From Michael Brown’s Fear of Fire:
Hurricane Fran. Hurricane Charley (once projected to hit Tampa, but ending up at Punta Gorda). Hurricane Hugo. Even “Sandy” did not directly target New York. The list was a long one. In many cases, it was the ritzy side of town that came under most severe threat. Spectacular was how few were dying as yet in American disasters—too many, if it was a person in your family; too many, if even one—but greatly less than how many died in floods and monsoons and typhoons and quakes in India, Asian nations, and places like Haiti (where the voodoo had practically begged for it).
You knew God’s mercy was still functioning in many parts of the world and that there was still time—waning, but time—before a great and sudden step-up in events by the limited damage. Had anyone envisioned what it would have been like had “Katrina” swept slightly west and filled downtown New Orleans with twenty feet of water or a storm like it smashed through downtown Houston or Tampa?
The storms, the fires, the terrorism were still glancing blows. In India, they were used to monsoons that displaced millions.
One day, they would not be so glancing.
One day, death tolls would come more in line with what occurred in Haiti or the Philippines or China. Did we really reckon just how many massive cities were along vulnerable coasts or the “Ring of Fire” (which was showing signs of coming to life)? What would happen if New York or Miami or Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. were covered with water, or all of the above, all at once?
About three billion people—nearly half of the world’s population — lived within a hundred and twenty miles of an ocean.
One day, some region in America or Europe would find itself under water as Manila did in 2012, when eighty percent of this massive city was inundated. In the Philippines, that wasn’t an apocalypse: it meant folks wading through water that was ankle-deep. Meanwhile, during Hurricane Charley, a Catholic church in Punta Gorda was completely ruined but for the tabernacle next to which a candle somehow some way still flickered. “The church split apart and imploded,” said the pastor. “Pews riveted into the ground were ripped and tossed around like twigs.” (But not the light for the Blessed Sacrament.)
[resources: Fear of Fire]
