Your Survival Blog
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Everybody out of the pool!: Underestimating the awesome power of nature
A story last summer on a near-Category 5 hurricane approaching the coast of Baja California contained these gems, from a tourist I’ll leave anonymous:
“We are waiting anxiously, wanting to be right in the middle of it,” said [the man], who said he has never seen a hurricane as powerful as Jimena. “We were advised to leave, but we want to be here,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to be in one ... a real bad one.”
Really? Jimena had a maximum wind speed of around 150 mph (240 kph), with gusts up to 175 mph (280 kph). At those speeds, say the Virginia Department of Emergency Management:
“Catastrophic damage to residential structures. Most of the affected area will be uninhabitable for weeks or longer. Nearly all industrial buildings and low-rise apartment buildings severely damaged or destroyed. Nearly all trees and power poles downed. Damage could extend well inland. For example, large portions of the affected area will experience total power and water loss for weeks and possibly months.”
Not just a really big storm, but one that could kill you just by standing in it. Sounds like a fun kind of sightseeing activity, doesn’t it?
A week earlier, on the opposite coast of North America, stories reported on spectators at Acadia National Park in Maine. Approximately ten thousand people converged on the shore to watch the waves churned up by the near approach of Hurricane Bill — waves exceeding fifteen feet (5 m) crashing over the shore. The waves swept, predictably enough, over at least twenty people who got too close, sending eleven to the hospital for broken bones — and sweeping three into the water, where one child drowned.
And the tales go on: climbers who try to scale Denali in a snowstorm. The residents of barrier islands in Texas who shrugged off 2008’s Hurricane Ike — dozens died, and hundreds were never found. The six geniuses who were caught walking on Old Faithful in May 2009, though it was “not erupting at the time.” I could find you dozens of these stories.
Now if you’re not especially attached to living, or at least living with all your limbs and skin attached, you might wonder why others care whether you kill yourself in spectacular ways. Here’s some thoughts for you to ponder:
- If you have children or elderly or disabled dependents, you don’t really get to make that choice for them. If worried authorities tell you to evacuate, you’d better have a darned good reason why not. “My house has stood for a hundred years” is not a good reason — hundred-year-old houses flood/burn down/blow away, too. If you’re just sightseeing around killer waves or volcanoes or what have you, at least keep your kids out of harm’s way!
- If you don’t have dependents .. do you have family and friends who will miss you?
- There are people who put their own lives at risk to rescue people who may be victims through no fault of their own. We call these people firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, doctors, nurses, park rangers, helicopter pilots. Every single person who needs to get rescued although they had an opportunity to get out of harm’s way puts someone else at greater risk of dying.
Please don’t do this to the overworked, underpaid folks who are supposed to be keeping you safe. Rescue workers die pulling people out of situations they shouldn’t be in in the first place. And the ones who live — like the park rangers who try but fail to keep people away from hazards in their parks — get to live with the knowledge that someone died on their watch.
So if you’re not going to be careful for you — at least be careful for their sakes. Thanks.
Posted by eks on 04/08 at 11:32 AM(2) Comments • Permalink