How natural are disasters?

Natural disasters often aren’t “natural” at all.

When a volcano erupts, when a big earthquake happens, when that earthquake causes a tsunami, a “natural disaster” has a natural cause, to be sure. (Usually. Fracking for natural gas now causes a lot of earthquakes in Oklahoma and Montana, but so far these are far too small to kill anyone.)

But in the cases of wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and electrical outages, often the “disaster” part is about not what nature has done, but about what we have done. It is a natural event made disastrous by human choices.

This is even true to an extent about earthquakes. Even a 9.0 earthquake would have a hard time killing people if we all lived in yurts or tipis. A few living such a life would die from rock falls, and on the coast many thousand might die from a tsunami were conditions right, but most people these days die in earthquakes from stuff—man-made stuff—falling on their heads. Roofs, facades, windows, paintings, lumber, facing stones, pediments, and bridges all come tumbling down when the earth shakes. In your own house, a heavy glass-fronted painting hanging on the wall could be the end of you in a quake.

If a hurricane hits an uninhabited island, there is no disaster. That’s just Mother Nature doing what she’s done for millions of years. Palm trees evolved to make it through hurricanes. And while hurricanes are certainly a force of nature, if we made better building decisions, wrote stricter zoning codes, and made evacuations mandatory on the mainland and built tough concrete shelters on islands, almost no one would die.

As the earth warms, as oceans warm, and as storms become bigger, incidents of extreme weather and wildfire grow bigger and more dangerous. This too was our choice—is our choice every time we drive a car or turn the air conditioning down or the heat up, with each child we have who goes on to have more children, all of them living the standard suburban life with its profligate energy use. This is our choice, not Mother Nature’s to drive worse weather disasters.

We make choices that can make weather and tectonic events worse...or better. All of those natural events are, whether we think of it often or not, necessary to life on Earth as we know it.

By law, in Miami, for instance, you must build better now to survive hurricanes. (But what do poor people living in sub-standard housing do? What do the poor of Puerto Rico do? Or the poor living in the flood plains of the world’s big rivers? I'll address this in more detail next week.)

Zoning regulations are also stricter in LA and San Francisco, which have some of the most stringent building codes in the US. (Japan’s are far better still--and there’s hardly a type of severe disaster Japan isn’t prone to.) Most of the buildings that lasted through the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake will last again through a similar-strength quake. And if buildings suffered cracks or survivable damage, the owners, if they were smart, did some retrofitting. I worked in an historical brick building in San Francisco, and the owners spent tens of thousands of dollars in the retrofit in the early 80’s, and the building came through the 1989 quake perfectly intact, though most brick buildings will crumble into a pile of bricks and mortar that has returned to sand in a big quake.

At a personal level, people can also get smarter. Once I experienced the quake, every house I lived in thereafter I did certain things to. I strapped the hot water heater to a support beam. I drove screws through the back of bookcases and knick-knack shelving and into studs in the wall. You pick up one disaster of a house in a quake, and you don’t do it again. You pay for a seismic inspection and do whatever the inspector tells you to do.

I know I'm being terribly judgmental here, but I do not understand when I see videos of Oklahoma post-tornado, and we’re looking at nice ranch homes, and the reporter says only one in 100 people have a basement or tornado shelter. People, you live in Oklahoma! Don’t you love your children? Apparently not, for there aren’t even laws about elementary schools in Oklahoma having tornado shelters or safe rooms. People standing in front of leveled homes will talk on TV about how they lost their new flatscreen TV and boat, which they apparently had the money to buy instead of a tornado shelter. That surely fits the definition of insanity. The absence of a legal requirement for schools to have shelters seems to me criminally irresponsible of zoning commissions and Oklahoma's state legislature, and I don't know about you, but I hate thinking of those children dying who do not have to. People, it’s only money. So, a better legislature passes a law mandating school shelters, and everyone in the district pays an extra $25 on their annual property tax bill for five years to build the school a shelter. Surely a human life, the life of an 8-year-old, even if you never meet that child, is worth that tiny amount to you. Isn't it? Apparently not, for it's still not happening there.

