Natural Disasters
by Barbara Roberts
As a Boomer nearing retirement, you might be thinking about relocating to another part of the country, or even the world. What are you looking for, or looking to get away from? Finding a locale that has what you need and is affordable takes some deliberation. And, for me, I would also take into account the number of natural disasters that occur.
I grew up in Seattle, and I’m sure you all are aware that, due to its location, the area is prone to earthquakes. Several of the smaller ones have plagued us over the years, and a few of the bigger ones have scared the living daylights out of us. Fortunately, damages have been minimal for us and my friends. Display pieces of milk glass fell off the shelves at my friend’s house when we were in college, and more recently, support beams for the deck on my Mercer Island home twisted and had to be replaced. The biggest problem with earthquakes is that they can only be predicted a few seconds before they occur. Not much time to prepare. I always wanted to live somewhere that didn’t promote worry about The Big One.
My next-door neighbor was obsessed with earthquakes, to the point where her husband, for that and probably other reasons, became fed up. We lived on the NW side of the island, and she came over to tell me that she was moving to the center of the island because her studies in horoscopes, the occult, and more informed her that our side of the island was going to fall into Lake Washington. The place is not THAT big, but she was convinced. When she moved, her husband stayed behind, eventually sold the house and remarried. That left me and my sons to plan our escape just in case she was, indeed, predicting a future disaster. We put the canoe on the deck outside my bedroom, hoping not to drown. So far, so good. I still have the house, although no family has lived there for many years.
Volcanoes are another threat to the area, where those tectonic plates shift and cause earthquakes and eruptions. Seattle would be impacted by a volcanic eruption from one of the five active volcanoes in the Cascade Range, depending on location. Mt. St. Helens was not that close, but when it erupted that Sunday morning in May of 1980, I heard it. It sounded like a sonic boom. I was reading the newspaper, enjoying some alone time before my sons got up. We only had a little ash at our house, but we drove over to Eastern Washington and you could really see how profoundly the closer locations were affected. Mt. Baker is not as distant, and Mt. Rainier is even nearer – and bigger – and it is the most dangerous. I guess a positive note here is that volcanoes are regularly monitored, and the public is informed of activity below ground that could suggest an imminent eruption. Thank goodness they are few and far between, by centuries.
When I was an administrator at a community college in Washington, one of my academic directors was from Ohio. Flooding was almost an annual event where she came from, and she talked a lot about the impacts it had on her family and friends. Listening to her stories made me realize that if my home were there I would move, rather than endure the fear, the inevitability, and the devastation year after year. Yes, I was coming from an earthquake/volcano position, but this was not quite a true pot-calling-the-kettle-black situation. At least my nemeses occurred sporadically.
Eventually, I was recruited away from the Evergreen State, and landed in Pittsburgh. Other than a big snowstorm or two while I lived there, and then the ice storms which made driving dangerous, there were no real disasters to speak of. Until the year before I left. At some point before 6 PM, when no other administrators were in the building, the night secretary who was working the phones came to my door to ask what she should tell students and faculty about evening classes. I was busy working on my dissertation, and hadn’t really paid attention to the fact that the sky was really dark, too dark for that time in late spring. She filled me in on the tornado warning that was in effect. What? Pittsburgh had never had one before. We took care of everyone, telling those not already there to be safe, and stay home until it was clear. Later, when we saw there no impacts at the school, I checked to see if the “T” was running and got on the train to head over to Mt. Washington.
I noticed a crowd of people standing at the bottom of the Incline that I take up to my apartment building that is across the street from the top of the incline. I waited with them for much longer than usual and then backed up into the street only to see trees and wires and other debris on the tracks. As a group, we walked back towards the “T” and intercepted a bus about to enter the tunnel. The driver told us the tornado had touched down on Mt. Washington and that the switchback road had downed power lines. The only way to get home was to take the bus to the back side and walk up from there. When we got up the hill, the first thing I noticed was the eerie silence, and then I saw a screen door hanging from the overhead wires. At that point a police woman yelled at us to get to the fire station because another tornado was on the way. We watched from the station until the twister turned and started heading towards us, at which point they made us go inside. In the end, it touched down before getting to us, thank goodness. Although I have a couple of regrets – my new hanging plant was completely blown away from my deck; it probably went to Boston, and I was without power for three days – I am immensely grateful that that is all that happened. The house behind my building, with the roof blown off, was featured on national news, and it took weeks to clean up the damage to the Incline and to the switch-back road. Welcome back fear and worry.
I almost did not take the position in San Francisco because it would mean jumping right back into earthquake territory, and I was watching the baseball game when the Bay Bridge was fell. I remember saying I would never live there. Never say never. One thing about San Francisco and the East Bay where I made my home is that there are so many fault lines you can’t get away from them. Everything is in danger if the Big One hits. I would fall asleep at night and be shaken awake on so many occasions. The fear and worry were back, big time. But then the opportunity to relocate once again came through, and I moved to an area with another type of disaster: Hurricanes! Yay!
I have been in the Miami area for about 10 years. It’s a long way from Seattle, even on the diagonal, but I love it here. Yes, hurricanes are scary, and the season is longer than I like, but we don’t always have one, and they are reserved for the season. The rest of the year is clear. My plan in case of a predicted hit is to get out of town at least a few days before a deadly weather event. Fortunately for me, in 2017 I was traveling and thus missed the hurricane that did damage to trees, shrubbery and fences, in SE Florida, and caused leaks and flooding in my condo building. So Lucky. A friend and I went to Miami Beach and were one of the volunteers cleaning it up afterwards. It is amazing how much trash is dumped in the ocean, and how much of it gets washed up during a hurricane. Sad.
If natural disasters are a make or break it condition for you, there is one place in the world that has none: Qatar! It is protected from hurricanes, which they call cyclones, and since there are no fault lines, they don’t have earthquakes or volcanos. It might be a little sandy, but the idea kind of works for me…
What do you think?
