What not to do in the event of an earthquake:

Elizabeth Zook, Salt Spring's Emergency Co-ordinator,
was quoted last year as saying, "The best thing to do is go under a desk and hold on to your head with your arms."
Either that, or "stand in a doorway, as long as you're aware of swinging doors." What if you're in a saloon? I guess you're toast.

Today on the CBC, another person was advising the same thing: "roll tuck and cover" - and this is the recommended course of action being told to students all across North America.

Being told to scurry under a desk and use your arms as some sort of debris-defying shield, is one of the really dumb things people are often told to do. I suspect this advice has more to do with crowd control. Fair enough, but I'd choose pandemonium over waiting for a roof to collapse on my head. Number one cause of death in these situations? Being trapped, or getting hit with falling objects. Hence, the folly of assuming a flimsy desk made from particle board is going to save you from a five hundred pound beam falling from a school that was built in 1945.

(It makes you realize that our human-made infrastructure is what threatens us. If you're living in a teepee, what's there to worry about? You could make a snack, sit back and enjoy the ride.)


I have had many discussions with my kids about this. This morning as I was driving them to school, I reminded them that if they feel an earthquake while in class, they are to run out of the building as fast as possible. Don't stop to pick up your backpack, don't wait for the teacher to start issuing frantic instructions, and don't hang around waiting for your friends. Book it - run to the field and wait for me.

My older son said, "Great...just when the cottage is finished it gets swept away by a tsunami." My younger son said, "Mum, just make sure you save Sachie and Marcello." His friend said, "I just worry what would happen to my baseball career." Sports injuries: one more thing to fret about.

 

Studies indicate that people who question authority are twice as likely to survive a catastrophe. I highly recommend this book - everyone should read this, and it's riveting:

This means I have a fighting chance because I question everything, and I generally take a dim view of the average person's intellect. Telling kids to sit around waiting to be squished like a june-bug is irresponsible. Things don't start to fall right away; you have time to find some place safer.

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Lorenzo and I, like millions of BC'ers, are not prepared for any sort of calamity. Flashlights? There might be one in the junk drawer but the batteries are probably dead. Candles? Yup - lots of Ikea tea candles, so if the power goes out we'll at least have ambiance. Water? There's a half-barrel in the front yard that would provide us with not-so-sparkling-clean water for about...a day or so. Lanterns? Nope. Food stocked away? A few tins of tuna, I guess. I don't buy a lot of canned goods. Shovels, picks, tools...? Lots of those, but if the storage area gets crunched, good luck finding them. The good news is, if the house suffers damage Lorenzo can rebuild it! This makes you think about how totally useless we are. I should have joined the Girl Scouts when I was a kid, but we all thought that was for nerds.

In the spirit of emergency preparedness, I am going to Home Depot today to buy some flashlights. I'm also going to start filling up our empty milk jugs with water and putting them aside.

(global warming, anyone?)

*     *     *     *

Lorenzo is heading over to Mayne Island on Thursday night to install the hearth. He's been suffering from neck pain and overall exhaustion, so I investigated the easiest hearth-pad solutions. A hearth pad goes on the floor under the stove, obviously. You can buy them and just pop them in:

I thought this one was quite nice...

Believe it or not, one of these hearth pads can run you as much as five hundred dollars. Which is ridiculous. So then I thought about using a piece of sheet metal, or checker plate...

Lorenzo called one of his steel contacts to get a price, but they didn't get back to him. In any event, we already have some pebble tile, so we'll just use what we have. I think we need a few more sheets, though...

 

The legs of the wood stove need to rest on a flat surface, so now I have to buy four tiles and Lorenzo will have to cut the pebble tile around them. I saw these ones on the Home Depot website. They measure 4 inches square and they're cheap. Good enough...

Until next time!