Armin Schuster is certainly not a great speaker. In this respect, he is not the ideal PR manager for the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid (BBK), which he has been leading for eight months. This may obscure the view that the catastrophe that has been taking place in the German west for days and has already cost an avoidably high number of lives is not due to an authority and one person, but – the word is unsexy: structures. Schusters BBK can still order so much “strategic realignment”: It would remain largely incompetent, except in the event of war. In the meantime, his information flows too slowly and often incomprehensibly to where it is needed. And they hit a wall of ignorance and arrogance. There are politicians who, like NRW Interior Minister Reul, claim against their better judgment that natural disasters cannot be foreseen. But there is also a population that still eats well-traveled tomatoes in winter, seals the river banks with homes and turns up the air conditioning in their armored cars because, oh wonder, it’s getting hotter and hotter outside. It is we who choose this policy. Because we want to believe that the disaster will stay in Bangladesh and California and spare us.
I am a technology author with 8 years of experience in journalism. My writing covers the latest technology advancements and trends, drawing on my expertise in news journalism and social media platforms. I have contributed to major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.
