Nearly every person on the planet lives in a hazard zone of some sort, with the possibility of a severe storm or shaking ground or bomb or some other disturbance disrupting daily life for many days, if not weeks. Having the capacity, as a household and community, to respond and get by without help for a while is vital. A lot of resilience is afforded through a little planning and investment.
If I’d followed my colleague Tom Zeller’s advice and invested in a wood-stove-style insert for my fireplace — as I’ve muttered about for years — my family wouldn’t have had to sleep in a 45-degree house for four days in the wake of the epic snowstorm in the Northeast last week. (Although we still would have had to melt snow on our propane stove to flush the toilets; watch the video below for more survival tips from the snow zone.)
Preparing for the inconvenience of no heat or tap water for a few days — which can count as a disaster in prosperous countries — is a far cry from preparing for a potent hurricane or devastating inevitable seismic hit. But the benefits of some training and a little equipment are clear at every scale. The team of quake rescue volunteers I wrote about last week in the Bagcilar district of quake-threatened Istanbul has already helped respond to a terrorist bombing, a severe flood and a fire. As the lead organizer there explained to me, citing China’s earthquake as an example:
China has the biggest civil defense capability in the world, but it still took three or four days to reach the collapsed towns. If there is the big one here [or anywhere], you are all alone to cope with whatever you have, at least for the first 72 hours.
Below you can read more useful background on how to prepare for disaster, sent by Ilan Kelman, a senior research fellow at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. (Another focus of Dr. Kelman’s is how disasters, from quakes to climate disruption, foster –or don’t –cooperation among nations, a topic I touched on as United States Navy ships steamed toward the Haiti quake zone.) Read more…