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Burke: When 'the big one' hits should ants help grasshoppers? | HeraldNet.com
By Tom Burke
The short version of the Greek storyteller Aesop's fable, "The Ant and the Grasshopper," goes: Ant works all summer laying in food; grasshopper spends summer making music. Comes winter the ant eats, the grasshopper starves. The moral: "There's a time to work and a time to play."
The original ending is ambiguous, saying nothing about the grasshopper dying. But that ant wasn't share'n. In later versions the ant may or may not share, as the story was used to illustrate whatever point folks wanted to make.
Today, all over Western Washington, there are ants and grasshoppers aplenty. Only the threat isn't winter but the "really big one." Or the moderately severe one. Or the semi-severe one. Or the itsy-bitsy one. But no matter how high on the Richter scale an earthquake scores the issue isn't just how prepared you are, but how are you going to react when the grasshoppers come begging at your door, after the after-shocks.
The absolute, very most critical thing to know about earthquake preparation in Washington is: Government has failed to prepare. The key finding of the draft report analyzing last year's mega-drill, "<broken link removed>," was, according to newspaper reports, that "Washington state officials called their own response plans 'grossly inadequate.'" (I wonder what the difference between "inadequate" and "grossly inadequate" is. And how it is measured; by the number of "extra" dead?) The report continues, "the state is at risk of a humanitarian disaster (versus some other sort of disaster?) within 10 days of the quake."
Not hard to read between the lines of that report: "Folks, you're on your own."
So let's say you're an ant. The old advice: Lay in a three-day supply of stuff. The new advice: Prepare for at least three weeks (and three months is probably inadequate) survival. So, water, check. Freeze dried food, check. Emergency medical supplies, warm clothes, cash, flashlights and batteries, extra prescriptions, AM/FM radio, matches, garbage bags, and a lot more: check, check … checkcheckcheck.
But suppose your neighbors are more grasshopperish. They have no food, no water, no nutt'in. And they need help.
What you do is a complex decision. A Google search of "disaster ethics" yields 36 million results. But it all boils down to asking, and honestly answering, "Where do I draw the line between providing for my family and sacrificing for others?" Or, "How much am I willing to risk to save another's life?"
The decision matrix could be framed as an exercise in "moral triage," the process of choosing which people to help, based on their need for immediate (and long-term) assistance as compared to their chance of benefiting from such assistance. And here's the kicker, you, and your family, are among the people you're choosing to help, or not. Ouch!
Emergency managers and ethicists draw distinctions between "disasters" ala Katrina and "catastrophes" as a mega-quake in Western Washington. These experts posit that as the size and scale of the tragedy expands, the ethical parameters change. Issues such as social justice, fairness, young versus old, rich versus poor, and the right to choose (and live with the consequences) all come into the mix. It is an exercise in applied ethics, determining how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations.
So what's my point here? Simple, adopt the Boy Scout motto, "Be prepared." Learn what needs to be done and do it. If you do you'll only have to contend with moral triage, not a basic, primal live-or-die survival scenario.
And sure, there's a lot to know. And a lot to do. And money to spend.
But the latest odds say there's an 80 percent chance of a magnitude-6.8 temblor (journalistic tradition requires reporters to use "temblor" at least once in any earthquake piece) in the next 50 years and a 10 percent to 15 percent chance of a magnitude-9 earthquake during the same period. And recent news reports of earthquake "swarms" on May 11 off Whidbey Island do nothing to ease my concerns.
I don't like those odds. So I'm becoming something of a downer. No one wants to read about catastrophes, or moral triage, or life straws making contaminated water drinkable, or earthquake insurance (without it you get nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero back on any and all earthquake-caused damage to your property).
And with all the other stuff going on in the world today, disaster prep is easy to put off 'till tomorrow. I guess if you sing loudly and dance gaily you can ignore all them pesky little ants scurrying about. "Let 'em work and let 'em scold," sez you; "but for heaven's sake, don't let 'em spoil the picnic."
