Showing posts with label disaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disaster. Show all posts
What it was really like in that Chilean mine.
Surprisingly different from what I'd pictured:
ADDED: I've seen some people defending Chris Matthews. First, they ignore the part where he predicts the miners would just start killing each other. Then, they assert with smug confidence that the government saved the miners. They are wrong: The rescue took place the way it did because of the Center Rock drill bit — "a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit."
The men... were not confined to the “rescue chamber,” the size of a Manhattan studio apartment...Meanwhile, Chris Matthews is an idiot:
“They had the run of the mine,” said Jeffery H. Kravitz, acting director for technical support at the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. With half a mile of tunnels open, he said, “they had places to exercise and to use for waste.” One miner ran several miles a day.
“They even had a sort of waterfall they could take a shower under,” Mr. Kravitz said. “They requested shampoo, and shaved for their families.”
Also, fresh air was pumped in, so asphyxiation was never a danger.... The air was nearly 90 degrees and humid, but it contained about 20 percent oxygen, like outside air. The men dug three wells, and had potable water....
Eventually, all sorts of comfort goods were going down three narrow tubes: dismantled camp beds, clean clothes, letters, movies, dominoes, tiny Bibles, toothbrushes, skin creams. The smokers were first allowed only gum and nicotine patches, but doctors eventually relented and let 40 cigarettes a day go down.
The tubes also accommodated fiber optic cables and, by the end, each miner was getting a daily video consultation with a doctor. They also had jobs to do, including reinforcing walls and clearing debris from the rescue drills.
If the trapped Chilean miners had subscribed to the tea party’s “every-man-for-himself” philosophy, “they would have been killing each other after about two days,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on his “Hardball” show Wednesday night....What that shows is that Matthews — in stereotypical liberal fashion — has forgotten the way private individuals cooperate and help each other. The government and only the government must be the source of all beneficence. If you don't want the government to solve all your problems, you must think you and everyone else can be 100% self-reliant.
"You know these people, if they were every man for himself down in that mine, they wouldn't have gotten out.... They would have been killing each other after about two days.”
ADDED: I've seen some people defending Chris Matthews. First, they ignore the part where he predicts the miners would just start killing each other. Then, they assert with smug confidence that the government saved the miners. They are wrong: The rescue took place the way it did because of the Center Rock drill bit — "a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit."
The 33 Chilean miners, who know they will be trapped below ground for months, display their living conditions to the world...
... and sing the national anthem to express their appreciation that people have the courage to go to all the trouble of rescuing them.
Think of all the miners in the past who have been trapped and were not rescued. Imagine knowing even one human being was buried alive and not making the effort — whatever the expense — to get them out.
ADDED:
Think of all the miners in the past who have been trapped and were not rescued. Imagine knowing even one human being was buried alive and not making the effort — whatever the expense — to get them out.
ADDED:
"This is our casino," the miner says at one point, showing a table where the miners, he says, had made some makeshift dominoes.It is the best thing to do, under the circumstances. In the above-ground world casinos are deliberately constructed without windows.
33 men, trapped 2300 feet underground, must wait 4 months for rescue.
A mine in Chile. For 17 days, there was no contact with the men. Now, there is communication — such as the note from the miners: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter." There is hope and jubilation and food and water.
Think what it must be like to be trapped in a group that size, for that long. What do you think they are doing, with all that time? I assume that, since they were miners, they have mental resources for dealing with the fears of confinement and danger that far exceed ours, so maybe it is a bit presumptuous to try to put ourselves in their place, but let's try. I think I would devote myself, above all, to preserving a calm attitude for everyone. You couldn't have any fighting or craziness.
Then, what would you do about the boredom? You would talk, but perhaps you'd get sick of the men who talk too much, and you can't have talk that is upsetting or arguments about what's okay to talk about and what isn't. There would be much prayer, maybe too much for some people. But there are 33 of you, you'd break into small groups or pairs. Some would be religious, others would play games or tell stories. Some would keep to themselves. Would you make sure that no one was despairing or lonely?
There are some ways in which the terrible limitations would intensify the richness of life. And, upon rescue, the true richness of ordinary life will be brilliantly obvious to them. The love, the light, the air — why do we not see that overwhelming beauty all the time?
"It will take months to get them out," [said Chilean President Sebastian Pinera]. "They'll come out thin and dirty, but whole and strong."It's hard to begin to imagine the emotions of the men and the people above ground who love them. First, the shock of the cave-in, with the uncertainty — both underground and above — about survival. Then the 17-day wait, with hope and suffering changing all the time. Then, the immense joy of contact, the families above ground all learning their men are alive and well and the men knowing their loved ones know they haven't died. All the basics of getting food and water. The comfort of notes back and forth. The window to the outside world that is the camera. What a relief to know that rescue is coming. But the wait is so long.
Mr Pinera also saw images of the miners taken by a camera that was lowered down the borehole....
"Many of them approached the camera and put their faces right up against it, like children, and we could see happiness and hope in their eyes," Mr Pinera said.
