Rick Stonell: on Disaster Preparedness

The good news is that the damage caused by floods in the MidWest is being dealt with - although it may take years for a full recovery.

But what’s the next disaster that might threaten a US city? Rick Stonell predicts a problem in July. This is the time that Air Conditioning saves lives. For ecxample, in 1995 Chicago, there were 500 fatalities caused by a heat wave

The city set new records for energy use, which then led to the failure of some power grids: 49,000 households were without electricity at one point. Many people went to the city’s beaches, but others vandalized the fire hydrants. More than 3,000 hydrants around Chicago were opened, causing some neighborhoods to lose water pressure on top of losing electricity.

The city’s roads warped in the heat - train tracks expanded beyond their engineering limits and buckled, causing long delays for commuters and freight. Some schoolkids in city buses became so dehydrated/nauseous that the Fire Department had to hose them down. Hundreds of people were hospitalized with heat-related illnesses - and this was not just the very young and the elderly (although they were most vulnerable)

On Friday, July 14, thousands of Chicagoans had developed severe heat-related illnesses. Ambulances couldn’t keep up with emergency calls; hospitals were unable to cope: 23 assumed “bypass status” and refused to accept new emergency patients. Some paramedics were forced to drive around the city, looking for an open hospital

As the price of fuel increases - and the nation’s infrastructure decays, this can happen again. Do you have a way of staying cool?

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