Tom Burke's email address is [email protected]
By Tom Burke
The short version of the Greek storyteller Aesop's fable, "The Ant and the Grasshopper," goes: Ant works all summer laying in food; grasshopper spends summer making music. Comes winter the ant eats, the grasshopper starves. The moral: "There's a time to work and a time to play."
The original ending is ambiguous, saying nothing about the grasshopper dying. But that ant wasn't share'n. In later versions the ant may or may not share, as the story was used to illustrate whatever point folks wanted to make.
Today, all over Western Washington, there are ants and grasshoppers aplenty. Only the threat isn't winter but the "really big one." Or the moderately severe one. Or the semi-severe one. Or the itsy-bitsy one. But no matter how high on the Richter scale an earthquake scores the issue isn't just how prepared you are, but how are you going to react when the grasshoppers come begging at your door, after the after-shocks.
The absolute, very most critical thing to know about earthquake preparation in Washington is: Government has failed to prepare. The key finding of the draft report analyzing last year's mega-drill, "<broken link removed>," was, according to newspaper reports, that "Washington state officials called their own response plans 'grossly inadequate.'" (I wonder what the difference between "inadequate" and "grossly inadequate" is. And how it is measured; by the number of "extra" dead?) The report continues, "the state is at risk of a humanitarian disaster (versus some other sort of disaster?) within 10 days of the quake."
Not hard to read between the lines of that report: "Folks, you're on your own."
So let's say you're an ant. The old advice: Lay in a three-day supply of stuff. The new advice: Prepare for at least three weeks (and three months is probably inadequate) survival. So, water, check. Freeze dried food, check. Emergency medical supplies, warm clothes, cash, flashlights and batteries, extra prescriptions, AM/FM radio, matches, garbage bags, and a lot more: check, check … checkcheckcheck.
But suppose your neighbors are more grasshopperish. They have no food, no water, no nutt'in. And they need help.
What you do is a complex decision. A Google search of "disaster ethics" yields 36 million results. But it all boils down to asking, and honestly answering, "Where do I draw the line between providing for my family and sacrificing for others?" Or, "How much am I willing to risk to save another's life?"
The decision matrix could be framed as an exercise in "moral triage," the process of choosing which people to help, based on their need for immediate (and long-term) assistance as compared to their chance of benefiting from such assistance. And here's the kicker, you, and your family, are among the people you're choosing to help, or not. Ouch!
Emergency managers and ethicists draw distinctions between "disasters" ala Katrina and "catastrophes" as a mega-quake in Western Washington. These experts posit that as the size and scale of the tragedy expands, the ethical parameters change. Issues such as social justice, fairness, young versus old, rich versus poor, and the right to choose (and live with the consequences) all come into the mix. It is an exercise in applied ethics, determining how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations.
So what's my point here? Simple, adopt the Boy Scout motto, "Be prepared." Learn what needs to be done and do it. If you do you'll only have to contend with moral triage, not a basic, primal live-or-die survival scenario.
And sure, there's a lot to know. And a lot to do. And money to spend.
But the latest odds say there's an 80 percent chance of a magnitude-6.8 temblor (journalistic tradition requires reporters to use "temblor" at least once in any earthquake piece) in the next 50 years and a 10 percent to 15 percent chance of a magnitude-9 earthquake during the same period. And recent news reports of earthquake "swarms" on May 11 off Whidbey Island do nothing to ease my concerns.
I don't like those odds. So I'm becoming something of a downer. No one wants to read about catastrophes, or moral triage, or life straws making contaminated water drinkable, or earthquake insurance (without it you get nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero back on any and all earthquake-caused damage to your property).
And with all the other stuff going on in the world today, disaster prep is easy to put off 'till tomorrow. I guess if you sing loudly and dance gaily you can ignore all them pesky little ants scurrying about. "Let 'em work and let 'em scold," sez you; "but for heaven's sake, don't let 'em spoil the picnic."
Tom Burke's email address is [email protected]