Well, we are getting a taste of the famous geology action associated with this area. Saturday morning a 5.7 (I think) earthquake rattled this area of Alaska. We felt a very light, short shaking where we are, but people on the western edge of Anchorage had a bit of damage. I'm told this is because our apartment is on bedrock, and the western edge is on sediment. (Thanks to friends and family who inquired after us! )
Shortly after the quake, one of our local volcanos started acting up a little. This may or may not mean there will be an eruption. For more details, see the ADN story here . Now, this is an interesting dilemma for a newbie. Not being from around here, I have no way of knowing if this is one of those things the authorities have to mention even if they don't really think anything's going to happen, or if the understated nature of the alert is just a factor of the typical Alaskan lack of concern for danger. I should point out that the volcano in question, Mt. Redoubt, is 100 miles away and across the Cook Inlet, so even if it goes up in a spectacular fashion, there won't be rivers of lava chasing screaming civilians down the streets of Anchorage. There will almost certainly be wads of ash, which is trouble. If we take no other lessons from the fate of Pompeii, we can certainly hold onto that one. Most of the warnings, in fact stem around precautions to take against ash. Although no one is hysterically swarming the stores, we couldn't find any respirators (on the emergency supplies list) at Sears today. I don't know that that means anything, but there it is.
This led us to reminiscing about other emergency precautions sent out by authorities in other parts of the country. In eastern Pennsylvania, for example, if a blizzard is coming, people stock up on bread, eggs, and milk. We will fight the awesome power of nature with French Toast! Although to be fair, I don't believe that is in response to an official announcement from the state. In Florida, people stock up on Clorox. Hit with a hurricane? May as well clean! ( No, seriously. I know it is to sterilize drinking water.) Last summer I was in California for work, and there were pretty severe wildfires nearby, to the point where the air was brown and everyone coughed the whole time. The locals responded by shrugging and declaring themselves "bummed". In some cases, they also had an extra glass of wine with dinner, because, hey. You know?
So I am stocking up on wine. Because, hey. You know?
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3 comments:
Hi there!
I just have a moment but I wanted to weigh in on the dilemma of volcano alerts and such.
An orange-level alert is just what you were thinking--it's one of those things the authorities mention so that when/if the level does change to red and the volcano starts putting out ash (up here, all I've ever heard of is ash, no lava), then people can't say, "What? There was a volcano acting like it was going to be more active and no one even *mentioned* it??"
The other thing about volcanoes here is that for some reason our relatively unpredictable weather almost always makes it..well, unpredictable when it comes to figuring out where the ash will go if it does come. =) The winds really up high tend to move it around before it makes it to the ground.
One area that does notice the volcano ash more readily than the casually observing populace is that of the airlines. Sometimes they cancel flights out of healthy respect for possible ash. I'm including a link taken from the window of a flight out over the Aleutians (where I'm from). =)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080715-volcano-photo.html
Well, lunch is up! I'd better get back to work! Have a great day! =)
Hi Feathers!
Thanks so much for your info - good to get an informed opinion. And thanks so much for the great link! Yes, you're right, they do sort of have to mention it at least.=)
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