How small we are before nature

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the news coming out of New York and New Jersey concerning Sandy. Some of the news is good, some of it is not. The good news is that so many people are helping each other, volunteering for the relief help, and so on. The bad news is that there are still many areas without electricity, without heat, without water (no shower or toilet facilities), without phone connection; I know people who cannot return to their homes because of these problems. As a friend of mine on Facebook commented—“how small we are before nature, even in one of the most modern cities in the world”. It’s true. We like to think that we can tackle most of the tough things that life throws at us; most of the time we do. But sometimes we cannot, and not through any fault of our own. It’s worth thinking about. Most homes in New York and New Jersey get their gas and electricity from power companies like Con Edison, Hess and the like. If you lost electrical power for a week, your refrigerator would not work, nor would any other electrical device you might have. This means that any food you had in the refrigerator would eventually spoil; ditto for food in the freezers. Unless you had a backup generator, you would be stuck in a situation that many people find themselves in now in New York City boroughs and in New Jersey. Some of them cannot get out of their homes to buy food because the areas they live in remain flooded, or because they cannot use their cars due to lack of fuel. Even if they could buy food, there would be no way to store it without a functioning refrigerator. The question of course is whether there is food to be bought, since deliveries of foodstuffs have been limited or non-existent in some areas. The same is true for car fuel; it is running low and gas stations are reporting long lines at the pumps. As far as food preparation, people can prepare food using gas stoves, providing that the natural gas supply to the stoves is functioning. In Norway however, we would have a huge problem, since most stoves are electric, not gas. We thus would not be able to store food or prepare it. We would also be without shower and toilet facilities. We would not be able to charge our cell phones, even though the cell phone networks might be working. We would not have regular telephone service; we would not have internet or cable TV connections. This would impact on the amount of information we would be privy to, in terms of critical updates on the situation we were experiencing. We would be cut off, in other words, like many residents of New York and New Jersey are, and probably like many residents in Haiti and Cuba are, since they were the first to get hit by Sandy. It is truly hard to believe that given all our modern technology, that we are in fact at the mercy of nature. It is a fallacy to think that we have any real control over what nature can throw at us—hurricanes, storm surges, earthquakes, tsunamis, or tornadoes. We can prepare as best we can, and hope for the best.

Nowhere to run to

And so it happened again, a major earthquake that generated a devastating tsunami—this time off the coast of northeast Japan. The horrific images of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that rolled in over Thailand and Indonesia are still vivid in my memory. This quake in Japan was a major one—a magnitude of 8.9 on the Richter scale is being reported, and that is scary enough. Just as disturbing are the video footages of the tsunami sweeping across coastal farmland carrying boats, cars and burning houses in its wake. Other videos show submerged cars and boats being pushed toward a highway overpass, and it is both terrifying and amazing to see how boat masts are just crushed like plastic toys. I watch such scenes and cannot help but think of the Mayan prophecy that says that the world will end in 2012 (more precisely, the Mayan calendar ends on the Gregorian calendar date of December 21, 2012 which has led to intense speculation about what this means for the planet). And if you have seen the film 2012 (not very good except for the special effects for earthquake scenes and subsequent destruction) you will understand that there really is nowhere to run when these types of things happen, because there is usually very little warning. I am glad that we do not live in a geographical area that is prone to earthquakes. My thoughts go to the Japanese people—I hope and pray that there will not be a huge loss of life as there was in Indonesia.

The power and fury of nature and of water never cease to amaze me. I just wrote about the Akerselva river and how its fish and insect life died in the space of one night due to a chemical spill. But the river itself keeps running down to the sea and hopefully always will. Back in November 2000, unusually large amounts of rainfall in Oslo resulted in extremely high water levels in the Akerselva that threatened to flood surrounding areas. We live about a five-minutes’ walk from the river, at a point where there are small waterfalls. When we opened our apartment windows facing toward the river, we could hear the river as it roared past. We joined many others who stood watching from a safe distance as this ordinarily peaceful river roared mightily past us. The spray from these falls was so intense as to take your breath away. I have never seen so many people out late in the evening, watching the river, photographing and filming its wildness. We are drawn to that which scares us. We watch even though we don’t want to. Even in the current video footage from Japan, there are motorists on the highway overpass who got out of their cars to see what was going on, in spite of the huge danger. I would like to think that I would have floored my car and sped off. But who knows, perhaps it was smartest to stay on the overpass bridge. It seemed to be made of solid cement and to be able to withstand the onslaught of the ocean water, and it was not submerged, at least not at the time point that the video footage was shot. I hope so anyway. The tanker truck that stopped on the bridge remained there. Perhaps the driver understood that there was nowhere to go. That must be the scariest thought of all—that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. The digital age, with the ability to send live footage in the space of a few seconds via iPhones and cell phones generally has brought with it the possibility of literally stepping into another person’s shoes, for better or for worse. We know how they must feel. We see how horrific it is and know what they face. Nowhere to run to—a sobering thought that pulls us out of ourselves for some minutes and makes us see what is happening elsewhere. We are forced to face our mortality. And it is not war but nature that does this to us.