Thursday, May 26, 2011

This is somewhat a similar scenario to Japan's nuclear disaster, but, this time with an F5 tornado.

The back up generator to St. John's Hospital was removed from it's location when the tornado struck the hospital and patients died from that cause alone.

In many instances, events such as these cause government and private institutions a pause to ask the question 'Are we safe enough to withstand...?".

That is a good question and should be asked especially with 'aging infrastructure.'  This was no one's fault.  It was a tragedy of every dimension, but, it was no one's fault in planning for every possible utility failure.  When the back up generator was installed I am quite confident it was more than sufficient to supply the hospital SHOULD THE ELECTRICITY FAIL FROM A TORNADO.  No one ever thought for one minute this hospital was going to be asked to withstand a tornado over a half mile wide with winds over 200 mph.  That dynamic was never planned for and I am not sure it can be.  These building were never asked to withstand a Climate Crisis.

...St. John's Regional Medical Center's backup generator was sucked out of the building by the twister's 200 mph winds, leaving the hospital without power while workers scrambled to evacuate 183 patients to neighboring hospital facilities, which they did within 90 minutes.

Though St. John's emergency preparedness plan was able to protect the vast majority of patients and hospital workers, their critical loss of power raises questions for other medical facilities in Tornado Alley....

One way to avoid these disasters is to recognize there are limits to the degree Earth can produce damaging events and call in scientists to construction plans to explain the degree at which materials (tensil strength and design) are stressed during these events.  Engineers plans  for what government demands of them to plan for, including housing units.  If engineers and designers were required to examine the dynamics of Earth Produced Damage at the extremes they would comply and write important plans for such disasters.