You wouldn't believe that I'm a whole-hearted optimist when I keep writing about disasters, but I am squarely in the "expect the best, prepare for the worst" school.
So what will be The Next Five Disasters post Katrina? Chris Bushnell in Wave magazine explores potential disasters in the continental US that scientists agree 100% that they will eventually happen. Bet you never worried before about a Tsunami coming at us from the Canary Islands.
Pacific Northwest: Mount Rainier Awakens
A big chunk of this western flank will just one day suddenly let go. And this would be totally without warning,” says Pierson. “There would be no precursor that we could pick up on and [the collapse] has the potential for sending a massive lahar down to populated valleys where upwards of 60,000 people now live. … This will definitely happen someday, we just don’t know when.”
Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas: Downtown Tornado Cluster
“The objective was to determine, if we had a major tornado outbreak like that in North Texas, what sort of impact we would see. The numbers were quite staggering. We saw anywhere from 17,000 to 18,000 homes impacted, between 3,000 to 9,000 apartment units that were impacted, and damages anywhere from $811 million up to $2.8 billion, depending on what areas the tornados hit.”
Eastern Seaboard: Mega-Landslide / Tsunami
Ward’s prediction is dire. A mega-landslide off the Canary Islands, which Ward calls “one of the steepest places on earth,” would result in a wave that is still more than 100 feet tall when it hits the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Boulder, Colorado: Flash Flood
On May 30, 1894, the then-fledgling city of Boulder, Colorado was nearly wiped out by a massive flash flood. It took only two days of rain – about six inches in all – to mix with that year’s snow melt to produce a sudden, enormous river that ripped through the city, wiping out bridges, buildings, trees and anything else in its path. Miraculously, no one was killed. Today, however, Boulder is a growing metropolis – and the threat of a repeat flood is always one big storm away.
Entire United States: Avian Flu Pandemic
Last month, eyebrows were raised when Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani, a communicable disease expert for the World Health Organization and a frontline warrior in the battle against H5N1 (a.k.a. The Hong Kong Bird Flu), said that it was only a matter of time before avian flu becomes communicable between humans and a worldwide pandemic erupts. Oshitani, who successfully led the effort to contain SARS in 2003, added that “it would take four to six months to develop and produce a vaccine and that might not be fast enough.”