Comments | telosphilos: Joys of Geography

telosphilos

Joys of Geography

Sep 02, 2005 14:53

I live in the USA and I rather like it here. The USA is a country of natrual disasters. The cold truth is they happen all the time in this country. There are big ones like what we are currently seeing and there are little ones that never make the international news like the wildfires out west. I've mostly lived in the east and south of the ( Read more... )

Comments 26

lisaroquin September 2 2005, 19:36:43 UTC

I'm out here on the central plains and we've got everything but the hurricanes ( ... )

telosphilos September 2 2005, 21:36:23 UTC

*nod* Ah the most recent batch of really horrible tornados recently in my memory is Oklahoma just a couple years ago. We sent a fair amount of stuff up for that one. I was living in North Dallas. Damn near took at the air force back in OKC where some friends of mine were stationed at the time. We had a few smaller tornados down in Texas that were more or less a part of the same system that went through. I believe my brother in law was called into the hospital to do a fair smattering of emergency blood donation too since he is O neg. He and my sister in law went to college at ACU ( ... )

elaina September 2 2005, 22:45:52 UTC

Part of the problem there is a failure of leadership. There isn't anyone who's stepped up to the plate and ordered things get done. FEMA sure as hell dragged their feet. It's Friday, and they finally got supplies in.

The Mayor, Ray Nagin, he did a lot of flailing about. We haven't heard from Aaron Broussard or Harry Lee in days. The governor, Blanco, she hasn't done a damn thing. The head of Homeland Security didn't even know there were people in the Convention Center, dying or not. There has been no Guiliani for this.

telosphilos September 2 2005, 23:13:30 UTC

An unfortunate point. Those supplies should have been there sooner. It just makes me cringe to think about it all. Do you know if you still have a house?

tornados, blizzards and volcanos! alchemia September 2 2005, 20:28:40 UTC

Tornado alley also extends into part of Illinois, i'm on the cusp of it. a few tornados are year are not uncommon here, and we've had some bad ones. The interior of the house is used if you do not have a basement. if you have a house here yoou usually have a basement and thats the place to go ( ... )

Re: tornados, blizzards and volcanos! telosphilos September 2 2005, 21:20:19 UTC

Tornado alley is defined as just those four states, stupid as that sounds. I've actually seen more tornados elsewhere, mostly because I was inside when the sirens went off in Texas. In reality, I can't think of a single place here that doesn't get the occasional tornado.

Blizzards are dangerous for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I haven't lived in the north of the country since I was a young child so I have forgotten a number of things about them. Thanks for bringing those points up.

You are quite right, I forgot all about the volcanos which is very silly of me since I used to live right next to five dormant volcanos in Albuquerque. I knew I was forgetting something major that happens regularly. Pretty much with a volcano, if its going to go you are most likely screwed. I would not want to contend with a volcano, I'll take the rest of the country instead. *shudder*

Re: tornados, blizzards and volcanos! alchemia September 2 2005, 21:32:33 UTC

did they change it or something when i was in hs, in earth science class, i remember they had a map with a big red sort of a rectable across the middle, covering mainly those states but extending into a few others, andthat was what waslabelled as T.A. i they've changed it i didnt know. our teacher used to like to scare us w. things like our proximity to the new madrid fault line, microbursts that can just come out of nowhere and squish you and survivor tales of what its like to be struck by lightening, etc..

yeh, i figure, all things cnsidered, its not too bad here. i personalyl can deal with blizzards. im not afraid rely of tornados. (i do worry about Bugland and meds ia medicaid though). i wouldnt mind earthquakes, if i lived on a *farm* but i would never live in a city near a fault line.

Re: tornados, blizzards and volcanos! telosphilos September 2 2005, 22:17:24 UTC

I think they did because I remember that big trapazoid thing too. I looked it up again just for this post and that is what I found. They called that small part tornado alley and the rest a regular tornado zone. My source could be wrong, the other still makes more sense to me.

I think you have a very legit worry about his meds. He needs them. Medicaid isn't that great a system at providing for its patrons. I've read a few of his rants on the subject.

I'll live wherever we need to to keep the family afloat. We have things worked out so that I don't have to work and can do all the things with the kiddo. Being aware of the hazards that come with living some place is only sensible.

reanimated September 2 2005, 21:01:52 UTC

interesting, i've never given much thought to how relatively stable europe is in this regard, or more to the point, how UNSTABLE the US can be just due to natural disasters. and we really do deal with alot of it. so much so that only the biggest occurences really garner attention, because otherwise we'd be worrying about it all the time. you start to 'get used to' the smaller, less disastrous events.

another thing...you say we'd like to think we'd be 'better' in this situation...i think that's an arrogant way to think. it doesn't matter where in the world this happens. it would happen the same way in NYC or LA or houston or chicago. people would be panicking. many people try to handle it as best as possible, but right now survival instinct is taking over. don't doubt the same scene would play out anywhere in the world under these cirumstances. people are people are people. i think i'd probably be one of those people screaming at others, if not getting into fights, because i know i have a bad temper. >.>

telosphilos September 2 2005, 21:09:54 UTC

When I say better, I mean purely as human beings without regard to race, ethnicity, country or creed, both in the US and abroad. I want to believe good things about people all over the world. I don't think it is arrogant so much as hopeful, but once order breaks down it takes a lot of work and cooperation to rebuild it. The people in New Orleans right now have been failed, badly, and they are reacting.

