These happened on the Cascadia Subduction Zone — which makes me think about future disasters and holidays.
These are not a predictor of any significant future earthquake, but it reminds me of the fact that the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami came the day after Christmas in 2004. Asking the young women (17-25) who work at Happy Donuts, where I'm blogging now, they have no memory or knowledge of that earthquake and that around 228,000 people died.
They also know absolutely nothing about disaster preparedness, what the standard is for the nation, three days, or that it is 14 days for Oregon and Washington state. This then is the status for our level of preparedness as a societal whole. Pretty depressing!!
I was also chatting with my former deputy director the other day. We both agreed that at one point we would have liked the "BIG ONE" to happen while we were still operational emergency managers — just to see how it would all play out. What got me thinking about this was being in my nice hot shower I enjoy every morning and thinking that not having the earthquake will preserve that hot shower.
Somewhere there is or will be an emergency manager responding to a disaster here in the United States or abroad — on Christmas Day. Let's all remember them as we enjoy the holidays with our families and give thanks that it is not us ... for now.
