Natural Disasters--From a Geologist's View

A golden rule of science: Science isn't malicious.
There is no intent or agendas among rocks, there are simply processes that forces compel them to undergo.

Likewise, neither does weather.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, wild fires, floods, rock falls, volcanic eruptions, sink holes, mud flows, tornadoes, tsunami, climate change, etc. are all natural and largely unpredictable phenomena. We've gotten better about predicting or forecasting them, but we've largely been stuck simply /detecting/ them.
As for stopping them or preventing them? Not so much!
We can mitigate, and I believe we should, we should bolt rocks when we make horrendously sharp vertical road cuts, we should net loose unconsolidated stone on hillsides next to homes, we should plant low lying grasses and ground cover on hills of mud to stabilize them, we should work on early warning programs for volcanoes, tsunami, storms, and floods, we should study wild fires and try to find the proper balance between 'conservation' and overgrowth that ensures a fire won't be local but catastrophic.

Here's what we shouldn't do--

Attempt to change the course of rives--an entity that by it's very nature will seek the path of least resistance, and that resistance varies over time

Blame climate change on people AND make any attempt to reverse it. Cut your pollutants sure, but stop focusing on CO2 and start taking a look at methane (something rice patties produce in over abundance! take that you veggie slayers)


Build on barrier islands (especially) or beaches--it's just dumb. Like rivers, beaches and barriers islands move and changed based on the PHYSICS OF THE OCEAN/SEA/LAKE.
When you build on a barrier island or beach you are building on SAND. Remember that story from the Bible? Anyone? Anyone at all? Come on I'm not even Christian and I know that one! Build on ROCK people. And when a hurricane comes and you leave your house on the beach don't be surprised if you come back and find that suddenly you are the proud owner of not beach front property, but ocean property.

This brings me to my largest beef this weekend: Galveston.

Now, disclaimer: I don't want to see anyone get hurt. I don't want people to lose their sentimental possessions, but part of me does want them to realize that they shouldn't be living on a sandbar, a sandbar that is largely (now) man made.

What do I mean? You know the seawall? It's there to hold the island together because it IS just one big pile of sand. They come and dump new sand at huge expense to the taxpayers and then within a WEEK (or in this case a weekend) it will be gone. Yesterday they dumped enough sand to make the 15ft seawall (normally about 10 feet of it is exposed) to leave only a couple feet exposed--all along the seawall. The tonnage of sand used is mind boggling, and it will all be gone come Monday.

After Ike passes over, people will go to their homes and collect on their insurance money. Then they will REBUILD right back on the same site and the next time a storm comes, they will do the same and play ignorant about it.


Barrier islands are neat to visit, they're some cool geology and oceanography taking place, but they're not places to /live/. They're called BARRIERS because they're supposed to protect the mainland from the brunt of storms (specifically storm surge). It's in the name! What about living on a barrier island sounds like a good proposition?


But if there is anything I've learned, it's that people will continue to do whatever it is they do as long as they feel that there will be someone to pull them out whether it's their insurance company or their government.
Unfortunately, when people get so complacent, they will make mistakes and lose their lives. See Katrina.
I love New Orleans, I think it's an amazing city, but I also realize that people are living in a bowl that was engineered by a haphazard conglomeration of trying to 'stabilize' the Mississippi and trying, ironically to keep the city above sea level (the irony stems from the fact that the Mississippi historically would provide the materials to replenish the land and build it up. when they build the levees they effectively halted any restoring material from flowing in. But every time you build a building or add weight or have a rain storm you either wash away sediment or you compact it and thus it subsides--lowering the level of the city even further). The tragedy of Katrina was the loss of life that never should have happened (at least not on the scale that it did, some people you just can't force to move). Proper planning, better maintenance, better care could all have reduced the number of people who died.
However--the property damage, people can blame all they want on the army corps of engineers but they need to look at themselves as well and realize where they were living. I applaud the people who made their exodus when Katrina came or at least when they moved back, built on higher ground. I applaud the people who learned a lesson from the storm.
I think it was a MISTAKE to try and rebuild portions of the city. I think it encourages a very very bad behavior.

One day it will be a lesson that Galveston will have to endure (perhaps this weekend, you never know) and decide if it's really worth it to rebuild on a pile of unstable, shifting (rightfully so) sand.


The most important lesson in geology: When people get hurt by the Earth, chances are they did something to put themselves in harms way.

Solution? Minimize your risk, don't up your insurance.