ALERT Newsletter – September 2012

Then as time passed and no further attacks succeeded in being carried out we began to feel secure once again and our interest in preparedness quickly vanished. Comedians even joked about the preparations, as if people were just overreacting to yet another Y2K scare.

Then Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, and in her aftermath there was another surge of interest in emergency preparedness.

As we saw with the tornadoes of 2012, disaster is only one storm away & now is the best time to be preparing.

It is good to see many are doing so, some taking CERT classes as you read this. I encourage you to study, prepare and refresh your training on a regular basis. That’s the only way to stay ahead of the game.

Sadly, not everyone will choose to prepare. Why is this? Lets examine some reasons encountered. Which could be titled “Lessons learned from Katrina, Rita And Their Smaller Cousins”.

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Top 6 Reasons Why People Don’t Prepare For Disasters.

I’ll start with the “politically incorrect” one first.

Reason #1. The government will take care of me.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Seriously though, It is OUR duty as responsible citizens to prepare, protect, and provide for our families, not the federal or state governments.

“Safety nets” exist and thank God for them, for anyone can end up needing help, but if I am physically, mentally and financially capable of providing for myself and my family, then the safety nets should be used as a last resort rather than the first, or even worse, as a chosen lifestyle of milking the system.

In the Capitoline Museum in Rome sits a sculpture called the Capitoline Wolf. The she-wolf stands vigilant as she suckles the infants Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of the Roman Republic.

The thought sometimes occurs that in Washington DC there should be a sculpture called the American Cow. Here you have dozens of fully-grown three hundred pound adults suckling on an emaciated dying cow, complaining all the while about their lot in life as they slowly milk her to death.

Some honestly feel that it is the government’s duty to endlessly suckle them. But, perhaps I’m drifting off topic.

Some expect FEMA to be their protector and provider after the storm.

It should be pointed out that FEMA, God bless them, faces an impossible situation. There are those who honestly expect them to come in and with a magic wand restore in a day or a week an infrastructure that took decades to build. No government, no agency, no group on Earth is capable of doing this. It is true that FEMA makes mistakes, but at least there IS a FEMA. Think of the countries that have no form of a FEMA and see how well they fair after disasters.

Making no personal efforts to prepare for clear and present dangers and then whining about the outcome of your choices makes about as much sense as jumping off a cliff and then expecting it not to hurt. One could say that it is stupidity gone to seed.

Once again, it is our responsibility to “man up” and at least attempt to provide for and protect our families, not the government.

Reason #2. I’ll look like a nut.

Oh, you already do, so that shouldn’t be a serious problem.

All joking aside, to some you will seem nutty. Oddly enough, sometimes even to people who have survived a disaster. You may get weird looks, be the butt of jokes and kidding. Then when the Poop Hits The Propeller the same comedians may think, “Wow, good thing Old Joe was preparing, lets go see what he can give us”.

The problem is Old Joe prepared for himself and his family, not to be the Community Food Bank.

Remember the saying “It takes a village a day to eat a months worth of groceries carefully gathered for one family.”

The way to not be labeled a nutcase or become a target is simple. Just don’t tell folk what you are doing. Your spouse needs to know. If the kids think they are the Neighborhood News Network, I wouldn’t tell them too much.

When I was a wee lad my Mom taught me “don’t tell the neighbors your business, because then they will know your business and theirs too & will know more than you do.”

That lesson and learning that some enjoy quickly altering and spreading things told in confidence taught me not to be too forthcoming with personal details, unless it is for a strategic advantage. This is a principle some have labeled as “Operational Security”.

So prepare, just do it quietly. Shhhh

Reason #3. Nothing will ever happen.

Hopefully this, which I call the old “It only happens in Bangladesh theory”, will prove true.

One thing to remember is that disasters come in many shapes and sizes. Some overly imbibed gentleman t-boning your car and disabling you for six weeks with two broken legs may not warrant a Red Cross response, but, on a personal level it is every bit as serious as if a tornado had left you with the same injuries.

