OTHER DISASTERS AND OTHER THOUGHTS

Earthquakes are but one of the natural disasters challenging utilities. Tornadoes, perhaps surprisingly, are the easiest to recover from, for the swath of destruction is usually only half a mile wide. More difficult to deal with are the 50 to 80 mph blasts of wind storms, because their damage is so widespread and they can last for days. Most dreaded after earthquakes are ice storms, which affect large areas, last long, and frozen trees lying across transmission lines can sometimes not be removed until the weather warms up. In 1976, an 11-day ice storm inflicted $11,000,000 of damage on Consumers Power Co of Michigan.

Which takes me to two more points. Natural disasters can be fought, just as the disasters of war can, but not everyone is willing to fight them. The "Physicians for Social Responsibility"and affiliated war-inviting riffraff spit on their hippocratic oath by refusing to cooperate in any civil defense measures and even in-ducing hospitals to refuse beds to possible victims of a nuclear attack. As Jimmy Reagan invites Soviet inspectors to watch the cutting up of cruise missiles, the defense of the US civil population is left entirely in the hands of three non-governmental volunteer organizations which lack funds and are worthy of your support (see below).

Second, the 60,000 Armenian dead (if that is the number) are to a considerable degree victims of communism with its inability to learn and cope. The number of earthquake victims in the US and Japan is kept small by building codes and technology that keeps up with seismics and advanced engineering. Even Mexico, which is not the Western World's most advanced country, anchors its high buildings on pylons and uses flexible framework; had Mexico (with a quake two Richter orders higher than that of Armenia) suffered under Soviet stagnation and built rigid panel frames on concrete foundations as in Armenia, they would have lost not 9,000, but one million lives in 1985. On another level, the Soviets have now ac-cepted the US offer of help (a truly generous concession), which will introduce another first: disposable hypodermic needles. All Soviet hypodermic needles belong to the government and are shared by all the people on its march to the glories of communism.

[More: On utility measures after earthquakes: J.G. Vera, "Back on line in 72 hours," [Mexico City] IEEE Spectrum, June 1986; H.L. Richter, "Post-quake lessons for power utilities," IEEE Spectrum, Dec. 1988. On doctors and civil defense: Doctors against Health (1982), $2 from us; see also Dr J. Orient's reply to the falsehoods by Dr Lown of the "Physician's for the Prevention of Nuclear War" in the British medical journal The Lancet, 19 Nov. 1988, pp.1185-6 (also available in Fort Freedom's Rathole). The three civil defense organizations are: The American Civil Defense Association (TACDA, Box 910, Starke, FL 32091), Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (Box 1057, Starke, FL 32091) and Fighting Chance, Box 1279, Cave Junction, OR 57523.]