In a game between man and Mother Nature, the latter always wins.
I’m simply horrified and disheartened at the destruction Hurricane Harvey has done to Houston and its surrounding area. It’s utterly unbelievable that there can be enough rain in such a short amount of time to flood a city up to the height of traffic lights. Most swimming pools haven’t got water that deep. Whilst countless people are stranded with flooded homes, at least the city was seemingly well prepared for the catastrophe, and therefore the casualties are but a handful.
God bless the brave and heroic first-responders, volunteers, and journalists canvassing the area to rescue, tender, and bring us the news, respectively, and sometimes not so mutually exclusive.
As I sit here in San Francisco, I can’t help but think what would it be like when the big disasters hits home. By the virtue of sitting on an active fault-line and being surrounded by water on three sides, it’s a matter of when, not if. While the house we live in is built after new seismic regulations so it should withstand quite the shake if it were to occur, a tsunami coming in from the Pacific Ocean would be bedlam, and unavoidable.
Evacuations? Our traffic system can’t handle the vehicle load on a good day; imagine all near million of us trying to leave this 7x7 square-mile space all at once. It’s practically impossible, I reckon.
All of this reminds me, I’d better get started on that emergency kit we’ve all procrastinated on.