Think what it must be like to be trapped in a group that size, for that long. What do you think they are doing, with all that time? I assume that, since they were miners, they have mental resources for dealing with the fears of confinement and danger that far exceed ours, so maybe it is a bit presumptuous to try to put ourselves in their place, but let's try. I think I would devote myself, above all, to preserving a calm attitude for everyone. You couldn't have any fighting or craziness.
Then, what would you do about the boredom? You would talk, but perhaps you'd get sick of the men who talk too much, and you can't have talk that is upsetting or arguments about what's okay to talk about and what isn't. There would be much prayer, maybe too much for some people. But there are 33 of you, you'd break into small groups or pairs. Some would be religious, others would play games or tell stories. Some would keep to themselves. Would you make sure that no one was despairing or lonely?
There are some ways in which the terrible limitations would intensify the richness of life. And, upon rescue, the true richness of ordinary life will be brilliantly obvious to them. The love, the light, the air — why do we not see that overwhelming beauty all the time?
"Marooned flood victims looking to escape grab the side bars of a hovering Army helicopter..."
A harrowing photograph.
ADDED: The link goes to the first picture in a slide show of the week's photographs. Check out #20 too. Rihanna strikes a pose.
ADDED: The link goes to the first picture in a slide show of the week's photographs. Check out #20 too. Rihanna strikes a pose.
"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected..."
Oh, no!
The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone... [The] few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf....Storms also helped, along with evaporation.
The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil.
Oh, no! Ron Johnson wants to move the BP oil spill to Lake Michigan!
The graphic in this new Russ Feingold ad had us guffawing.
Deep...
... seep.
(This post stirs memories of The Me Blog?)
ADDED: I've screwed up the first link twice. Insert joke about being like BP.
***
(This post stirs memories of The Me Blog?)
ADDED: I've screwed up the first link twice. Insert joke about being like BP.
"If you are trapped under wreckage..."
"... tap on something hard to attract attention."
Just an image I ran across Googling "Conelrad." Who among you remembers Conelrad? I only got to thinking about it because "Talkin' World War III Blues" attracted my attention:
Well, I remember seein’ some adWhy did Bob Dylan's record player work when the radio didn't? You'd be more likely to have a battery-operated radio than a battery-operated record player. But you probably don't even have a record player anymore, do you? And I don't think your radio has the Conelrad symbol on it. Do you even remember what the symbol looks like? I don't. Some triangle? That's what I wanted to see when I got distracted by that poor trapped woman, who was not so unfortunate that she didn't have a stiletto shoe to use to tap out her distress.
So I turned on my Conelrad
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill
So the radio didn’t work so well
Turned on my record player—
It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa
Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”
What took me back to the old Dylan song? I wasn't worrying about World War III. (I have a book in the house — it was given to me — called "World War IV" and one of my sons, puzzled, said "When did we have World War III?") I wasn't worrying about that, I was selecting the ideal pronunciation of the word "paw" (or "pa") to explain how to pronounce the name "Pawlenty" so it didn't confuse me by sounding like "polenta." Now, Tim Pawlenty, like Bob Dylan, is a Minnesotan. We were talking about him, because he's in a bit of a dispute with Mitch Daniels — who, unlike Bob Dylan, is a Hoosier (like my interlocutor in this conversation I'm alluding too). I need to do a separate post on the Pawlenty/Daniels dust-up, though, because in this post, I'm trapped under wreckage.
Are we keeping a constant eye on the BP oil leak?
I don't normally watch the news on TV, but today, we were sitting at the bar and eating cheeseburgers for lunch at The Old Fashioned and there was a big HDTV right in front of us. CNN. Sound off. Closed captioning on. Virtually the entire time, the screen was taken up with that live video feed from bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Oil endlessly spewing. High definition TV, and the very low definition bottom-of-the-sea cam. Okay, already. I get it.
When you're on line, you set your own speed. By comparison, news TV is ridiculous. Are there people monitoring the oil leak all day, day after day, for 45 days? Of course, the leak is a huge problem, but it's not as if you're learning anything more by keeping an eye on it.
The more you watch, the more you start to feel that it's a vision of everything going wrong everywhere. I'm a little worried that this is the mental image of the Obama administration millions of people are going to have. Pollution, waste, corruption... despair!
When you're on line, you set your own speed. By comparison, news TV is ridiculous. Are there people monitoring the oil leak all day, day after day, for 45 days? Of course, the leak is a huge problem, but it's not as if you're learning anything more by keeping an eye on it.
The more you watch, the more you start to feel that it's a vision of everything going wrong everywhere. I'm a little worried that this is the mental image of the Obama administration millions of people are going to have. Pollution, waste, corruption... despair!
"Couple of weeks ago, the President, our President said, 'It turns out the oil rigs today generally don't cause oil spills. They are technologically very advanced.'"
"Now if, if I was quoting George Bush, this crowd would be laughing in hysterics.... So, why isn't Barack Obama getting more shit for this? I think he should."
That's Bill Maher.
That's Bill Maher.
"It may have looked like no one was counting, but someone was supposed to."
Suddenly, Haiti is saying that it has collected and buried 150,000 bodies. How many remain in the rubble? Are any still alive? Consider that the internation rescue effort has extracted only 132 live human beings from the wreckage.
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