As our family was sitting in the car last evening, with the dog, inside our basement, as the tornado sirens were going on outside, I pondered how different our circumstance was from 15 years ago.
When we bought our current (second) house, one of my requirements was an underground space that we could use as shelter from tornados. Because 15 years ago we had spent time hearing the tornado sirens howl, huddled in the bathroom of our 800 sq. foot house. It had a crawl space, no basement, and that room was the most shelter the house had.
Last evening, sitting in the car, the kids were playing on their Nintendo DS’s, Betsy was on her tablet, and I was using my computer. We were all wired through wifi to the internet. Wifi also was something we didn’t have 15 years ago.
We also had our cell phones now. They had alerted us to the tornado warning before the sirens had gone off. They also gave us periodic updates of where the tornados were touching down, where the flash floods were overflowing roads and highways, when the tornado warning ended and then was reinstated.
We had a cell phone 15 years ago, but I don’t think we got all those alerts (we didn’t have texting like we do know).
With all that I made the comment to the family about how different things were now to then. That prompted the boy to mention the below cartoon about earthquakes and Twitter:
Which raises a good point: we may be smarter, but are we wiser with all our technology?
Which way do you run and which way should you run when you hear an explosion, for instance? I have heard that one bantered about. But our culture is prone to go look and gawk, head heedlessly into danger. The correct answer, I was told, is to move away, to safety, unless you are rescue personnel, whose impulse should be to see how you can assist.
Personally, I think anyone can be rescue personnel, official or not. It just depends on your motivation in moving closer. But as the comic suggests, rescue isn’t most people’s impulse.
At The Rainbow 