something new and exciting to worry about

[owlmoose]

(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.

Comments

[peachespig.livejournal.com]

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.

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

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.

[luvmoose.livejournal.com]

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.

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

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.

[luvmoose.livejournal.com]

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