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September 1, 2010

Tim Rogers: Being ready for Earl

timrogers@daltoncitizen.com

There was a point earlier this week when I thought me and Earl would arrive in Eastern North Carolina at the same time.

Fortunately, as I gear up to head back to Wilson for the Labor Day weekend, it no longer appears that Earl will be sitting on my front porch when I pull into the driveway.

There will probably be the usual tree limbs down and low lying streets flooded if, as predicted, the hurricane skirts the Outer Banks as it heads north, but we will have been spared a direct hit.

The first time I heard there was a hurricane named Earl, I said to myself that anything named Earl has to mess something up, but I didn’t know it would possibly be my house and my weekend with my family.

Every area of the country has its natural disasters that it has to look out for and in Eastern North Carolina hurricanes top the list. When I lived in Kansas we wouldn’t have gotten worked up about Earl, but we watched the spring and summer skies religiously for any signs of wall clouds and rotation that might herald the formation of a tornado.

Every place in the country these days seems to have to worry about tornados, but in Kansas they are more frequent and, potentially, more deadly. My family and I had to head to the basement several times, and at one point we could see a funnel cloud trying to form right above our house, but we never had a tornado strike anywhere near us when we lived in Wichita.

I haven’t lived anywhere where you have to worry about earthquakes or volcanoes, but I can imagine that people who live in those areas do so with the knowledge that something may happen at any time in the back of their minds as well.

Of all the natural disasters you have to cope with, I think I would take a hurricane over the others simply because we can plan for them.

Until the early 20th century, hurricanes were destructive, deadly forces of nature, far worse than they are now, because they struck without warning and carried a widespread punch. One of the best books I have ever read dealt with the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, in 1900 and killed an estimated 8,000 people. That storm changed the way that forecasters dealt with potential hurricanes and how people living near the coast received warnings of their approach. The name of the book by the way is “Isaac’s Storm” by Eric Larson.

While we in Dalton aren’t immune to natural disasters, our geography does help us out a little. We are too far from the coast to take a direct hit from a hurricane, our ground is too chopped up to give a tornado a great running start and earthquakes are possible but not as likely as they are on the left coast.

Nevertheless, the nature of natural disasters is that you have to be prepared for anything to happen at anytime.

That is why our friends at Whitfield County are reminding us that September is Emergency Preparedness Month and that we ought to take a few minutes to make sure that we have a disaster plan mapped out for our family and a disaster supplies kit ready in case it is ever needed.

Yes, we have all heard these messages a hundred times, but please take the time to make sure you have at least thought about what you would do if a tornado were to land in your neighborhood or there was a chemical spill that forced the quick evacuation of your home.

Among the items you should have ready access to are water, nonperishable food, a flashlight for each person, important documents you might need, a first aid kit and medical information.

You don’t have to go crazy and have a backpack full of stuff waiting in perpetual readiness at the bottom of the stairs, but the difference between basic knowledge of what to do and blowing it off could be the difference between life and death.

I hope Earl continues on its current course and doesn’t decide to take a left turn. If it does I am going to get a lot more wet this weekend than I planned on.

 

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