The images from Japan this week are almost as horrifying as those from 9-11 and every bit as searing as the scenes that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2005.
Like our homegrown tragedies, the story from Japan feels like a bad horror movie, the kind where the director went long on visuals and short on vision.
As we go to press this week, the situation at the Fukishima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is teetering on a worst-case scenario, the death toll is expected to reach 10,000 and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. The dead are still being pulled from the wreckage.
With Japan’s domestic economic damage, and the impact of the still recovering world economy yet to be determined, the bad news doesn’t show any sign of letting up any time soon.
It makes us give thanks once again that we live here, in this place, Maine, where earthquakes are scarce and hurricanes are scarcer. Most years our biggest weather aggravation is a couple, three decent Nor’easters and a case of Red Tide.
It is a reminder too, that for all our modern luxuries, our electronic toys, and handheld gadgets, all that really separates us from the Dark Ages is one really, really bad day.
Just about everyone who reads this newspaper can remember the Patriots’ Day storm in 2007, and the Ice Storm of 1998, and Hurricane Bob in 1991. All of those storms caused billions of dollars of damage and disrupted lives for weeks on end. Still compared to what the people of Japan are experiencing, we got off light.
But for a quirk of fate, the famed “Perfect Storm” of 1991 wouldn’t have been a nameless weather system, responsible for a dozen or so deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. It could have come ashore where it might have re-set the benchmark for the proverbial 100-year storm.
Thing is, our time is coming. Nature does not discriminate. It may not be now or next year or even within our lifetime, but our turn is coming and when it does, vigilance will be rewarded.
A stash of blankets, batteries and bottles of water; an escape plan, and a designated contact person for friends and family all will go a long, long way.
