Indonesia suffered a tidal wave that killed over 200,000 people and this isn’t counting all the other deaths in Sri Lanka and India.
A fire swept through a small city on Oahu Island and may have killed 10,000 people but no one is admitting anything because those in charge were mostly at fault and the exact same is true for Paradise, CA.
An old and inadequate dam broke above Derna, Libya and the flood wiped out possibly 20,000 people and maybe more, they’re still counting.
The Paradise and Oahu fires were started by a poorly maintained power supply.
These human disasters will keep right on happening. They used to be much rarer. When the Hindenburg Zeppelin caught fire on landing in New Jersey in 1937, 36 people died and it made world headlines. Now, when an aircraft crashes and 250 people die, most of us don’t even notice. It takes a disaster on a massive scale like the Indonesian tsunami to get our attention.
When we build a dam directly above a flood plain with a city on it, a disaster will eventually happen because dams never outlast cities. When we build cities on beaches, tsunamis will happen and destroy them. When we allow electrical infrastructure to crumble in forests, it will set fire to the forests and if we build towns in those forests the towns will burn.
An accident is when a rock hurtles to Earth from outer space and causes damage. Two cars colliding isn’t an accident, nor a dam breaking, or a tsunami wiping out sea-level villages. Those are called Acts, of incompetence, laziness, greediness and stupidity.
Don’t build in forests, on flood plains, at sea level, on mountain sides and on earthquake faults and if you run out of safe places to build, stop having babies for awhile until you free up some room.