Ingineers Ramblings

Captain America over at First In posted about this today so I decided to make a posting of my own.
Should we help the Burmese people even if their government will not let us in?
We have 4 ships with dozens of helicopters sitting offshore of Burma. We could fly aid in and drop it to people without ever actually setting foot on the ground. I would bet if we did do that the govt. there would not challenge us. And we would be saving the lives of about 100,000 people. Pretty good reason to go in as far as I am concerned. Hell even the French want to go in by force to help people. That should say something. And if we were challenged militarily then use the same rules as Iraq. If they shoot first then we smoke them and keep handing out food. We dropped food under hostile fire in Bosnia. But we had a Democrat in the white house so it was OK.

On earthquake damage here compared to China.
In reality there is very little chance of being killed by one in the US. During the history of the US we have had very few deaths from earthquakes. It really is not something to be that concerned over unless you or a relative are one of the few that are killed in a quake. Even Japan had 8,000 deaths in the Kobe quake in the 90's and everyone said that they knew how to build things while slamming the US after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in the SF area and the 1992 Northridge in LA.

As for the difference between the US and third world countries on emergency response, this subject reminds me of the skyscraper fire they had in Sao Paulo Brazil several years ago. They had fire engines respond from all 85 of the city's fire stations, which sounds like a lot if you are from a small town like me. But consider that Sao Paulo is about the size of Chicago and Chicago has about 500 fire stations and you see the difference in response capability. And Brazil is a pretty industrialized country not a backward place like Burma or backwoods China.

Labels: Burma cyclone, Chinese earthquake