The Kitchen Blog

Cooking, Gardening, Angst and More. Including Job Search Tales and lifestyle tips about island living.

About me

User: ChefNeal
Outspoken Podcasting Chef, Sustainability Advocate and Farmer.

  • Contact me
  • My profile
  • Linkme

Recent comments

Anonymous on Ring. . . .Ring. ...


www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from podchef. Make you own badge here.



Search Popdex:

Counter

visited *loading* times

« Today  |  Home  |  Sunday, again »
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
This could be Seattle



(From Amiran)

These latest, tragic quakes half-way across the world are a grim reminder that our area is expected to get "the big one" sometime soon.
How can we learn from what is going on?
How can we prepare?  Is there anything we can do?

Although the building codes around here have been anticipating a great quake for some time, many of the buildings are older.  If Seattle itself gets the brunt of it, that is horrible enough--but the coastal communities, and up here where we are would also, likely be wiped out. And then the tsunami--that's what worries me. First the bay drains--"oh, look, cool--let's run out and get the sunken treasure!"--and then whoosh. My house is only 50 feet from shore and only 20 feet tall. A cresting wave would tower over it. What could we grab?

I'm confiden the quake itself would do little damage to us. We're built on solid rock. I haven't ever felt any of the several quakes which have hit here since we built.
I called my Wife from another island where I was building a house during a quake. She felt nothing. I was wavering around like a flag during a gale. But even there--I was in the framed part of the building and my apprentice was standing on a concrete slab. I was moving--he was not.

How quick would aid come to us?
Could we wait it out?
It stand to reason that we should prepare for the worst case. In the last two major tradgedies in the world aid has been slow to arrive. We can expect no better in the next one either. Global resources are tapped out. I am tapped out. My heart and thoughts are with the afflicted people. I have never been to Pakistan. I would like to go. At one point, during University, I almost had a Pakistani wife. . . .and several chums from my English Bording school days were Pakistani, or from the stricken region.

Should we be asking is this the end? In global history, recorded of course, has there ever been so many natural disasters in sucession? When will the next one strike and where? An exceptional remider that life can be nasty, brutish and short and that Gaia can be an angry mother. And we want to explore and live on more violent worlds in outer space? Perhaps the space program should be closed down to provide a relief fund for what is going on on our own planet. . . .

posted by: ChefNeal at October 12, 2005 06:36 | link | comments |
seattle, island life, earthquakes

Comments: