Planning for Disaster on the North Coast
As I write this, COVID-19, colloquially know as The Coronavirus, is into the beginning stages of a potential pandemic. People are worried. It’s still too early to say how it is going to play out in my country but the infection rate is trending upward. Under the threat of a full blown epidemic people have begun stocking up on essential items like food and hand sanitizer. And for some reason hoarding toilet paper.
It’s March 8th as I write this and the coronavirus has been a thing since mid to late December. Furthermore, organizations like the WHO and the CDC have been warning us about preparing for an epidemic for years. Leave it to humans to ignore the obvious until it’s staring us in the face.
Thing is, I was already mostly ready.
In the later part of last year, California residents had their power shut off multiple times with little warning. During the first shut-off we did okay as a few years prior, after an earthquake, I had bought some emergency supplies like flashlights and an emergency radio. But like most people my fridge wasn’t powered and the food was fading fast. We needed ice. We needed some canned and boxed items. We needed them now and OH MY GOD they’re going to be sold out! What are we going to do?!
I went to Safeway (which was one of a couple stores open) and I found I wasn’t the only one there. The place was packed. People were buying whatever they could and workers from the bakery and deli were stocking items from the back to keep up with demand. Many people had worried looks on their faces. Some even barked at others over the last can of this or that. It took forever to get out of there and just to make it worse I had to pay Safeway’s prices. I loathe Safeway’s prices. It was a stressful day and I really wished it wasn’t. I wanted to just sit at home and enjoy my day off and not stress. As someone who deals with panic attacks I just wanted this to be over.
The power came back on for us in a day. Not long but just long enough to spoil the food in our fridge. As I emptied it out I decided I wouldn’t deal with this unprepared next time so I went and ordered a generator. “These power outages are the new norm”, I argued to my disapproving wife. “Waste of money”, she retorted.
Two weeks later the power went off again. The generator fired up and the whole house was powered up like nothing happened. The milk survived this second attack of the power company and on top of that we still had most of the emergency food we had bought two weeks ago. And the wife. She was happy. We didn’t have to close our daycare that day and so we didn’t have to refund families who had already paid and that alone would help pay for the generator. To top off the day we even had a party for all of our friends who would have otherwise stayed home in the dark. It was actually a pretty fun day.
It was fun. For us. Not so much for others. Most people didn’t learn the lesson from two weeks prior. They ran out to the stores again. They bought ice and batteries and food again. They sat in the dark again. I really didn’t understand that part. Why not see the writing on the wall and do something about it? I understand not everyone has the money to buy a generator but at least plan something, right? But according to the comments I read on local power outage news items, not many had. They were frightened and angry that the power company was doing this and they didn’t know how they were going to make do. I really didn’t understand that part.
As for me though, I knew I could do better than just a generator. The power outages were nothing. We would have survived just fine without a generator and without even the food we had bought. Hell, we could have fasted all day since the event was so short. But I’m not an idiot. I’m always trying to find the lesson. And for me, as I commented to others, this was a dry run for something worse. At some point in the future, who knows when, something worse will happen. There’s the random what-if scenarios like the power just not coming back on or wildfires closer to home but for me, where I live, I believe our worst case scenario is an earthquake. Not just any earthquake either. A megathrust earthquake, the largest earthquake you can have. For us it’s the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and the devastating effects it will have. No one knows when it will happen but everyone is in agreement on the most important part; it will happen. And as much as the earthquake (and associated tsunami) will suck, the aftermath will be worse.
I’ll write on article on the CSZ a different time but in the meantime I’ll just say that I’ve chosen this as my thing to plan for. It’s my opinion that other disasters that are likely on the North Coast pale in comparison to this. And it stands to reason that if I am ready for one I’ll be ready for the other. After watching and reading as much as I could on it (I’m pretty fascinated by earthquakes now) I believe those of us who are in the hazard zone are going to be pretty well screwed for at least two months. It’s just a guess but unfortunately I think it’s actually a pretty liberal estimate. I’m still a fairly politically liberal guy but in my adult life I’ve watched the state and federal government screw up emergency responses over and over. Katrina, Sandy, Puerto Rico. FUBAR. The most important takeaway is, in my opinion, this: Don’t expect anyone to come help you.
We’re not kids anymore. We can’t afford to forget our history. Whether an earthquake or a pandemic, history will be repeated. We can be prepared or we can continue to keep our heads in the sand.
Take it from me. Being prepared is a lot more fun.
Next post: The Pantry Rises