Gregg Zachary on disaster preparation

My friend Gregg Zachary recently argued in the San Francisco Chronicle that "India [and] Indonesia didn't prepare for worst:"

There is an old cliche about famines: They are all man-made. There is enough food to go around; it is just in the wrong places. The same can be said about natural disasters like the earthquake and tsunami that killed tens of thousands in Asia last week. People are in the wrong places.

It's a harsh piece, but I tend to agree with his assessment that the governments deserve criticism for their unwillingness to invest in an early warning system that could have saved lives.