So before we blame Mother Nature for disasters, we should look in the mirror. Are you contributing to climate change more than an average person on the planet? Is your house in a risky area and you haven’t bothered to do everything you can afford to minimize your risks? Are you one of those fools who owns a working car but does not obey a mandatory evacuation order? (Do such people simply not understand the word “mandatory?”) And please tell me you’re not one of those fools who runs out to the dock to take a video of the storm surge coming in and the 12 foot waves breaking! If you want to live in wildfire area, you think hard before buying a place right up against the woods or dry grasses, asking yourself if the pretty view is worth the risk, and you consider concrete and tile construction before you fall in love with the beautiful hardwood and cedar shake ranch home. You keep the yard picked up and trees far away from the house, just as the fire marshal recommends. And if you're a developer, you do not fight sane zoning laws that keep safe distances between subdivisions that help prevent a wildfire jumping quickly from one neighborhood to the next.

Even if we do everything we can, some people will still die in natural disasters. A hurricane’s storm surge can be quick and powerful. A traffic jam in a n evacuation zone can be so terrible that people end up exposed to the disaster and die. You might already be disabled, and it’s impossible for you to get out in time. You might be poor and not be able to evacuate. Your state may have planned badly for evacuations and there's not enough gasoline for sale to get everyone out of the area. Bad luck happens.

But please, don’t make a natural event into a disaster it didn’t have to be. Live in as safe a place you can afford, and be as prepared as you can. (more information at https://www.ready.gov/make-a-plan)

I know I'll never convince TV to write copy about Mother Nature's "wrath" during disasters. She is not actually wrathful. She's doing what she is meant to do, what she did before people came along, and what she'll do after people are gone. The dramatic events like hurricanes and earthquakes are only disastrous to us when we've made choices that don't take their inevitability into account.

Natural Disaster History: The Tri-State Tornado

March brings us the 91st anniversary of the Tri-State Tornado. March 18, 1925, a deadly tornado swept through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing almost 700 people.  Though the Fujita scale was not in use then, photos of damage lead most people today to agree it was an EF5 tornado.

Gabe Garfield and Marc Austin via Wikimedia Commons

A mile wide, with multiple satellite tornados (as in the modern photo, above) forming and dissipating and forming once again, the primary tornado stayed on the ground for an astonishing four hours, with another forming immediately in its place and lasting another three hours. This is a rare, rare event. Usually, when a tornado appears to exist for that long, careful examination of the track shows it was actually several tornados, forming and dying along the same track. This mile-wide tornado just lasted and lasted and lasted. The meteorological requirements for this are complicated and not likely to happen often. Perhaps once every 200 years, such a tornado will be seen, or perhaps even less often.

Unfortunately, “seen” is something this tornado often was not. As in my novel Storm, it was for long periods, a rain-wrapped tornado in a high precipitation cell. If you can imagine living in a world without The Weather Channel, where radios were not all that common. It’s early afternoon, and the sky has gone dark with the thunderstorm activity. At most, you might detect a denser darkness in the west, visible when the rain eases up for a moment. You would have no idea that darkness held your doom.

And then, it is on you, with its cloud of deadly debris.

Southern Illinois towns took the brunt of it, with a few small towns being wiped from the face of the earth. 33 children were killed in one DeSoto school (the worst school tornado fatality number in US history). 91 meters of train track was yanked out of the ground and scattered. Lumber was tossed up and driven through the steel walls of a water tower. Murphysboro Illinois lost 234 residents, 2% of its population. This too is a record, the most deaths in one municipality from a U.S. tornado. Illinois saw the most deaths any state has seen in a single tornado in just a few hours.

And if this wasn’t terrible enough, because of the way people cooked and heated their homes in 1925, fires caught after the tornado and some people trapped in debris were burned to death before they could be rescued. And for people who think there were some “good old days” when people behaved better, think again. Looting occurred, and intact but empty homes of those who had died at work or while out shopping were broken into and robbed.

This was a horrifying event in natural disaster history that broke so many records, it’d take too much space to list them all. Let’s hope we don’t see another one like this in our lifetime.

Storm is for sale!

A tornado bears down on a small Ohio town. It snaps giant trees in half as if they were toothpicks. It drives house beams through cars at 200 mph.

It kills.

Greg Duncan stands in the path of the twister. As a first responder, his obligation is to serve his community. As a single dad, his heart tells him to protect his little girl.

The tornado is moving fast. He has almost no time to choose.

Available exclusively at Amazon. Click on image (BUY ON AMAZON) or HERE to buy.

Why does the U.S. have more tornadoes than any other country?

FEMA image in the public domain

In brief, the answer to this is a three-parter:

1) Geology + temperature.

2) It doesn't. England has more per square kilometer.