Either way, you are in trouble.

One thing one should always do is to learn about your neighborhood and its unique dangers, vulnerabilities and assets. Then if something happens you are already one step ahead in the game.

For example, the area in which I live has no flood threat. On the other hand I am very close to an Interstate and a main traffic artery. It is entirely possible that a tanker can wreck, release hazardous materials and endanger my neighborhood. Once in my old neighborhood they were going to evacuate us at 3AM because a railroad tank car was venting ammonia into the air. So I know it CAN happen.

Add to this the ever-present tornado threat, a low-level earthquake threat and the ever-present danger of unkind hooliganism, and I have a decent idea of what I should prepare for.

As for assets, the fire station is within walking distance and there is a hospital a couple of miles away.

I also know the traffic access and choke points in case I have to make an emergency run.

It pays to know your “hood”.

Reason #4, I don’t have the room to prep

Following basic FEMA guidelines and adding a few items, you can store three milk jugs worth of water, three packets of instant oatmeal for breakfast, three cans of deviled ham and other spreads and some crackers for lunch & three cans of food – chili, stew, chicken and dumplings for supper. Then add a roll of duct tape, some clear plastic sheeting and your medicine supply. Get a 2 by 2 foot box to put it in. You now have a three-day emergency kit for one person that fits in a closet.

More room does help, and you can plan for more than one person and for a longer “shelter in place” period. Preferably 21 days. But, if one is able to find a space for a bowling ball or golf clubs, they can find room for a basic emergency kit.

Reason #5, It costs too much

This depends on how elaborately you prepare and if you do it all at once, going full bore and fully into debt, however there is another way.

Start small. Lets talk food for example. The way to stockpile food is simple. If you eat a can of green beans, when you go to the store by two cans. Eat another can? Buy two more. That gives a stockpile three deep. Then just replace as used. Do this gradually with everything you eat and soon you will have a supply two to three weeks deep. With a added benefit that the food you have stored is food you normally like. As opposed to bulk “survival food” or a pallet of military MRE’s that may prove as tasty as decaying cardboard.

For water, just get a couple of 24 bottles crates of bottled water, or some 7-gallon water containers from the Wally World.

Start small and gradually build. Think of it as “the art of useful accumulation”.

Remember to mark on the calendar when to regularly check your preparations, as batteries and food will go out of date quicker than you think.

Reason #6, I don’t know where to start

I can recommend the following online State, FEMA courses and Civil Defense manuals:

Ready Alabama Family Supply List

http://www.readyalabama.gov/post/30240893495/more-water-food-and-clean-air-are-important

IS-22 Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness http://www.training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is22.asp

IS-317 Introduction to Community Emergency Response Teams

http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/training_mat.shtm#IS317

Here are the old Civil Defense Manuals from the “Good Old Days”:

H-14 In time of EMERGENCY a citizen’s handbook on … Nuclear Attack … Natural Disasters (1968)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15158/15158-h/15158-h.htm

SM-3-11 Personal And Family Survival (1966)

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ina22/+301/$301-text-Personal_and_Family_Survival.html

All this light reading will certainly make your days brighter and more cheerful, which brings me to my disclaimer.

While I am advocating that you be aware of dangers you face, be prepared & stay fresh in your preparations, I’m not advocating that you become a doomsday nut. You will hear of many who are, since “Doomsday 2012” is the flavor of the moment.

I recommend you make reasonable, well thought out preparations for the “usual disasters” & then go live life and have some fun in 2012, 2013 and the years to come.

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A husband and his wife were sound asleep when suddenly the phone rang.

The husband picked up the phone and said, “Hello? How the heck do I know? What do I look like, a weatherman?” He then slammed the phone down and settled into bed.

“Who was that?” asked his wife.

“I don’t know. It was some guy who wanted to know if the coast was clear.”

Courtesy of Teresa KQ4JC

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Mark’s Almanac

September is the ninth month of the year and the seventh month of the Roman calendar, which is where the month gets its name.

