Charles Wooley
Why do you think it is, that seemingly the most wretchedly disadvantaged people on earth are also those most frequently afflicted by catastrophes like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and cyclones?
“It’s God’s judgment on them for being heathens” a fundamentalist Christian, and a former mother-in-law of mine, once darkly pronounced. I was just back from covering the Haitian earthquake at the time, an experience so unsettling I had little that I could say to the misguided old zealot. Instead I just quietly inserted sharp pins into the voodoo doll I had brought home but with no effect. Had I told her what I was doing, the result might have been quite different, given her susceptibility to outlandish belief systems.
Nepal presents one of the earth’s cruelest ironies. It is unbelievably beautiful but inconceivably poverty-stricken. When I was last there, the World Health Organisation listed it as ‘one of the sickest countries in the world’ not just in terms of the diseases that well-heeled trekkers might pick up there, but more to the point, the untreated suffering and premature death endured by a majority of citizens. The Republic of Haiti should be a tropical island paradise, but it isn’t, for much the same reasons that Nepal isn’t Aspen or Courchevel. In a few words, grinding poverty and government so bad, that ‘bad’ isn’t a good enough word to describe it. We are indeed lucky here in Little Cuba that our governments never usually get much worse than a minor degree of bad. We are lucky too that our island remains, hopefully, as uneventful geologically as it is politically.
Seismologists tell me that Hobart’s main fault line lies not under the Town Hall as you might expect, but beneath the garbage tip at McRobies Gully (I am supposing that’s a world of difference?) I went to investigate the possible epicenter of our next earthquake at the Hobart tip this week. No one there seemed to know much about its quakiness, but I was greatly impressed by our new waste transfer system. I can remember when you brought home a greater weight of clay on your boots than the rubbish you had left behind. As a ratepayer, I was excited by the scrubbed concrete cleanliness of the modern, drive-in transfer station. I marveled at the huge improvements made with the small amount of money left over from the aldermen’s non-payment of parking fines and their expense account lunches. Yes, I was thrilled by the obvious progress, but thankfully, not so excited that I felt the earth move at McRobies Gully.
Carey argued that we were far from stable
In fact not many of us ever feel the earth move in Tasmania. It’s not that kind of place. Though historically we have been shaken. Here in River City we’ve only had a few infrequent minor quakes, most recently in 1946. But I do remember that a former Professor of Geology at the University of Tasmania, Sam Carey, was more than a bit Californian in his expectation of ‘The Big One’. At some expense, back in remote geological time, the Prof. had the University Geology Department housed in an earthquake-proof building. Carey argued that we were far from stable. Linking us with enormous regional seismic forces, such as the huge Pacific Tectonic plate pressing up against Australia, Sam reckoned in the geological scheme of things we were between a rock and a hard place and due for a good shake up.
Still waiting Sam. But I do accept your caution and have never lived too far from the safe haven of your Geology building.
We know now, of course, that it’s not the gods or karma or for that manner any punishable human vanities that cause earthquakes. Well, most people know that, with the exception of some American television evangelists and indeed an Iranian mullah who recently reckoned it was scantily dressed women who were responsible for this year’s quakes and tremors in his country.
‘It’s the Geology stupid!’
After I’ve finished laughing, all these silly people make me want to shout ‘It’s the Geology stupid!’
Actually I get the tremors every time I go to the Middle East but that’s just me. Let’s stick with the science. It’s what was once called Continental Drift Theory and now it is an accepted reality. I’m over-simplifying here for evangelists, mullahs and mothers-in-law, but the mighty continental plates of the earth float on a red-hot sea of lava and they push against each other, moving at about the same speed as your toenails grow, sometimes for millennia, until something has to give. Then with the force of a hundred Hiroshima atomic bombs, bang goes Nepal or Haiti, Los Angeles or McRobies Gully!
But it’s not personal folks. Those tectonic plates don’t even know we are here.
I’m a creature of science. I don’t have an argument with any of the various gods that humans choose to worship, about their appalling indifference, nor about why it is that the most wretched people are usually the worst afflicted when the earth dramatically moves. I think it’s simply a case of geological determinism. Nepal gets flattened every century, likewise Haiti. How can you ever build an economy and climb out of poverty when every generation or so you are reduced to rubble? Most people living on the fault lines of the earth are forever condemned to a grim cycle of poverty and destruction. Since we don’t accept seismological refugees the best we can do is contribute to the relief effort.
Meanwhile, closer to home, while you are dumping your discarded affluence at McRobies Gully this weekend, by all means enjoy the modern sanitized facility, but don’t forget that River City does have its faults and that some of them are right beneath your feet. So get in and out as quickly as you can.
First published in Mercury’s Tasweekend
• Isla MacGregor, in Comments: The earth might not have moved for you Charles at McRobies Gully tip but the tip site’s toxicity is certainly moving day by day into an increasingly poisoned Hobart Rivulet. New data has come out recently from Hobart City Council…..not that we have read anything in The Mercury about this!
• Chris Sharples, in Comments: Oh dear, I fear there’s quite a bit of faulty thinking around about geological faults (sorry couldn’t help myself…).
