Pandemic Rehearsals

Disasters like hurricanes and flood perform a great service by testing emergency preparedness systems and the thing they mostly show is that, beyond a certain scale such as a few trees down and some surface flooding, the systems all fail.

Which appears to be what is happening right now in Texas after IKE: Folks in Houston Living in Complete Mayhem.

I just got off the phone with my dad in Houston (after hours of trying to get through) and the situation is BAD....REAL BAD.

In fact, it is so bad that even though I grew up in Houston and have seen more than my fair share of tornados and hurricanes I was shocked at what I just heard from my dad.

I thought it was important to share the news.

My dad is forever the optimist- so when he says it's bad- it's bad!

Read the run-down. No water, no power, no petrol and above all

- No food.  There is only one grocery store open
nearby (if you can get to it) and the lines stretches for blocks.  My
dad says it is so jam-packed that there are hundreds of people waiting
to check out.  And they are so full that they can only let someone in
as someone else goes out- 2 people out, 2 people in (like they do in a
nightclub if they are over capacity). 

THEN AND ONLY THEN can you gather what little is left on the shelves.  In Houston most homes have electric stovetops so the only way to cook is if you have a gas grill.  Hotdogs and anything you can put on a grill are long gone.  Bread is gone.  All the staples are gone. They are grabbing anything they can and being creative about how to cook it.

- They have a 6 pm curfew to try to deter looters.

Meanwhile the US Government is restricting access to the media and has stopped private aviation over certain areas. In other words, they are behaving in exactly the same way as the Myanmar government did, and almost certainly for the same reason. If they can prevent the news getting out, then it didn't happen.

In a pandemic, of course, there will be not much physical damage (till the fire brigades can't respond anyway) but the dynamic infrastructure will fail very quickly and the people of Houston are having a trial run at that right now.

Don't let this one fall off your radar

Comments

[Saltation]

true dat