Earthquakes and Tornados

There are so many things to write about this week that I am really in a quandary as to where to start.  So, I thought I would start with my older brother’s first grade classroom.  Fortunately for our family and many others, the Long Beach earthquake, magnitude 6.4, struck at 5:55 PM.  The reason it was fortunate that it struck at that time is that he was not in the famous first grade classroom that simply collapsed like a pancake.  He actually was sitting in front of our big upright radio listening to Little Orphan Annie.  I was in a highchair under the cabinets watching my mother make dinner.  I still remember, when the dishes from the cupboard fell to floor in front of me, yelling, “I didn’t do it”.  The wonderful, egocentricity of childhood!

As a result of that earthquake, California established some standards in the Uniform Building Code regarding safer buildings.  The standards have been updated several times since then, and except for some unscrupulous builders, they have been pretty well adhered to.  Right after the Long Beach event Los Angeles passed an ordinance that no building could be taller than four stories.  I was really shocked the first time I saw a high rise in Los Angeles.  Recently in 2003, after our local San Simeon earthquake, magnitude 6.3, our General Hospital was declared unsafe to be used as a hospital. 

The fact that Oklahoma does not have a strict requirement in its building code requiring a small underground tornado cellar for homes or engineered safe rooms in its schools and hospitals blew my mind.  The reason I heard is that people there don’t want the government to tell them how to spend their money! What that means to me is that they prefer their money to the lives of their children.  For an individual house, I heard, it costs some $8-10,000 more.  One assumes that this cost would be added to the house payments and would be spread over 25-30 years. 

The one thing I do not want to read or hear is that it is God’s will that those children died in Plaza Tower Elementary School.  There was no safe room because “it cost too much”.  If there is any blame anywhere it is on those who didn’t want to spend money to protect their children.

Don’t unload the responsibility for those tragic deaths on God.  She had nothing to do with it.