Looking at the video footage of the latest earthquake in Japan got me thinking about how vulnerable we all are to natural disasters.They are generally something which we can do very little about and even with all the scientific knowledge in the world, they still cannot predict when it is going to happen. My heart really goes out to all the people in Japan and with us having some family there it makes it just all that more personal.
For those of you that do follow the news will know that New Zealand had its own quake a while back, on the 22 February 2011 and that was shocking enough, knowing that it is almost in your backyard. We have lived through the news coverage of that since it happened and it still dominates our local news and then with this happening in Japan, one just has to ask that all important question; "where will it strike next and are they related?" I found the following piece of very interesting information on the BBC News website History of deadly earthquakes and even though it only shows up to April 2010, looking down the list one sees a trend of an increase in frequency since 1999. This is confirmed by some pages in Wikipedia List of 20th-century earthquakes and List of 21st-century earthquakes. Is the world trying to tell us something?
Thus how safe are we really in the world and should we be taking notice of all the disaster recovery kits that we are being told to keep at home. What do I need to keep? Well here in New Zealand they have TV campaigns around being prepared and having a 3 day survival kit on hand. Interesting when an instance happens like in Christchurch where the inner city was cordoned off for weeks; so how did the folk who live in the inner city and no longer had a home, get to their survival kits. I have come to the conclusion that is just another money making scam by a few, knowing full well that you will have to replace all the food and water in your kit every 3 to 6 months because no foodstuffs will last that long and yes, even water has a use-by date on it. (a different discussion at another time). Better to keep beer and wine that lasts longer. Maybe that is a good business to get into.
I really think that there is very little that we as the individual can do and we are really very reliant on our governments to react to provide in the instances of such natural emergencies. Thus a question we should all be asking ourselves is; "How prepared is my government to deal with a catastrophic event?" Well the answer in New Zealand would be - not at all. It has taken them 3 weeks and still places are without power, water and sewer systems and only now are they starting to get potable toilets in for folk and restore some water systems. To my mind they could have strung temporary pipes all over the place very quickly have dealt with the sewerage issues a lot quicker as well. Shops took more than a week to get stocks in and then we had the TV presenters telling people to stay at home; "well how do I get some food then, my three days supply which you told me to keep is finished?" They just don't think do they? Interesting to see that within less than 12 hours the Japanese government has mobilised whatever resources it has to deal with the event. Quite nice when you have a military force that you can rely on or even better still actually have a military force. And then of course Japan has the full backing of the USA which New Zealand did not have. Well you cannot go around upsetting them by not allowing their nuclear vessels in your coastal waters and then expect them to drop everything to help you.
Finances obviously also play a role and no country can really afford the cost that any natural disaster brings with it. Or can it? My feeling is that in times like that a government has to forget about inflation and all that other stuff they keep telling us about and put the printing presses into motion and get the country fixed along with the people that live in it. Don Marquis is on record as having said "Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday" How true that is in the New Zealand context. It is going to be quite interesting to see how long it takes New Zealand to rebuild Christchurch a city for population of 400,000 compared to Japan which is millions. I know who my money is on. A quote which comes to mind and I don't know who said it is; "You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate." It think that I most definitely fall into that category. But then perhaps that is just the old school in me where I was brought up to get things done. That just does not seem to be the way of the modern world (I will have this chat at some stage later with my thoughts on this).
Anyway to come to a conclusion; I think that we are all extremely vulnerable no matter what country we live in and it is up to us to make sure that as people we have governments in place to deal with crises and that we look after our neighbour. So who is your neighbour? Well lets not go there now.
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