A weekly round-up of news, articles and surveys to make your next emergency better. Have a suggestion for the round-up? Contact me at abetteremergency@gmail.com.

I vividly recall the morning after the tsunami in 1964. The earthquake washed down the west coast and left the beach littered with dead cows near Cannon Beach, Oregon. In Alaska, a scientist witnessed wreckage shortly afterwards. You can read his account here.  The real issue is the amount of growth has occurred in areas impacted by the 1964 event. I wonder what would happen if that same earthquake struck today.

You would think Japanese citizens would be on top of their earthquake game, but that may not be the case. Read how dire quake forecasts fail to stir a numb public.  Speaking of Japan, an interesting comparison came to mind while reading this article about disaster debris trains making a final run.  Roughly 17 million tons of debris in the three hardest-hit prefectures — Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima — were hauled away by trains running non-stop since the 2011 event. Almost three years.  When the United States experiences a New Madrid earthquake, it has been estimated that roughly 250 million tons of debris will be generated. Will we have trains running for decades with no idea where the material will go?

This Chinese theme park and its Titanic museum and shipwreck simulator made me wonder. If we immersed people in more realistic settings of disasters in an entertaining manner, would awareness would go up?  It would be interesting to also have an environmental sphere setting where people could learn about the state of science when climate disaster looms.

I found the idea of attaching reassessed values to homes damaged in the New Zealand earthquake premature and disturbing. It assumes that repairs would eventually get done. Speaking of unsettling, this title was too compelling to miss: Village of widows’ determined to rebuild in India flood disaster. And if that was not bad enough, read how many women die when while hunting for a chador when they should be evacuating. It’s sad. I try to be respectful of others’ beliefs, but this made me wonder if women had any say in this idea.

I found this refreshing: disasters offer opportunity to prevent the next.   I once worked on a project where they sought disaster preparedness “incentives” to give away. I suggested simple, inexpensive reflective emergency blankets.  I also think major cities should stockpile these for the homeless rather than let them freeze.   I was pleased to see a place in New Jersey actually came to the same conclusion.

One thing I find interesting about the chemical impacting the water supply of the capital of West Virginia, is how little we know about the product and its levels of toxicity.  Chlorine is toxic in high enough amounts. Yet many municipal water supply systems use it to make certain the water is free of bacteria. Scientists seem to have no idea what the real threat of the material in the water is, and without the odor, would anyone even notice that there was a spill?

Television doomsday people get a lot of ridicule. So when I read how these Doomsday planes protect heads of state when disaster strikes, it made me realize that taxpayers have been funding the most outrageous sky-is-falling-machines I can think of.   Good to know that our politicians will be safe. It helps me sleep better at night.

[GARD]