Hurricane Georges
Hurricane news: We’re fine… well if you count being without electricity and water for a week. It was just like camping. NOT!! Civilization doesn’t lend itself to camping very easily. What I wouldn’t have given for a tent, a campfire, and a hole in the ground (for you know what). Cities just weren’t made to be without water and electricity.
What can I say. It was very impressive. I’ve not seen anything like it in my life. Right now it looks like winter has struck this Caribbean paradise. What trees ARE left don’t have any leaves. Normally urban sprawl is just barely kept in check by the jungle seeking to reclaim the constructs of man. Now, I look out and it seems that humankind has won, our defenses have certainly proved themselves over natural selection.
It’s really sad, but all you see is concrete. "My God, is there really this much city?" Condado window has 43 cargo containers worth of glass on it’s way from New Jersey ready to install this coming week. Soon the skyscrapers will have their quick repairs, electricity will come back, and we will be on our feet completely by the end of the year, while the jungle will limp slowly back within years. That is if we don’t find something to do with the bare spots in the meantime. "Hey I never noticed that nice spot over there. Won’t that make a nice McDonalds."
In reality the humans here have lost very little. Perhaps we have had a bit of inconvenience. And maybe we will finally learn to put the electrical system underground, as the power poles took heavy a heavy toll. Then the next hurricane might just pass us by, and we won’t even notice it was here.
In truth, it threw everything it had at us, and we’re still here. I think there were only a couple of deaths (heart attacks I think). The important lesson here is that this horrendous force of nature was thrown at us almost as if to say, "Hey you!! Pay attention, I can still kick your ass, " and it almost got overlooked. What people really worried about was the rotting food in the fridge, the unflushed toilets, the unshowered bodies, and long lines at McDonalds (they had power generators).
While I’m glad we live in the twentieth century and the loss of life wasn’t worse, and most people can weather an event like this pretty well, I just wonder if we’re missing something. Is the abstraction almost complete now. Will the bubble of urban life sustain us so completely and exclusively that we’ll lose all connection… and just float away.
I know this is a weird way to portray a hurricane, but I can’t help but feel like it’s all in slow motion, no big deal, just going on outside the bubble. It’s all so surreal.
But not to worry, today the electricity and water came back on. Looks like we’ll have air conditioning tonight.