Emergency!

Having grown up in the midwest, knowing what to do during thunderstorms, tornadoes and the like is pretty much second nature. Meaning I tend to ignore them. Don't get me wrong, I don't like severe storms nor do I like tornadoes. And even more than that, I hate traveling in them. I've driven through some doozy storms before and was with my mom when we drove under a wall cloud (freaky and unsettling).

When you work in public service you have to know what to do when there is a weather emergency of some sort. When I was in library school the fire alarms went off in the library where I worked. Let me tell you, getting college kids to move during a fire alarm is next to impossible. I came close to yelling at one student to get their ass up off the chair and get the hell out right now. I didn't, but I did my best to imitate my mom's best Mom Voice.

At Ye Olde University we had a couple of tornado warnings where we had to round students up and move them to a different part of the library. At times I felt like a flight attendant--using my arms to direct students while saying, "Everyone move to the back of the building." I do have to say, though, my supervisor had the best line when trying to get students to move: "If you die I'm not picking up your body. Move."

The point to all this? Today I got the emergency procedures for the New University. There are lots of the same things I've seen on others--fire, accident, suspicious mail, etc. Two of them threw me for a second: earthquake and tsunami. I know I live in an earthquake zone and everyone pretends that they are no big deal. No big deal? People, the earth below you moves. It moves. That's scary. Tsunami? Even a bit freakier especially since I live right next to the water. (Although people tell me due to the various islands between us and the ocean, the tsunami threat is fairly low.) But the one that really made me stop?

Volcano.

During a volcano I should avoid flying debris, hot gases, and lava. How do you avoid ash? Stay indoors. Wear goggles. If you have to drive, drive no more than 35 MPH and be prepared to change oil and the various filters every 500-1000 miles in light dust (50-100 in a heavy dust). And, of course, protect dust-sensitive electronics.

Y'all, I live near an active volcano. People tell me it hasn't done anything in lord knows how long and that projections show that if it blows, it will blow away from town. But still....

What's even weirder? When it comes to emergencies, people around here completely lose their shit when there is lightning. Yet they are non-chelant about a damn volcano.