Temperatures are still hot at the beginning of the month, but, by months end, fall will definitely be felt.

Noticeable in September will be the thickening of the cat’s fur, as she begins growing her winter coat & the drift of Yellow Giant Sulphur Butterflies as they migrate towards Florida.

Weather starts shifting from the summer to autumn pattern and then back again. Storm activity resembles the August pattern, but the Bermuda High starts shifting southward and begins weakening, which will weaken the blocking effect it has had which prevented fronts from invading from the northwest.

September is the peak of the hurricane season, the actual peak being on September 10. This peak coincides with the time of “syzygy”, when the combination of the solar and lunar gravity and autumnal equinox combine to provide the highest astronomical tides of the year. Add a hurricane’s storm surge on top of this and you can have incredibly destructive flooding.

Fall begins at Autumnal Equinox on September 22, 2012 at 9:49 A.M. CDT, when the Sun crosses directly over the equator and night and day is approximately the same length.

One term that occasionally pops up is “equinoctial storms”. Which are severe storms in North America and the UK that supposedly accompany the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Where this belief originated is obscure. Some say perhaps from the 1700’s when sailors were greeted by West Indies hurricanes, or due to the coincidence of the first fall severe storms sometimes coming in the latter half of September. At any rate, statistics show no evidence to support the belief.

On this date, if there is sufficient solar activity, and you are away from city lights, the aurora may possibly be seen, as the Equinox dates are the two most favored times of the year for auroral sightings.

High in the Southern night sky an asterism or a group of stars appearing clustered together, but not actually gravitationally bound, will be seen that resembles a teapot. This is the Teapot of Sagittarius.

To the naked eye, the Teapot is roughly the size of your fist at arm’s length. Above the spout of the Teapot lies a band of light, which is the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud. A pair of binoculars will reveal a sea of stars and faint grayish patches, the largest of which is the Lagoon Nebula. When you look upon these nebulae you are seeing stars in the process of being born.

The spout also points towards the galactic center of the Milky Way, located just beyond the Large Sagittarius Star cloud, but largely hidden by the dust clouds, which lie along the plane of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy.

Looking closer to home, Mercury lies too close to the Sun to be readily visible but may make a brief appearance low in the west at the very end of the month.

Venus rises in deep darkness around 3 A.M., emerging above the east-northeast horizon like a UFO two hours before the first glimmer of dawn. By dawn it’s blazing high in the east.

Mars rises in the southwest during the early evening. On September 19, Mars is to the immediate right of the crescent moon about an hour after sunset.

Jupiter rises in the east-northeast around midnight. Once it’s well clear of the horizon, look for the orange star Aldebaran twinkling to the lower right. By dawn Jupiter shines very high in the southeast, above the brighter Venus.

Mars, Saturn, and the star Spica form a lengthening triangle low in the west-southwest at dusk. Mars is pulling away to the left of the other two.

Uranus at the Pisces-Cetus border and Neptune in Aquarius reach good heights in the southeast by late evening.

Uranus is larger and brighter than any other time of the year appearing as a blue-green disk to viewers with high power binoculars.

Neptune is seen as a bluish-gray star like object in the south hiding in plain site among the stars of Aquarius.

September’s Full Moon will occur September 15 at 9:11 PM. This month’s moon is “Full Corn Moon” in Native American folklore. This year it is also “Harvest Moon”. So called because the moon is larger and seems to rise at almost the same time every night, which allowed harvesting to continue on into the night.

Most believe that Harvest Moon is always in September, however this isn’t always the case. Harvest Moon is actually the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox, and so occasionally it can occur with October “Hunters Moon”.

September is National Chicken Month – which is certainly something to crow about.

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This month’s regular meeting will be on September 11 at 7PM at the National Weather Service forecast office at the Shelby County Airport.

I hope to see you there.

Mark / WD4NYL

Training Officer

ALERT

www.freewebs.com/weatherlynx