As Mark Twain said, “Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” Too bad that we can’t because we have had more than our share of natural disasters in the past months.
Who knows whether we are really having more weather-related catastrophes or does it just seem that way because of the flood of media exposure? I suspect it is some of both. If there really are more violent events then surely the culprit is global warming . . . or not.
Despite the apparent stability of our planet its history has been fraught with natural disasters for the last four billion years. Of course, with no one around to report them, the impact of 99.9999 percent goes unrecorded.
This year, for whatever reason, the hurricanes and now the tornadoes mark 2012-13 as one of the worst. With the hurricanes, we now have days or weeks of warning; with tornadoes there is far less time but usually there are some hours in which to prepare.
Here in Roanoke, we have had only flooding and that rarely. The flood of 1985 was described as the worst natural disaster in our history. Ten people lost their lives and it was due only to the excellent work of emergency crews and public safety workers that there were not more.
I witnessed the flooding from the lofty perch of the coronary care unit of the hospital, hard by the 20 foot wave that washed down the Roanoke River in a terrifyingly short time. The water rose to the ceiling of the first floor and we had an hour’s warning that operations had to be stopped or completed because the power would fail.
Back then the generators for the hospital were in the basement. The patients on ventilators would have to be breathed manually by staff until the power was restored; that might have been days, but mercifully it was less than 24 hours. My most vivid memory was hearing the water rush through the elevator shafts below and wondering if the whole building might topple into the river.
The thing that sticks in my mind is how everyone went about their business, walking through the darkened halls, flashlights in hand, and into every room countless times during the night to make sure the patients were all right. There was no panic and little thought to what the rest of the city was enduring. That was the only time I was ever in the midst of a disaster and that can’t compare with hurricane Sandy or the ravages of Tornado Alley.
The best plan is to not be where a weather-related disaster occurs but escape may be impossible. As we saw in Oklahoma I-40 became parking lot. Until I listened to those weather reports, I didn’t realize how dangerous it was to remain in your car. The Weather Chasers from the Weather Channel found out when their car was rolled over many times then carried in the air for hundreds of feet before crashing. No one was seriously injured, but one reporter said that was the last time he would take a storm chasing assignment. Three experienced storm chasers were not so fortunate and were among the 13 who died.
For those of us with no underground rooms, a direct hit may be disastrous and looking at the devastation in Moore, OK two weeks ago, how anyone lived through that is a miracle. Twenty-four died and virtually none of the homes have basements, so finding an interior room away from windows seems to be the best option.
Of one thing we can be certain: natural disasters will continue and the better preparation one has, the more likely is survival. I have never thought something like that would happen to me but neither did the victims of Sandy or the residents of Moore expect anything like that.
It’s time to have a survival plan with flashlights, water, and food. If turns out that we don’t need it, then look around for those who do, even if they live in Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Jersey, or Long Island. There are agencies that can use our financial support in their work. I suspect that if we were in the same situation the nation would be coming to our rescue.
We do live at the mercy of the weather and that’s not going to change, global warming notwithstanding. We ignore the warnings at our peril.
– Hayden Hollingsworth, MD
