Natural disaster complacency
The Ruidoso fires and floods
I’ve been thinking about writing about our fires for a week now, and no angle sounded unique, except this one.
This article is about complacency. We also see this in healthcare.
Fire history
My wife and I figured we’ve been through 10 fires and 2 floods since moving to this town in 2006. Our kids have grown up with fires. The flames from a fire 5 years ago came up to their school. They wanted to be cool, so acted like it was no big deal. We take it seriously, but I think also want to pride ourselves on not panicking.
But we can also become too complacent amongst all the danger.
Fire day
We were made aware of a new fire about 10am. By lunch we could see it from around town.
I watched the fire develop for 2 hours at work. Oh yeah, and my house is in that general direction.
But I had patients to see, and my wife was watching the fire, and collecting some things.
Finally about 3pm she called and asked what the name of our subdivision was. The authorities were starting to call for GO NOW! evacuations, and we couldn’t remember that name, which is on the title. We never refer to our neighborhood by legal subdivisions, only street names. Like any of that mattered in the big picture…maybe we should have just left.
I could hear it in her voice, and that finally triggered me into leaving immediately.
I heard later that once I left, other employees starting thinking the same. That’s the bad part of our group sociology. I didn’t want to be the first to “chicken out.” But it’s a good thing I did.
The fires these past 3 weeks tested our level of readiness and acceptance. We were too comfortable in waiting before evacuation. We watch the fires on apps, and with binoculars, and sirens, and wind directions, etc. We always think that we have enough time to get out.
Most of us waited too long to start leaving. There are basically 3 routes to leave the mountain, and 2 became blocked by the fires. Almost the entire area of 10,000 residents had to evacuate through one corridor, 2 lanes, bumper to bumper traffic. What normally took one hour to drive to the next town, took 4 hours.
We were lucky this bottle neck didn’t cause more casualties.
The fall out from this was chaos. People were trying to get hotel rooms in other towns. Some hotels price gouged the situation, some charging up to $170/night. We’re not talking about the Ritz.
Some people didn’t have enough gas to reach the next town. Pumps are shut down in a natural disaster, or only remain open for first responders. It was a good lesson in always keeping at least half a tank.
The Floods
Most of us were allowed to return to town after a week, just in time for the floods. The summer monsoon rains helped decrease the fires, however also contribute to floods and fire debris run off.
Floods of a different sort are also rampant, that of gossip on social media. Arson is now suspected. It was curious that there were 5 fires in the area, and a ring around the town, in the perfect wind direction towards town.
Movies
We just had a famous actor in town a few months ago, filming a movie about the Paradise, CA fires. It felt like a bad omen the whole time. Look for that movie to come out in the future, and you can see what our town looked like beforehand.
“Ruidoso Smart”
I wish we were “Smart” instead of “Strong”. This “Strong” label always comes out after disasters, and then people sell merchandise with the logo.
Why not be “Smart” and try to prevent the problem we know is going to happen.
What will be the next national disaster that we label “Strong”, when is fact we were “Weak” or “Not Smart”?
