How I am Preparing for Natural Phenomena
Part 1 - Reconsidering "Disaster"

It was an adventure coming up with a title for this article. I was going to call it "How I am Preparing for Emergencies," but an emergency is an urgent need for assistance or relief. I was going to call it "How I am Preparing for Disasters," but a disaster is a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction. What I have written about is how to prepare for the possibility of the inevitable, eventual occurance of natural phenomena so as to minimize the damage, loss, destruction, and calamity that then creates an urgent need for assistance or relief. Thus the title "How I am Preparing for Natural Phenomena."

I spent most of my life living in the San Francisco Bay Area, known for its earthquakes. While I have been through a few rumbles, the only major earthquake I experienced in the 47 years I lived there was the Loma Priata quake in 1989. Fortunately, I was living across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin county at the time, but I sat and watched on television the fire that followed which burned through the Marina district in San Francisco, coming within feet of an apartment building I had lived in only a few years before.

Another common hazard in the San Francisco Bay Area is fire. Many homes are in wooded hills, as my home was. I happened to be driving through Oakland in 1991 as the firestorm broke which killed 25 people and destroyed 2500 houses. As I lived in a wooded canyon myself at the time, fires both natural and manmade were a constant threat during the dry summers.

Then I moved to Florida, right to the "capital of extreme weather" where we have more lightning strikes that anywhere else on earth. We also have hurricanes. Not all the time, but last summer we were right in line to be directly hit four times in six weeks. Once, I sat watching the hurricane creep closer and closer and then it fizzled just as it hit our county line. But it was easy to drive to nearby areas and see the massive destruction that could have been ours.

Every area of the country has it's own destructive phnomenon that can cause loss of life and property.

I never really thought about preparing for loss until last summer, when week after week I was being faced with the possibility of a hurricane blowing away everything I own. It was then that I began to see the value of planning for these events. Over and over on the news I hear victims crying, "I never thought it would happen to us!" We don't know when natural events will occur that may devastate human life, but if we are prepared for their arrival, we can minimize our loss and be ready to rebuild our lives.

Natural Phenomena

We live on a planet that is constantly changing. All the phenomena that we humans experience as unfortunate--earthquakes, floods, fires, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, and others--all have a beneficial function that make this planet habitable for us. The natural purpose of hurricanes, for example, is to act as safety valves and balance the Earth's climate by exchanging vast amounts of heat and cold between the equator and the poles, and from upper to lower atmospheres. Without hurricanes, air at the equator would continue to get hotter and hotter, air at the poles would get colder and colder, and our planet would become unlivable. Hurricanes also bring much needed rain to parched regions and recharge underground aquifers.

The winds of a hurricane have tremendous force. When they are over warm water, the vortex spins faster and faster. When it hits land, however, it immediately begins to slow down. Protecting land life is actually built in to the nature of the hurricane.

One of the reasons that these natural phenomena are considered disasters is that we humans often experience tremendous loss when they occur. The reason we experience loss is not because the natural phenomena are destructive, but because we have not learned to live in a manner that respects and honors these natural functions of the Earth.

When I lived in the San Francsico Bay Area, I knew eventually there would be an earthquake. Every child in school was taught about the 1906 earthquake and fire that leveled the city and we were warned that one day another earthquake of that magnitude would occur. At a local national park, there were markers in the land along the fault line to show how far the land shifted in the 1906 quake--you could see the movement in the pattern in the rock. So I learned where the fault lines were and made a point not to live on one. Other people were not so wise and did build on fault lines. When the big quake occurs, their houses will split in two and they will call it a "disaster."

After the hurricans hit the west coast of Florida last year, my husband and I drove around to inspect the damage. By far, the greatest devastation was to mobile home communities. Thousands of retirees live in these flimsy structures that simply blow away with all their belongings in a hurricane. Mobile homes are entirely inappropriate for any area where there is the possibility of a hurricane!

