I had a cart full of produce and was reaching for sunflower seeds when it happened: the rumbling at first sounded like a truck and then maybe an explosion. Then people were running for the supermarket doors and spilling into the streets. Bottles of olive oil toppled from the shelves, and the remaining shoppers stood in quiet disbelief. We were, after all, in Arlington, VA, two miles from the Pentagon, and a terrorist attack seemed more probable than a 5.8 earthquake.
But if it was an earthquake, then we had another problem: most of us had no clue what…
Tsunami is a Japanese word, and we are reminded why today. Our thoughts go to the victims and survivors in Japan as we await more information on the 8.9-magnitude quake that rocked the country earlier today.
One story to watch: Initial reports suggest that Japan’s early warning system for earthquakes (Kinkyu Jishin Sokuho in Japanese) did indeed work in some locations. That system, launched in 2007, is the only one of its kind. It only gives people a few seconds warning at the most (via TV and cell-phone alerts), but it is also…
Vivian Reyes lives in San Francisco, where she likes to go biking and play with her puppy. She is also an emergency medicine doctor who recently went to Haiti to help with the relief effort.
I watched all the Chile “looting” footage I could find yesterday. It was hard to know what I was looking at, as it always is when you are watching disasters from afar—and often even when you are right there. I mostly saw people carrying water, diapers, sacks of flour and other necessities. I saw young men playing Robin Hood, throwing paper towels and toilet paper rolls from storefront balconies to older women waiting, arms uplifted, below.
Here’s how the story line usually goes for disasters: First, in the days immediately following the hurricane or quake or other calamity, reporters warn of a generalized “fear” that desperate survivors may turn to violence and looting. Then, sure enough, reporters tell stories of violence and looting. Some are eye witness accounts by credible observers. Most are not.
The thing is, in developed nations, we can say with some certainty that…
What happens if you take a horrifically poor place and shake it to pieces? I heard a survivor describe the scene in Haiti as “hell on top of hell” on CNN yesterday. We are learning all over again that disasters aren’t “natural” or inevitable. Money matters more than anything else. Which is to say, where and how we live matters more than Mother Nature.
Remember the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California? In magnitude and depth, that quake was similar to the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. The Northridge quake killed 63 people, and the Pakistan one killed about 100,000. The…
In Indonesia, emergency workers are having a very hard time getting into several remote villages devastated by last Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude earthquake. As we’ve seen in every major disaster in history, regular people matter more than anyone else in the darkness of these voids. During the golden hours when rescue is possible, civilians do much of the lifesaving—and they are capable of remarkable creativity. It is wrenching and inspiring at once.
A few examples out of Indonesia:
“Every day on the road to Pariaman, a hard-hit district in the north, four or…