3) Some details are still unknown, and that might change the answer

What is widely accepted:

• Low elevation moisture comes from the Gulf, sweeping across Texas and into Tornado Alley (the red parts of the map, above).
• High, hot dry air from the SW desert creates a high cap.
• Cold air swoops down from the Rocky Mountains. It's crucial that the mountains run North-South for storm formation. A country split by east-west mountains would not have this ingredient.
• All of this gets stirred together, and a new front can send that moist air up and up. Clouds form. Add circulation, and you get supercell thunderstorms.

Supercell, by NOAA, seen from the south

You'll notice I slid right past that "add circulation" bit. Here is where scientists are still trying to untangle the knot that is tornadogenesis and tease out those facts. Why will some storms rotate quickly and others hardly at all? Bit by bit, the scientists are closing in on an answer, but they aren't quite there yet.

30-50 degrees latitude is currently the sweet spot for tornadoes. If the weather continues to steadily heat up worldwide, that will shift northward, and Canada may one day rival the US for tornadoes.

If the US were three countries--west of the Rockies, middle third, and east-coast states--the two coastal thirds would have a more typical number of tornadoes. It's that middle third that gets slammed with the EF4 and EF5 tornadoes that turns the US into tornado central. England may have more tornadoes for its area, but they tend to be EF1 storms.

If you meet people from Oklahoma, which has the majority of the worst tornadoes, ask them about twisters and you'll discover this: most have never seen a tornado in person. Like the rest of us, they mostly see video of them on TV, over in the next county. I've seen one in Illinois, IRL, from a distance, which I think we can all agree is the ideal way to see one.

I have a tornado novel written, by the way, with major revisions done, but I need to get the last Gray novel out before I return to it and finish the final edits of it. It'll be out in early 2016, I think.

Tornado season in the US

It is tornado season in the USA, the country with the most tornadoes every year. This past week has seen some major storms, including many that have provided dramatic pictures of mammatus clouds, like these from some years ago:

by Brian0918, Wikipedia Commons

These cloud formations often come with anvil clouds and big thunderstorms. Try google image for some recent uploads of these impressive cloud photos. Or visit Dr. Masters' always interesting weather blog

(Still revising Gray II, by the way. I do have a tornado novel drafted, but it's going to be awhile before I can get back to revising that one! And I have the coolest idea for a new series...but that's going to have to wait until 2016.)

Tornado emergency preparation

In North America, it's tornado season, and it will be for six more months.

Wikipedia Commons

Some reminders on preparation for these killer storms:

• Make your emergency plan now and discuss it with your family
• Find your "safe room," the best place in your home to survive a tornado
• Know where the designated shelter is at work or school
• Have a contact person and meeting place for your family at least a few miles away from home, should your home be destroyed and the cell phone towers taken down, too, preventing phone calls
• Prepare your emergency kit: a gallon of water per person and per pet, a battery-operated radio (a NOAA weather radio is ideal), canned food with pop tops and crackers and peanut butter (or equivalent), life-saving medicines, plastic bags for waste, work gloves, and a flashlight. This is the very minimum you should have, and you can google for more information on tornado emergency kits
• Keep photocopies of driver's licenses, insurance information, birth certificates, and other important information either at a relative's house, in a safety deposit box, or scanned and in the cloud
• Listen to the broadcast warnings and obey them
• Don't risk your life getting a video for youtube of a funnel cloud bearing down on you
• Obey police and fire when they tell you not to enter an area or structure, no matter how panicked you are about loved ones or how curious
• Don't be a tornado tourist if there's destruction near you. It's rude at best, dangerous to you and others, and places unnecessary strain on first responders who might be saving lives instead of trying to police you
• If you loot tornado victims, expect to be shot, and prosecuted, and shunned by decent people thereafter

Stay safe!

What natural disaster frightens you most?

From Wikipedia Commons

That's easy for me to answer: Wildfire. I was living in San Francisco when the Oakland wildfire of 1991 happened. I was entirely safe--there was a big body of water between me and it--but my heart was still pounding hard for hours. My logical mind could not convince my body that I was safe.

This was before the internet was anything but a few thousand nerds sending text over phone lines, I didn't own (and don't) a television, and I had no radio on, so the disaster made itself made aware to me directly. I was sitting and reading a novel in front of a window. Suddenly, the sky changed colors. The smoke cloud had dimmed the sun, coloring everything a strange burnt orange. I could hardly breathe--not because of the smoke, which was well above me, but because of the adrenaline surge. An animal urge to flee swept over me, and I had to hold on to my chair not to follow that imperative and run barefoot out of my house, trying to escape the danger. My body knew instinctively what it was. (Who knew that knowledge of wildfire was hardwired in humans, too?) I didn't have to see the flames or hear the crackling of popping trees or smell the smoke--I was still plenty scared.

