A Great Day to Shake Out Your Community's Vulnerabilities

Natural hazards don't have to result in unnatural disasters. On earthquake Great Shakeout day, have a look around at all sources of risk.

🌏〰 Today is the U.S. and international Great Shakeout earthquake preparedness exercise. I’m encouraged to see more than 50 million signups on the website, from Alaska to Venezuela. Maybe you already doid your “drop, cover, hold on” exercise if you’re in a relevant place?

GreatShakeout.org

I hope the several billion people in Earth’s crowding earthquake danger zones get a least a bit of the message. These students I filmed in 2009 in Istanbul, one of a long list of big cities facing a profound seismic threat, certainly knew what to do. When I asked “what do you do in an earthquake” and a translator translated, at first there were raised hands. But the teacher said show, don’t tell. Et voila. Learn more from me about Turkey’s earthquakes.)

Earthquake deaths can be avoided if schools, companies, agencies and families practice how to drop, cover and hold on. And of course, on the vital bigger scale, it’s buildings that kill, not the shaking. So enforced building codes and simple design norms are key - as with wildfire. (Explore the meaning of the phrase “ductile detail.”)

As I wrote in my pre-Substack days, though, the nation and world really need a “great shakeout” for all vulnerabilities. I think it’d be great to have one day a year when regular schooling or company activities are set aside and we all look around with an eye to resilience - not just in our own homes and lives, but those of neighbors with fewer means or abilities.

Too often, sources of danger if the worst happens hide in plain sight until the worst happens.

🔥 Towns that sprouted in the treeless foothill grasslands east of the Rocky Mountains in recent decades burned down when a December 2021 windstorm swept embers onto fire-vulnerable wood structures. Tiny details can make a huge difference in the survival of a home. See my relevant post below.

🌪️ Tornadoes can be survived in safe rooms or basements if warnings are heeded. Amazon’s warehouse collapse didn’t have to kill. Tornado damage sleuth Tim Marshall offers so much wisdom.

🌀⛈️ 🌊 Deluges and hurricane coastal surges can be survived if people prepare and listen to “turn around, don’t drown” warnings. I’ve written reams on paths to coastal and riverside resilience.

A good start for identifying your hazards and risk level is to explore FEMA’s dynamic National Risk Index map, which provides a county-by-county view of exposure to hazards and societal vulnerability - for earthquakes and all the other major threats. Here’s the community resilience map - with darker shades of purple marking the lowest levels of community resilience.

Then convene with your neighbors or colleagues. A great model evolved in San Francisco thanks to Daniel Homsey of Neighborhood Empowerment Network, which initiates community-led resilience conversations and helps them move from motivation to action with a host of tools and connections.

Please watch this "Prep Talk" that Homesey gave for FEMA on "Neighborfests - Building Resilience from the Block Up!”

This model simply must spread beyond San Francisco!

The analytics side of Substack shows that very few readers of my posts click the links, but in this case I hope you do. Here are earlier posts that are highly relevant:

This Sustain What webcast can help:

When Avoiding Disaster is the Story

There’s more to stay but I have other work to do, and I’m sure you do, as well. Please do pass this post around before you click elsewhere.