Reminders on why we need to plan ahead for disasters
Hawaiian fiasco should prompt us to ask: Are we ready if disaster strikes?
Thirty-eight minutes of panic gripped the tropical paradise of Hawaii Saturday morning when emergency management authorities accidentally triggered an erroneous alert that ballistic missiles were racing toward the archipelago.
Terror has since turned to outrage over the false alarm among residents who legitimately feared their lives were ending. It has cast serious doubt on the credibility of the state’s emergency systems. Authorities certainly owe Hawaiians some explanations — and perhaps an apology.
But one thing this fiasco should do, no matter where we live, is cause us to ask: Am I ready if disaster strikes?
The nuclear threat level hasn’t been this high since the Cold War era, thanks to the war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean despot Kim Jong Un. However the fallout from a nuke attack is only one kind of emergency we ought to be prepared for. From earthquakes to ice storms, floods to blizzards, major blackouts to toxic spills, too few of us have the necessary supplies, let alone the knowledge, to react in the case of even a minor crisis.
I include myself in this category. I arrived home with my children on Friday evening to a run-of-the-mill power outage. This incident was more inconvenient than urgent, but we were still bumbling around in the dark using my iPhone to locate candles, matches and a real flashlight.
On the 20th anniversary of the Ice Storm, which at its height plunged half of Quebec into cold and darkness for days, how many of us have survival kits handy to weather a similar power failure in the middle of winter, even though climatologists warn freezing rain is becoming more common?
How many of us have emergency provisions in our car should a vicious storm leave us stranded, like the one last March that trapped hundreds of motorists on Highway 13 for hours overnight?
How quickly our memories fade. How swiftly cautionary tales are forgotten. We are predisposed to think the next major hurricane, tsunami, mudslide or wildfire will happen to others, never to ourselves.
But potential apocalypse lurks high and low. Garnering many fewer headlines than the Hawaii mayhem — but deserving no less of our attention here in Montreal — is a report issued last week by the Swiss Re Institute on the earthquake threat in Quebec.
The report, Earthquake Risk in Eastern Canada: Mind the Shakes, found that though the fault line in the Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City corridor is one of the most seismically sensitive in the country, we are woefully unaware — and unprepared. Only a tiny fraction — just 3.4 per cent — are properly insured for a tremor despite the fact 70 per cent of Quebec’s population resides in this zone.
“According to Swiss Re’s in-house catastrophe model, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in the Charlevoix seismic zone near Quebec City could cause private residential property losses of up to $10.6 billion,” noted the institute, which does research for the insurance industry. “And a repeat today of the magnitude 5.8 earthquake in the city of Montreal in 1732 would lead to even higher losses, estimated at $45 billion.”
These findings echo an earlier, equally alarming, study by the Insurance Bureau of Canada in 2013 that estimated the total losses from a 7.1 magnitude quake in the Ottawa-Montreal- Quebec area at a staggering $61 billion. The IBC report pegged the probability of a major convulsion along the eastern Canadian fault line at five to 15 per cent in the next 50 years.
If so few of us are insured, it stands to reason nowhere near enough of us have taken precautions to increase our chances of surviving the big one.
Do you know the safest place to take cover if the ground starts shaking? How many days’ worth of water and food do you have stockpiled? Do you have a manual can-opener or flashlight close at hand? Do you have a prearranged rendezvous point to meet up with your loved ones if you are apart when the earth rattles?
The Quebec public security department provides tips on what to do in the event of all sorts of situations, including earthquakes. While it’s not the role of authorities to stoke unnecessary alarm about impending disaster, surely civil security could do more to urge Quebecers to take stock of their advice ahead of time.
The terrifying 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker article, which examined the devastating scenarios for the Pacific Northwest if the precarious Cascadia Subduction Zone gives way, helped raise awareness among ordinary citizens about their own readiness levels.
Perhaps a scare like the one inflicted on Hawaiians, heartstopping and inexcusable though it was, will have a silver lining. Though the state has been testing air raid sirens recently, many people realized in the throes of the chaos they had no clue what steps to take in the event of a missile strike.
Let this be a wake-up call to all of us: Expect the unexpected and prepare for the worst — now, before it’s too late.
From earthquakes to ice storms, floods to blizzards, major blackouts to toxic spills, too few of us have the necessary supplies, let alone the knowledge, to react in even a minor crisis.