generalspeaking

Post-Catastrophe

Ten thousand soldiers have been dispatched by President Michelle Bachelet in the wake of the earthquake that hit Chile on Saturday morning. The soldiers' presence is required to restore order. And, said President Bachelet, the government is also attending to ensuring that desperate earthquake survivors are provided with emergency food and medical supplies. In the meantime they are not, most definitely not, to engage in looting.

To that effect a curfew has been called in certain regions and in Concepcion, the country's second-most-populous city, which bore the brunt of the incredible 8.8-magnitude earthquake. People are informed that they are under no circumstances to indulge in looting. Despite that those looters - or many of them - complain of a lack of food and water and needed supplies. Even in Santiago, the capital city, looting has taken place.

The government does have an excuse for laggardly supplying necessities to survivors since many of the highways have been mangled, slowing down relief efforts. But Chileans, trying to cope with the disaster, are resourceful enough to try to take matters into their own hands. Rather than wait for help that is not speedily forthcoming, they expediently enter stores to avail themselves of food, medicines, diapers.

And the soldiers, dispatched to ensure that order prevails, are told to fire only when looters are seen to be hoisting television sets, computers, that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, residents of hard-hit areas where people never woke from their sleep, but were swept out to sea by the most insistent of the tsunami waves, are huddled around fires made of the wood debris of destroyed homes, trying to stay warm, and calm and hopeful.

And a day later, nature went out of her way yet again to hold the disaster podium, sending 'Xynthia' with its gale-force winds and torrential rains to destroy roads and houses along the Atlantic coast, hitting France for the most part, but also Germany, Spain, Portugal and Belgium. An equal-opportunity mix-and-match disaster-set as countries took what was thrown at them; earthquakes and hurricanes.

"We have to find out how families in France in the 21st Century can be surprised in their sleep and drowned in their own houses", President Nicolas Sarkozy fumed. "We have to shed light as urgently as possible on this unacceptable and incomprehensible drama", claiming a detailed examination of the disaster would be implemented along with a plan to strengthen the sea levees that collapsed under the force of the winds and rain.

Well, what might conceivably destroy Atlantic coastal sea walls other than their lack of sufficient height and strength? Just as Hurricane Katrina had its disastrous triumph in New Orleans because of the dredging of the coastline marshes that represented a first-line defence, and the grossly inadequate levees permitted the seas to overwhelm the low-lying city, so too have poor building rules on the coast and the safety of existing levees come under scrutiny.

"It shouldn't stop us analysing the levees, their solidity, their adaptability to current conditions. And there is urban planning as well. You can't just build anywhere", said President Sarkozy.

Bingo!

Labels: Environment, Nature, World News

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, March 02, 2010