It was hours before the adrenaline buzz left me, and the whole time, I thought, I'd take another Loma Prieta quake before this, any ol' day.

I also had a heart-in-throat moment the only time I saw a wedge tornado in the distance. They're mean-looking. (Beautiful, too, if kept at a distance.)

Earthquakes have been exhilarating to me. When they fade, the adrenaline rush is a positive one--like skydiving's rush or the rush I got scuba-diving when learning to doff and don. I don't mean to be insensitive to anyone who has lost a loved one in a quake, but for me, it's been a thrill ride every time. I hope I'm never in a situation where it's otherwise.

The only volcanic eruptions I've experienced have been St. Helens' minor ones from a distance (pretty, and safe if you're not right on top of it), and Kilauea (the kindest eruptions imaginable--slow-moving and lovely to view). I stood at the edge of the ocean, on the moving lava of Kilauea; as the red-hot lava at the leading edge of the flow hit the water, clouds of steam rained little glass shards over me, and it was beautiful and filled my heart with joy. I don't know that I've every felt more connected to Nature than at that moment.

I've been in three ex-hurricanes (2014, in Arizona, which should be against the law or something--seriously, Arizona? Hurricanes?) which had no more wind than any other rain storm, but I've never been in a real, powerful hurricane at its peak. They sure look scary. I've been hit by a downburst of over 100mph, while in an RV--that was a little worrisome, but it was over with in a couple minutes, and the RV was still upright, much to my surprise.

For real terror, for me, it's wildfire. I'll no doubt write a novel about wildfire within the next three years--but I suspect it'll upset me to write it, to mentally put myself into the midst of the smoke and flames.

How about you? Through personal experience, or what you've seen on the news, which natural disaster frightens you the most?

Tornado thriller progress

I'm drafting the next natural disaster novel, this one with tornadoes, during National Novel Writing Month (quite an international event, despite the name). I've crested 10,000 words, and it's really starting to feel alive to me. Three of the characters have achieved that feeling of independence that writers know so well--they seem to write "their own" dialog. I know that, in reality, it's me doing the work, but the me who is me and the me who is them have become different people, with different personalities, different ways of speaking, and different reactions. We share my head for a month. They seem to dictate many of the words, and I just type as fast as I can to get them down. It's a lovely feeling, when it's working well.

I've been researching tornadoes off and on for several months, and as I do that, possible characters start to form in my head, and the research suggests plot events. At the same time, I've taken a specific sort of student out of my teaching past, a line recorded by Connie Fletcher in one of her non-fiction books on cops that I read a very long time ago, my experience with a sick neighbor today and one many years ago, and added all that to the characters. It's like...the slowest of slow cookers, putting all the ingredients in over many years, increasing the rate of addition over the last weeks, and then you eventually you open it up and realize you have a pretty tasty meal to present to guests. Or it's a bit like planting bulbs. You put in fertilizer, bulbs, and almost forget about them, and then in the spring you have pretty flowers. Now's the bouquet-making moment, and luckily, you know how to arrange flowers because you've been studying the art for long years. Neither of those metaphors is exact, I know, but it's as close as I can come to explaining the process.

By the end of the month (barring difficulties), I'll have a new novel draft. After setting it aside to revise and proofread a completed Lou Cadle novel (Gray) and a Rosellyn Sparks novel (Nellie), and quite possibly draft yet another novel, I'll have gained important distance and return to revise this one with a cool editor's eye. Look for it at Amazon, iTunes, Nook, and elsewhere in early summer, 2015.

Planning my next disaster novel

NOAA public domain image

I have two more natural disaster thrillers finished, and after a final edit, I'll be publishing those, and before the end of the year.

In addition, I'm in early stages of planning and researching for my next, a novel about a swarm of tornadoes. Growing up in the Midwest, I saw only one, as a teenager, while driving through farm country. It was alone, far from the main rainstorm, and (thankfully!) distant, a fat wedge of ominous blackness. Scared me half to death, and it's as close to one as I ever hope to be.

I'm reading some fascinating information about tornado formation and damage, and I'm going to enjoy setting a novel back in my home locale after years of setting novels in the western U.S.