MEGADOOM's KATRINA DIARY ***Sneak preview of doom***

[Megadoom]

Have you decided on a specialization in your Nursing studies?
Athina

Anything that doesn't involve changing poopy diapers.  If I can only be so lucky.

BTW, it was kitties, havn't included the next chapter. "Sixty," the other cat, also died but her body washed out and I would only find a skull a few weeks later. Both are buried in my front yard now, there bodies giving back to the soil and enriching the vegetables now growing above them.

[Athina]

Anything that doesn't involve changing poopy diapers.  If I can only be so lucky.

... all Nursing students say that 

Sorry about Sixty, your other kitty.
Looking forward to reading the next chapters of the story!

[Megadoom]

Speaking of which, I'm studying for "Lifespan 3 for nursing" at this moment. Test is tomorrow at 4pm. It's covering CVA, burns, Parkinsons, MS, and orthopedic managment to name a few.

[Tropicalgirl]

Good luck with your tests tomorrow, and thanks too for sharing the medical info on the Alternative Medicine thread, you know that is going to come in handy for someone in the future.... we never know when it could be us, needing that critical information.

[rdocr]

Ralph, I'll bet most of the few with earthquake insurance still have brick chimneys next to their houses.  Insurance is a good idea, but taking down the chimney is a better one.  Hard to care about insurance when you're dead.
And we will wonder again who put the line in gasoline.

Hi Grave
Chimneys come in two varieties: Built up brick ones and precast ones with stone or brick surfaces- there may be other types, but the concrete ones topple wheras the brick ones only crumble in place. either one is deadly, but I have seen houses lose brick chimneys without structural damage to the siding. I have a picture of one of these in my books. Porches always seem to collapse. I did a failure analysis of earthquake damage according to building shape. A ectulangular box is best.

It used to be spelled gasolene...

Ralph

[rdocr]

Sorry, Megadoom, I did not want to sound arrogant or say this could not happen here, I was just stunned by the circumstances you described. I live in Munich, Germany. This looting and shooting in an emergency situation all sounds so strange to me. We grew up on totally different stories of survival amongst ruins, I think that does colour our perception of "what people do in an emergency".
Bad organisation is terrible, of course - I'm sure there were nut just looters, but also lots of "civilians" with boats or whatever willing to help, but no one and no way to coordinate things.
You are right, of course, about the things that will "get us" when they're suddenly missing. But as far as Katrina is concerned, I always thought that all these points became truly lethal because people could not get out / help could not get in? And because all this lasted too long. But then, the affected area was huge. I remember seeing pictures of school buses, long lines of yellow buses, that were meant to evacuate people, but it never happened?

During any kind of disaster, a comradery exists when people help each other. As things cool down this vanishes and people look inward and follow previous mindsets- whatever they may be. The degeneration of society is not restriced to big cities, it is just more obvious.
The further you get from a big city- out in the countryside, you begin to encounter the "survivor" mentalaity. They are the group that are waiting for society to disintegrate and they will survive in their individual fortresses- well stocked, well armed, etc.

But what will they do then?

I tell this as part of the story in our book, First Aid For Disaster Stress Trauma Victims- A Guide and Self-help Manual For the Lay Person.
The only difference is that I chose an earthquake rather then a hurricane and tell the story of a typical family with two children. It is part of our Disaster Preparedness Series of nine books

Incidentally, I gave this book free to all who asked for it, for six months after Katrina.

Ralph