By Richard Fernandez from PJ
Media
Pictures of Tacloban clearly show what
sustained 200 mph winds can do. It can toss shipping containers around like
matchboxes, flip cars, level cinder block houses and uproot any tree short of a
coconut palm. What it can’t do is knock down reinforced concrete structures or structures
that have a small sail area.
During the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, 42 buildings collapsed in Clark Air
Force Base. A nine year old girl was killed by a beam when the roof
fell through in gymnasium she was sheltering in. Roofs with a large area
can be vulnerable.
And if there’s any place on earth that disaster visits regularly,
it’s the Philippines. It has earthquakes (an intensity 8 hit the same region
the typhoon struck); volcanoes and 11 typhoons on average a year, not to mention
shipwrecks, insurgencies, terror attacks and assorted other nuisances. Any
improvement in civil defense technology would see a lot of use.
The Tacloban pictures suggest that a six foot deep foxhole would
have been a pretty good defense against the high winds precisely because flush
structures allow overpressures to pass over them. The difference of course, is
that typhoons threaten excavated protections with flooding. Digging
foxholes might save you from the winds only to drown you later.
Nevertheless, the similarity between the threats posed by high
winds and high explosive blasts suggests that emergency planners should revisit
the civil defense structures designed for the Second World War because the
designers faced problems similar to those posed by high winds.
One interesting but now forgotten British design resembled a
quonset hut built in
reinforced concrete. A closer look shows that the design consists
of prefabricated concrete sections that join up at
the top. The halves slot into a concrete channel which comprises
the base.
It is called the Stanton Shelter, after the Stanton Ironworks where it was manufactured.
“They could be built in any length but usually consisted of 18 precast concrete
arched-shaped units (each one in two parts), bolted together to form a standard
(after 1941) Air Ministry shelter for 50 men. The entrance can be a brick-lined
with concrete steps (where required) and the rear unit has an emergency escape
hatch. They are often above ground or semi-sunk but for concealment purposes
there is a layer of earth and turf.”
A battlefield archaeologist who actually went out and measured one
finds that
Floor to apex of the internal surface is 7 feet exactly. Width-7
foot 5½ inches. Made up from 18 sections bolted together, with an end cap and a
door end to form a length of 30 foot 4 inches. The door has an entry access of
75 inches with a door width of 22 inches.Doorway edge is thickened to four
inches to provide additional support. The two sections at the door end each
have half of the escape hatch formed within the top. the hatch dimensions are
31X31 inches with an internal dimension of 24½ inches. There is a half inch
wide internal lip to provide a seat for the escape hatch cover. A raising piece
sat on the hatch to bring the exit up by 14 inches to allow for the soil
covering. The actual thickness of each section is 2 inches. Each section has a
formed rib of 2 inches wide that make up a rib of 4 inches thick. These ribs
are bolted together every 22 inches. The outside top ridge is four inches high.
Construction
crews that dismantled a derelect Stanton and found it weighed 20 tons.
But in this age of cranes and backhoes that does not seem to be an
insurmountable problem.
The Stantons are an interesting example of forgotten technology
that may find uses today. In 1932 Stanley Baldwin said “the bomber will always
get through”. Maybe we no longer worry about bombers, but it is probably
still correct to say: the typhoon will always get through.
Having said that, one can turn to what constitutes the real civil
defense infrastructure of the Philippines. It is the social network a defense
mechanism that arose over the centuries in the face of constant threats;
poverty, civil unrest, volcanos, earthquakes, storms and the odd world war.
Giant volcanos, supertyphoons, earthquakes at 8 on the Richter
every decade or so have engendered a dense human framework that is almost
feudal. Each inhabitant has someone to run to in the social ladder above and
people who depend on him from below. And for redundancy the relationships form
a matrix. People have multiple family-type relationships, multiple sets of
friends and belong to bewilderment of informal groupings.
This crazy social fabric has actually been supercharged by the
Internet. Wikipedia says 83% of the Philippine population belongs
to one Internet social networking platform or the other. In addition to
“friends” you have “Facebook friends”.
A study released by Universal McCann entitled “Power To The People
– Wave3″ declared the Philippines as “the social networking capital of the
world,” with 83 percent of Filipinos surveyed are members of a social network.
They are also regarded as the top photo uploaders and web video viewers, while
they are second when it comes to the number of blog readers and video
uploaders.
There’s an apocryphal story told about a rescue team happening
upon the skeleton of a Filipino in front of a table laden with food. The corpse
apparently died of starvation to the bewilderment of the European rescuers. One
of the rescuers, a Filipino, explained what happened. “He died of starvation
because he had no friends to share the meal with and couldn’t eat from
loneliness.”
In comparison to Filipino social networks the equivalent
structures in many Western countries seem distinctly weak, as if a
tradeoff had been made betwen the physical infrastructure and the social; where
the poor live in housing projects far better than Filipino slums but where the
nuclear family has been driven to extinction and the only friend anyone has
left is their EBT card; where government is all the kin you have.
James Taranto described the ideal modern
vision of the ideal Western woman in his piece The Lonely Life of Julia.
“In Obama’s ideal world, men are replaced by bureaucrats.” ‘Julia’ is a
fictional character that was created by the Obama campaign to depict an ideal
life.
The most shocking bit of the Obama story is that Julia apparently
never marries. She simply “decides” to have a baby, and Obama uses other
people’s money to help her take care of it. … In due course she bears a son
named Zachary, the only other character in the tale.
But it’s a choice. Julia will do alright as long as the government
keeps paying out. But one wonders what happens if the music stops: should
Julia’s apartment get totaled by an earthquake or if there’s civil unrest or
she’s de-housed by a 200 mile an hour hurricane, then what? Social networks of
the old fashioned kind were once prevalent in America and in Europe. Maybe they
have their uses still, along with the Stanton shelters.
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