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Unnatural Disasters

Today at work, we had a drill. An Earthquake Drill. At the appointed time, a Center-wide announcement simulating "shaking in the area" was piped in over the intercom, and all good little Hutch employees dove under their desks, or lab benches, or whatever. Duck, cover, hold. Or so they say.

In the midst of this drill, I looked around and thought, "My God! What the hell am I doing in this place?!"

After all, as one born Arkansas, and later grew up in Florida and Illinois, I've had my share of Natural Disasters:
--Tornadoes
--Hurricanes
--Flash floods
From Montessori School on through college, I participated in Organized Drill after Organized Drill. Remember those tornado drills, anybody? Grab your biggest textbook, file out into the hallway, crouch, face the wall, and bring the book over your head. I was a particular fan of the hurricane drills we had in Florida when my second grade class met in a "portable classroom" (a glorified trailer... the southern Florida schools were overwhelmed with the latest influx of Cuban refugees and couldn't build new classrooms fast enough). For those of us in the vulnerable trailers/portable classrooms, the hurricane drill consisted of:
"When I blow this whistle, run like heck for the main gym!!!"

I've been in dozens of tornadoes (hiding in the basement, the interior bathroom, the basement of my high school, whatever), several hurricanes, and I'm not even going to get started on the Mississippi floods from my years in Illinois. And, all in all, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of it all. The siren sounds, or the warning is given, and you take cover. In the case of hurricanes, the warning lasts several days. For tornadoes, just a few minutes. But simple pimple. We have warning!

And now, here I sit in Seattle... one of many no-good troublespots breeding an assortment of Unnatural Disasters:
--Earthquakes
--Volcanoes
--Tsunamis

How do you spell "no warning"? E-A-R-T-H-Q-U-A-K-E. And "maybe no warning"? V-O-L-C-A-N-O. And "warning, but not long enough to do anything about it"? T-S-U-N-A-M-I. An Unnatural Disaster isn't kind enough to announce itself. (I obviously don't like surprises... and can't think on my feet.)

So, obviously, today's calm, orderly drill at work reminded me of one thing: I've moved from a hotbed of Natural Disasters to a melting pot of Unnatural Disasters. Damnit! It's not like I'll spend the rest of my days here on the West Coast constantly fearing The Inevitable. But it really frosts my cookies that, after twenty-two years of careful preparation on the part of my parents, teachers, and government officials for the scores of Natural Disasters I've faced, here I go off to Seattle, with no idea what to do when the ground shakes. After all, Illinois isn't exactly teeming with earthquakes.

What really irks me is how my friends and co-workers describe the last earthquake with such calm, poise, and ease... almost like they're recalling a good, fun day-at-the-beach:
"Oh, I was in the T building at the hospital; once the walls cracked and the ceiling fell in, we dove under the counter just before the south window burst..."
"I just dove on top of my kids until it stopped, and then we took a nap."
"We all dove under the table just before the overhead light fixtures collapsed and the windows broke... I'd worn sandals, of course..."

For my first earthquake experience, whenever it happens, my description will be thus: "I ran around screaming bloody murder and tearing my clothes off until something knocked me unconscious... then I awoke and mourned the loss of my flat-screen TV."

Posted by James at April 22, 2004 12:06 PM