Grim humour as Gustav nears Gulf oil and petchems

Why is ICIS, like the rest of the press, so obsessed by every single hurricane that hits the USA ? Countless people worldwide die from typhoons and cyclones and you could give a tuppence to their plight.

Hi Noor Jivraj - ICIS does track a number of cyclones and typhoons which cross the globe every year. ICIS doesn't cover many of them because, although they kill many people and destroy many buildings, they don't have much effect on the chemicals business. Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico get covered because the US coast from Texas to Florida is relatively packed with big petrochemical plants. ICIS exists to report on issues affecting the chemicals business. It isn't a general newswire. All the best. Simon

It is also worth noting that the US is one of the few democracies in the world that is routinely subject to this kind of natural disaster. The Bush administration's handling of Katrina is a topic in the current campaign. Are there any other functioning democracies in the world in which the government handling of the threat and the outcome are subject to such intense and open scrutiny? Admittedly, there are only a dozen or so countries in the world that qualify as functioning democracies, and of these perhaps only Australia is regularly threatened by cyclones. I think global press coverage of disasters in other places would be much different if the people affected were not already victims of their own governments.