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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, not trying to anger anyone or anything, I am genuinely interested. Where in the US was there a natural disaster of significant scale where there was no looting?

I'm actually from Wisconsin, but was living in Cedar Rapids during the floods, and there was looting there. My neighbor was the cop chasing these guys down. I am just curious how other communities were able to avoid looting.

BTW, Cedar Rapids is in Iowa.

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I'm from Cedar Rapids as well. You really need to qualify the claim there was looting in CR. The term is rather loaded and conjures visions of angry Iowans raiding the local Casey's on John Deeres. The burglary rates did rise somewhat; but there was definitely not a feeling on lawlessness or looting. During the height of the flood, thousands of citizens from across the city helped sandbag. The only thing that saved the last remaining water pumping station was a concerted effort to build a large sandbag wall against the Cedar River.

After the waters receded many groups helped clean up countless houses in the hard-hit areas. While I wouldn't say we have quite the serene calm of the Japanese, I think communities in the United States still can effectively work together.

http://www.sanitaryum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/You-loo...

Not a disaster quite, but in Houston everyone evacuated from the hurricane and no one I knew reported any looting happening.

And people turned out to help, first to clean up their own blocks, then to help with citywide food banks.

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