not only would the devastation be vastly greater, but the pace of getting life back to normal would be slower, even on the West Coast where temblors are common and preparation for them is greatest. A quake in the Midwest or the East — where two of the biggest shakers in American history struck — would be exponentially worse for reasons of geology and indifference.

This might not change, but the Japanese quake should at least raise the requisite alarm bells on nuclear power plants. The U.S. is not as dependent on nuclear power as is Japan (We get about 20% of our electricity from it while Japan gets 30%). But we do have existing plants near fault lines, including the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre facilities, both along the California coast where they are exposed to both earthquake and tsunami. And, after a 30-year hiatus, several new plants are now under consideration. The energy they could provide is sorely needed. But this quake should prompt a re-evaluation of which new plants to build and which existing plants should be considered for decommissioning.

Given all the misery left in a country as well prepared as any for a major earthquake, Americans should be humbled and concerned, not grateful that such a tragedy did not strike closer to home. Because one day it will.

Keep government open

The Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and even the U.S. Senate, in its early years, met in secret. The Founding Fathers were mostly wealthy planters and businessmen who didn't trust the common people quite enough to let them know what was being done in their name.

Fortunately, the flexible government they created evolved in a more egalitarian direction. Washington and the states now have laws that largely require public bodies to meet in public and make government records available to citizens. But the struggle continues.

Open-government laws have loopholes; politicians, bureaucrats and law enforcement officers who don't want the voters to know what's going on obstruct access to information and decision-making.

Just a sampling from recent headlines:

•The New York City Police Department insists its reports of shooting incidents, even reports of police shooting at civilians, must be secret. Encouragingly, a trial judge ordered last month that they be made available in response to freedom-of-information requests. Without a chance to review such reports, how is the public to know whether such shootings are justified?

•Authorities in York County, Pa., tried to hide addresses linked to 911 emergency reports, thus making it impossible to evaluate the timeliness of police and fire department responses. An appeals court ordered that the addresses be made available.

•In two examples of exceptional legislative arrogance, the watchdog Sunlight Foundation reports that the New Mexico Senate passed a rule this year to bar members of the public from recording any of the public meetings held in the state Capitol. And the New Hampshire House, claiming exemption from the state's right-to-know law, is carrying out executive sessions immediately after general sessions.

•Elsewhere, the Utah Legislature, with little notice, rammed through a law signed last Tuesday exempting records of text messages and voice mails of government officials from open-records laws, restricting access to other records and raising the fees imposed on members of the public trying to find out what's going on in their government. The new governor of Maine claimed the right to exempt advisory boards he's creating from open-government rules, and the governor of Tennessee blithely exempted himself from state financial disclosure rules.

•In Washington, D.C., reforms in recent years have supposedly made public access to records faster and easier, but at a recent conference, research groups complained that computerized reports are often electronic gibberish, not in usable form, and bureaucrats' definition of timeliness in meeting requests leaves a lot to be desired. Nearly half the federal agencies ordered by President Obama two years ago to streamline public access to records have yet to act in a substantive way.

This is Sunshine Week, an annual event sponsored by advocates of open government to call attention to the ongoing struggle over the public's access to what's being done in its name. Today also marks the 260th birthday of James Madison, father of the First Amendment and the man whose copious notes of those debates inside the Constitutional Convention, when eventually made public, became the accepted historical record of how our government came to be.

As these and other struggles show, an ongoing sunshine effort is indispensible. Absent public scrutiny, politicians, law officers and bureaucrats will act like the 18th century aristocrats in their zeal to keep the public in the dark.