ghosts are good company

April 18th, 2007

101 years

Posted by puck in background, emergency preparedness
101-years

it’s a hundred-and-one years since the 1906 earthquake that burnt down much of san francisco, killed around 3,600 people, and left more than half of the city’s then-population homeless.

there’s a 67% chance that an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or higher will hit this city between 1990 and 2020. that’s not a small chance.

i remember the nisqually earthquake in 2001; i was in choir, and nobody knew what to do. that was the scariest part for me - not the shaking or the danger, but that nobody knew how to respond.

so, i’m taking part in a local neighborhood emergency response team (nert) training series. i’ve only had one class, but i’ve learned a lot - partially through their training manual, which is the second link here. nert’s premise is that, because emergency services will probably be tied up for the first few days after a major disaster, people should have the skills that they need to support themselves and their families and neighborhoods.

this is especially important because i live in one of the neighborhoods of san francisco that would probably be ignored like the ninth ward of new orleans.

the point of this post, is that i’m all in favor of emergency preparedness. it’s part of my crazy, a little, but i think that this is a good aspect of it i want everybody i know to work hard to educate themselves - i don’t want my loved ones to die in stupid coincidences or accidents.

i’m trying to figure out a way to anchor our heavy shelves to our walls, but we’re not allowed to make holes in the walls. do any of you have advice around this?

what other emergency preparedness thoughts do you have? what are your disaster experiences, if you want to talk about them?

101-years

Viewing 2 Comments

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    yes, i know that you wrote this months and months ago, but i just wanted to say that it's a fantastic idea, people being prepared on their own. i hope you learned a lot, because i went back home for mardi gras just a month before you wrote this, and we went to the ninth ward. and you know what? it's still totally fucked. i stood a block away from the levee that burst. i don't know what i expected, but all i could do was sit in my car and cry, cry harder than i had in a very long time. and anything that people can do to help themselves is fantastic, because no one else cares. that's what i learned from the whole thing. i mean, people care. but groups, groups just get too bogged down in STUFF.
    not a terribly cheerful thought, but it's the truth. it was harder to see from so far away, i'm sure, but if you could go back and see what i see, almost two years after it happened, and see how different it all is.....it still isn't right. anything you can do to get people to wake up and learn to take care of themselves, that's not part of your crazy. that's lucid. don't let the ninth ward (or river ridge, or lakeview, or plaquemines parish, or st. bernard parish, or pass christian, or any of the other places that got destroyed just as badly as the ninth ward) happen again. in new orleans or anywhere else.
    i'm done.
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    yeah. i can't even think or talk about new orleans, *still* because it still breaks my heart. and it wasn't mine, that city. i had distant ties full of love, but it wasn't nearly as much mine as it was so many other folks'.

    i didn't end up finishing the course, but i'm going to do my best to take it up again when i get back to san francisco.
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