I have prepared for the natural phenomena in my area by learning about thunderstorms and hurricanes and how to live safely with them. I know what the sky looks like before the lightning comes and I know to go indoors and not use the telephone. I learned the nature of lightning and that one can be struck by lightning even before the moment you hear the first rumble of thunder--bolts of lightning can travel for miles and occur at the edge of the storm, so an approaching storm is actually more dangerous than a storm right above you. I researched hurricane flood zones and bought a house well away from them. As much as I would like to live right on the water, I chose instead a house on the highest piece of land in Clearwater--the storm surge would have to be 57 feet high before it would reach my house. I learned the difference between a hurricane watch and a hurricane warning and I memorized the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale so I could recognize the wind speed by watching leaves rustle and branches break.

Being Prepared

In our modern industrial culture, we have this idea that we humans don't need to pay attention to nature and her cycles. We build and live in complete disregard to the natural phenmenon that are sustaining life all around us. The word disaster literally means "against the stars." When we order our lives to go against the natural conditions of our place instead of in harmony with those natural conditions, we set up a disaster just waiting to happen.

We saw the results of this thinking in New Orleans with hurricane Katrina. The natural conditions are that a piece of high ground was surrounded on three sides by wetlands and water. It was at the mouth of a very large river. It was in the path of hurricanes. The Earth functions that needed to occur were for the river to flood the wetlands, bringing nutrients from upriver. These wetlands naturally would act as a buffer to lessen the impact of the hurricanes. I've noticed that all along the southern hurricane zone, there are what are called "barrier islands" just offshore. Nature has figured this out and put up protection for us with these outer islands and wetlands.

In New Orleans, the first settlers built on high ground, which is why the French Quarter and the beautiful Garden District were spared from the floods. But when technology made it possible, humans came along and put up flood control to protect human property from the natural cycle of flooding of the great Mississippi River. They put up levees and pumps and drained the wetlands to create a bigger city. Given the immense amount of alteration of the Earth's natural functions in this area, it should have been no surprise that one day a large hurricane would hit and the city would be flooded, since much of New Orleans was built below sea level. Yes, it is a disaster and a tragedy that this occurred. But the disaster is lack of human respect for natural conditions and lack of preparation and knowledge--not the hurricane.

In other parts of the world, humans interact with hurricanes quite differently. In the Bahamas, they know about hurricanes, expect them, and design their world around them. On television, after hurricane Francis, I saw how a restaurant owner took up the floorboards of his dockside building so the water could flow through the crossbeams, rather than forcing the water to break apart the whole floor to get through. After the hurricane passed, he just nailed the floorboards down again and the next day he was back in business. For the restaurant owner, the hurricane was just a passing thing--part of life, not a "disaster."

In Key West, I saw houses over 100 years old that have withstood many hurricanes. They are built in a special way about a foot off the ground, with open vents so the wind can blow under them and leave the house standing.

Throughout the world, buildings have always been built around the conditions of place--this is called "vernacular architecture." Except that now, in America, we build buildings not suited to their surroundings at all, so, of course, they are destroyed when the natural conditions of the place occur. There is starting to be a change here in Florida. New homes are starting to be built that consider floodwaters and hurricane winds. In California, houses are being built to be earthquake-safe.

If we experience the normal, natural phenomena of the Earth as disasters, it's because we haven't yet learned how to live with them and be prepared for them. If we lose our valuables, it's because we haven't identified them as valuable and sufficiently secured them. If we lose our homes, it's because they weren't built appropriate to our place. All of these things we can do something about, and doing so brings us into greater harmony with all Life.

Though natural phenomenon can and does cause catastrophic damage to the physical world, good things can come of them, too. In times of great physical loss, many people experience a spiritual gain. Differences between people are set aside as communities pull together and everyone helps each other to survive. Love, compassion, caring, sharing, cooperation, and help come forth in almost everyone. Though the material is destroyed, the door opens to finding our strength, creativity, and ability to survive.

I once lost something very important to me. Many years ago, I was publishing a printed newsletter and lost my mailing list to a power outage caused by wind. I didn't have a backup. My whole business and all of my income revolved around that mailing list. After recovering from the shock, I had to rebuild my business. But that loss gave me the opportunity to reconsider what I was doing and how I was doing it. As it happened, as a result of the loss I had some major realizations that lead to an expansion of my life and work that has had many major benefits and has led to much happiness. I am thankful that the wind blew what I had away so I could create something better. It was one of the major turning points in my life.

In the Chinese language, both crisis and opportunity share the same symbol. An event is an event. Whether we experience it as a crisis or an opportunity depends on our own preparation and response.