The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Helping World Prepare for Disasters
Human vulnerability is never more evident than during a natural disaster. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and hurricanes can reduce us to fragile reeds blowing in the wind, helpless against the powerful forces of nature.
Throughout most of human history, these devastating experiences were considered acts of God. Their existence, and the havoc they wreak, were beyond our control.
And then along came Frank Press.
As the science adviser to Jimmy Carter, Press had flown with the President over Mt. St. Helens shortly after the volcano blew its top May 18, 1980. The explosion sent out shock waves powerful enough to knock down a forest and covered much of Washington and Oregon with volcanic ash. As Air Force One circled over the parched land below, Press turned to a stunned Carter and said, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
As a geophysicist, Press knew that nature has far more powerful weapons in its arsenal than Mt. St. Helens. A catastrophic earthquake in the heart of Los Angeles could make a volcanic eruption pale by comparison. He also knew it was only a matter of time.
Haunted by that thought, Press moved on to become president of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1984 he made a bold proposal. In a keynote address before the eighth World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Press said it was time for humans to take control of their future. We could not stop earthquakes, he said, but we could greatly reduce the destruction they cause.
He proposed that the world spend a decade--the 1990s--figuring out and implementing ways to mitigate natural disasters.
Three years later, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the idea and designated the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.
The Decade, as the program has come to be known, is now half over, and I asked Press the other day if he thought it was working.
“I do,” he said.
“There was a big mid-Decade conference in Yokohama [Japan] at the end of last year,” Press said. “There was a very large representation, about 130 countries, and so the Decade has entered the consciousness of political leaders in a lot of countries, especially the smaller, poorer countries where most of the tragedy and devastation occurs.”
Underdeveloped countries are hit harder, he said, because they are less prepared, and it is that lack of preparation that the program addresses directly.
Under the U.N. initiative, poorer countries have been exposed to earthquake engineering and hurricane warning systems that can greatly reduce the consequences of natural disasters. And they have been given some of the tools they need to do the job--including training for scientists, risk assessment and such things as satellite weather reports to help them track storms that may be headed their way.
Their success is threatened now by efforts in Congress to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, greatly weakening the agency’s ability to track storms and issue warnings.
And the ability to predict volcanic eruptions could be eroded by cuts in the budget for the U.S. Geological Survey. Volcanoes do not erupt unexpectedly--unless no one is watching for the right signals. Under the U.N. program, the 100 most dangerous volcanoes in the world have been identified and are being monitored by satellites and ground instruments, a program that is crucial to the survival of millions of people around the world.
But simply knowing that a volcano is about to erupt is not enough. When Nevada del Ruiz erupted in Colombia in November, 1985, mudflows from melting ice buried at least 22,000 people, despite the fact that the eruption had been predicted weeks in advance. Residents of the area had never been warned, and Colombia was totally unprepared for the disaster.
Creating the infrastructure for evacuating residents from harm’s way is one of the primary goals of the program, and Press believes it is succeeding. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in June, 1991, only about 800 people died, despite producing a much more powerful eruption than that of Nevada del Ruiz. The difference, Press said, was that U.S. and Filipino teams had predicted the eruption and evacuated thousands of residents.
Press believes the most encouraging result of the Decade program has been a change in attitude among scientists and political leaders in countries around the world.
There is now widespread recognition “that a government has to do more than say it’s an act of God,” he said.
At the Yokohama conference, he said, nations that had never had any kind of planning for natural disasters seemed to be “almost in a competition” to come up with the best programs.
The United Nations has established an office in Geneva to help underdeveloped countries grapple with the problem. Through that office, scientists and engineers around the world can get access to the latest studies on such things as earthquake engineering. There they can learn that earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings and bridges that fall down during earthquakes kill people, and the likelihood of that occurring can be greatly reduced.
Recent earthquakes in Russia, Soviet Armenia and Japan show the vulnerability of older buildings that were built without a clear understanding of earthquake engineering. Damages, and deaths, have been far lower from similar quakes in California simply because structures were built better.
Such knowledge is now being shared among people all over the world, although progress in some areas is more readily attainable than in others. It takes generations, not just a decade of awareness, to replace poorly constructed buildings that are prone to collapse during a quake, and progress there will undoubtedly be slow. But it is now possible to warn more people in low-lying areas of a possible tsunami, or an approaching hurricane, or a volcano threatening to erupt. At least we have made a start.
Because one man used his position to compel us to move more of the burden from God’s back to ours, we are gradually building a safer world.
Thanks, Frank.
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Lee Dye can be reached via e-mail at 72040.3515@compuserve.com.
