After public tragedies, snap judgments rule the day. Will we ever learn?
A bridge collapses in Minneapolis, and we all know why: We've been skimping on maintenance of our infrastructure, and our tightfistedness has cost 13 lives. A stripper claims lacrosse players from Duke University gang-raped her, and we see it as proof that virulent racism is alive and well. A restaurant fire in West Roxbury kills two firefighters, and the cause is clear: The city has fallen down on its inspections, leaving deadly firetraps waiting to explode.
Each one of these incidents follows the same pattern. A dramatic event occurs, and we rush to judgment. The problem is that those judgments were not based on facts.
In Minneapolis, preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board now raises doubt on whether maintenance was actually at fault. Rather, a design flaw from 40 years ago may have hampered the bridge's ability to carry the weight it was supposed to hold. The Durham rape accusation, of course, turned out to be a false claim, made first by the alleged victim and later by a prosecutor run amok. And August's fire at the Tai Ho restaurant came two days after a prominent story in this newspaper about cutbacks in city restaurant inspections. While the problems in that report involved food safety, that seemed almost irrelevant to some politicians and commentators, who immediately focused on fire inspections, blaming the tragic deaths on underfunding in that area and reliance on private firms.
However, recent reports present the possibility that inspections wouldn't have mattered. I tread carefully here, because, as of this writing, a formal investigation is ongoing. But questions about the firefighters' competence have been raised. Regardless of that, others theorize the double-ceiling design of the kitchen itself would have made it difficult for an ordinary inspection to have caught the problem.
"Facts are stupid things," Ronald Reagan once misspoke, and while he was mercilessly ridiculed for that (he meant "stubborn"), it does sometimes seem that we conduct much of our public discourse the same way. There are some issues - matters of liberty, the distribution of wealth, or the role of the welfare state - where values drive the debate. But on a host of other topics - why a bridge falls, whether someone is guilty, or the reasons for a fire - facts should be paramount. Too frequently, they are not. None of this is to suggest that we shouldn't maintain our bridges or that we shouldn't fight racism or that stepped-up fire inspections are a bad idea. But it is to suggest that these measures probably wouldn't have stopped these particular tragedies. Perhaps as important, it also suggests that focusing on dramatic public events prevents us from coming up with the right solutions.
Critics say that in Massachusetts, we've shorted maintenance of our infrastructure by tens of billion of dollars. That may be, but, in fact, almost all major bridge calamities have nothing to do with maintenance and everything to do with design or construction flaws or natural disasters. More attention to bridge-building standards might save more lives. Similarly, according to the FBI, the number of violent racist incidents is decreasing. If battling discrimination is the goal, more attention to the subtleties of, say, day-to-day working conditions might yield better results.
And in Boston, a more intrusive and expensive inspection system may not make much of a difference. In 2005, just 14 fires (of 28,793) were related to restaurant hoods and ducting, according to the state's Department of Fire Services. If one were to conclude that more money should be spent on fire protection, other measures (residential sprinklers or better training for firefighters) might be more worthwhile.
Still, this is analysis in the cold light of day. In the passion of the moment, it's hard not to point fingers, to use one instance to press a favored cause or to find partisan advantage. How can one deny human nature?
The answer, I suppose, is to learn from history and, when the next tragedy occurs, take a deep breath, study the facts, and figure out what happened. It's possible to do. Even as local pols were jumping to assign blame for the restaurant fire, Mayor Tom Menino held back - refusing, for example, to take the bait of blaming state budget cuts. It's less viscerally satisfying, perhaps. But it's the right thing to do.
Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, October 21, 2007.