2004-09-13 - 3:40 p.m.
I've spent the last couple of weeks engaged in the not entirely comforting task of reading about emergency management in Ontario. Who knew that Ontario had such an extensive list of criteria that make it uniquely vulnerable to disaster? This has left me feeling A) endangered and B) morbidly amused. I particularly like the hypothetical town used for table-top training purposes, a town which should simply be known as Disasterville - It has a chemical plant full of dangerous chemicals! It has an agricultural co-op store full of pesticides and flammable fertilizer! It has a single rail line which carries cargo to and from the chemical plant and the co-op, passing close by the local elementary school! It has a river whose flood plain has been built over and which is crossed by a single, ageing bridge! It has a conservation and reforestation area prone to forest fires! Its local hospital can't handle serious cases, which have to be transported to nearby Collegetown on the single highway that crosses the ageing bridge! The reservoir only holds 24 hours worth of water! It's on a faultline and gets tornadoes! In winter it is covered in ice! The cemetery is full of people who died of the Spanish flu in 1918! It's on an Indian burial ground!
OK, I might have made up the indian burial ground part, but still... if I lived there I think I'd move.
And to continue with the theme of disaster, I'm reading The Hot Zone, and have learned the valuable lesson that you should never read a graphic description of someone dying of Ebola when it's first thing in the morning, your stomach is empty, and you're on an airless, overheated bus. I had to open the window and breathe deeply for a while, and may be haunted for the rest of my life by phrases like "the lining of his intestine sloughed off and was expelled" and "the outer layer of the tongue peels loose and is swallowed or vomited".
Ebola = bad.
