owlmoose | something new and exciting to worry about

(Lyrics answers posted.)

With events in New Orleans, the question of "the Big One" has been much on the minds of many San Franciscans, myself included. As one of my favorite baseball bloggers said:

"In the toxic floodwaters of Katrina, in the drowned houses and lives of St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward I see my own city pulverized, in flames; in the desperate suicides and defections of New Orleans cops I see S.F. emergency workers unable to climb steep hills to reach people under debris; in the stranded refugees on the Superdome concourse I see people sleeping in the San Francisco streets, wondering when the next aftershock will send damaged buildings tumbling down."

We are in a precarious position here, and when our disaster comes it will be without warning. Response -- federal, state, local -- is all we have. So I find this profoundly disturbing:

Hosed: S.F. hydrants don't fit equipment from other fire departments.

Earthquakes are dangerous, but the real risk to life and limb is fire. All the seismic retrofits in the world are as nothing in the face of that. It was fire that caused the bulk of the destruction in 1906, and it will be fire that threatens us again when an 8.5 rocks the San Andreas. It's not just the fact that fire departments from other cities won't be able to use SF fire hydrants without hose adapters that bothers me. It's the blythe attitude of the SFFD. "Oh well, our system works for us and it will cost too much to change it." Don't they see? This is exactly the attitude that got us into trouble with Katrina. Planning for the ideal scenario instead of the worst case, dismissing the concerns of experts and of the people who would come in to help -- every non-SF fire official quoted in this story points to this issue as serious... this is all looking far too familiar.

Grim as this thought is, we have to stop thinking of natural disaster as an "if" and start planning for it as a "when". Unless attitudes change, I fear for my city.

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Okay, so it seems to me the solution is to just screw an adaptor on to every hydrant in the city. That way, when there is a need, it already has one. And if a SF truck needs to use it, they can just remove it when they remove the cap to attach their hose.

But I'm sure someone will find a way to argue about that.

That's way too simple and obvious. Don't you know that solutions to problems like these have to be complex and obscure? ;)

Seriously, though, that makes a lot of sense. The only hole I can see is that they would have to be easy to remove, hence easy to steal. I don't know why people would want to steal them, but people will steal anything that isn't tied down.

I don't see a lot of firehydrants with the plug caps missing. Those have to be easy to remove too. If you have the right tool. No reason why the right tool can't work both.

They'll say it makes no sense to have the adapters there all the time when 99.9% of the use of the hydrant is by trucks that don't need the adapter, it would only get in the way of normal SF firefighters responding to normal fires, and that's why their plan is to give them out in the event they're actually needed.

I think you're right about how short-sighted this is. They have a half-assed plan for a rare event; it's a common logical fallacy to think that the plan for something unlikely doesn't need to be prefect, as if they were trying to maximize some combination of likelihood and being well-planned, forgetting that they also have to take into account how terrible the unlikely event would be. Know what I mean? The worse the eventuality is, the more you have to prepare for it, even if it's unlikely.

I know exactly what you mean, and I think you're right. Both in terms of their reasoning ("well, it's not likely to happen, so we should save our efforts for things that happen all the time") and regarding why the attitude is so wrong-headed.

Exactly. And no one's been making plans for the time when The Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster) comes to obliterate us all.

I thought FSM was a creation god, not an agent of destruction. I think we should be more worried about the Garbage Disposal at the End of Time.

I'm just waiting for the day that FSM says "I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it"

I, too, have been thinking about the earthquake situation lately. With the trifecta of disasters already two thirds accomplished, who would not? Knowing you and T are there worries me. Although, the city is so beautiful, like New Orleans, one would have to be powerfully motivated to leave. If I were religious, I would pray for you and your city. As it is, all I can do is hope you have made what preparations are practical and hope that chance will not roll bad dice for you. And also, of course, that your city fathers/mothers develop a severe case of good sense.

I appreciate the good thoughts. True, there are risks involved in living here. But it's also true of everywhere: no matter where you are, there's a risk of something. I grew up in tornado country, and I always found those far scarier.

It's interesting that many of the most beautiful and character-filled US cities live in the shadow of disaster: New Orleans, San Francisco, New York, Seattle with Mount Rainer looming. I wonder whether or not this is coincidence.

T is the ultimate contingency planner, so we are in good shape I think. As much as is possible, anyway.

I hate to be negative here, but the whole fire hydrant question is based on the assumption that the city's water system would still be functioning, that water mains would still be intact, that roads would be passable enough for firetrucks to get to fires, not to mention for firetrucks from other places to get into SF to begin with.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that in a real worse case scenario, the fire hydrant question is purely academic.

On the bright side however, there is a lot of airborne firefighting equipment now being used that was not available in 1906.

I will not argue with that. There are certainly different levels of "worst-case". But I do think we have to plan for all of them, and the scenario with raging fires and a mostly-functioning water system should definitely be on the books.

Good point about fire-fighting from the sky, I hadn't thought of that.

You live in a city that has to think pretty seriously about this stuff, although for very different reasons of course. How well do you think they're handling it?

aargh! I just wrote you a whole long reply and it got lost....

but the basic gist of it was- we can get people out of Manhattan- evacuating the whole city would be pretty much impossible I think

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