I know where I'd be, heads down somewhere with my kid doing whatever I could to shelter him and looting for food and drink. I think that is what most parents are trying to do really, keep their kids safe and hope help arrives soon or trying to help themselves. Read the articles I linked too as well in the second half. One is ranty yes, but it does have some excellent points. The second also has a few very valid points to consider about the situation as well.

reanimated September 2 2005, 21:36:04 UTC

oh yeah, i know what you mean, but it becomes one of those 'lord of the flies,' 'heart of darkness' scenarios. i think we'd all like to assume that people are going to make the best of any situation, but i think everyone has a breaking point. it's a different level for everyone, and perhaps there are some true saints who would always turn the other cheek. but i think it's a matter of relative morals. how many people would choose 'not stealing' over 'we haven't eaten in almost a week, so it's every man for himself'? when people feel, whether correctly or not, that their survival is at stake, instincts take over. and when a large group of people goes into survival mode, it can get ugly. i guess my point is, it's a universal part of being human. civilization and rules and ethics keep us working together on a regular basis, but when the entire foundation of a community falls apart, the gut reaction is to go into survival mode. civilization and community are not the natural state of things. your social needs and respsonsibilites can easily ( ... )

telosphilos September 2 2005, 22:09:18 UTC

I would not wait a week. Three days without water is the longest you can live without dying of dehydration. In that heat, you won't last three days. There is a difference between taking the necessities because you honestly need them and taking fancy electronics because you can. I can see a case for taking radios and batteries of all sorts just so you know what is going on if you can get a signal from anywhere.

We can discuss states of nature for weeks on end, but we won't get anywhere. My ethics classes have proved that at least to me.

Thread 5

ann_mcn September 3 2005, 00:01:03 UTC

Thanks for an excellent discussion -- don't have anything particular to add, but it's good.

telosphilos September 3 2005, 00:26:18 UTC

Just trying to put some perspective on it for the people outside the US who don't have to deal with this sort of thing so often. Most of the rants and such from the US just don't make as much sense without the cultural perspective.

I just talked to a dear friend of mine who did the computer models for the Army Corps of Engineers in 2002. He says he is amazed the city faired so well. Thank God, he's safe with his girlfriend and her family. They went east and got hit anyway, but it was a cat 1 when it got to them.

ann_mcn September 3 2005, 00:34:13 UTC

I've been reading about the New Orleans disaster potential all my life, and here in Georgia, near Atlanta, we have tornadoes mostly, but many people have flooding problems, made much worse by over construction and paving everything in sight.

loopyloonyluna September 3 2005, 04:26:03 UTC

There were cerainly a multitude of things that were handled poorly or not at all in New Orleans, and I agree with your astute assessment. Perhaps the biggest shame of it all is the missed opportunities to take preventative measures before the storm hit (it seems that there were at least two days in ehich people were sure that New Orleans would be hit. That time could have been spent bussing people out to safety and provisioning the Superdome to handle last-minute refugees. People have been dying in that building because they have no access to medication which to me is heartbreaking. People dying in their homes waiting for someone to rescue them is also heartbreaking but not as unexpected because they are widely scatteres and nobody is sure who is still in those houses. From the news reports many survivors are on the brink of a full scale riot due to the horrendous conditions ( ... )

telosphilos September 3 2005, 16:31:13 UTC

Food and water have finally made it to the evacuation centers. The fact is they should have gotten the flooding taken care of sooner rather then later because that would have prevented so much of this. There was time, there were opportunities, and they weren't taken.

How bad do you think the final investigations into what went wrong will be? If he could be reelected, I'm sure this mess would have prevented W from reelection. I somehow don't think the gov of LA will be reelected either. The mayor might, but he's the only one.

loopyloonyluna September 4 2005, 03:39:12 UTC

I highly doubt that the governor of LA has a snowballs chance of getting re-elected. This would also have hamper Bush's bid had he been eligible for it (the republicans' chances in 2008 may suffer still, though a lot can happen in that amount of time). The mayor of New Orleans has probably gained a lot of support from his impassioned pleas for immediate and drastic action. The investigations are going to be awful but ultimately will probably yeild little resolution. To me it seems that the situation was mis-handled from the beginning- decades before Katrina to be honest. New Orleans was betting a lot that no hurricanes worse than a level three would hit and the city and its people lost the bet in as bad a way as possible. It's gut-wrenching in the extreme to see people suffer and die when things could have been done to prevent at least some of the damage and death.