Tips for Earthquake Safety
A good friend sent this to me the other day. It appears to be sound advice. Please take heed.
1) Almost everyone who simply "Ducks and Covers" when buildings collapse ARE CRUSHED TO DEATH. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.
2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too, in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. That position helps you survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to the sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.
3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs. Concrete slab buildings are the most dangerous during an earthquake.
4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.
5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.
6) Almost everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse, is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed.
7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different moment of frequency (they swing separately from the main part of the building) The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fall are chopped up by the stair treads, horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.
8) Get near the outer walls of buildings or outside of them if possible, it is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.
9) People that get inside their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicle, which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake, all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and lying in the fetal position next to their vehicle. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.
10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.
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Please SPREAD THE WORD about the “triangle of life” to friends and families, it could save someone's life. With all the natural disasters going on in the world, every little bit can only help.
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Tennessee Granddaddy Says:
Almost everything can be recycled,
except time.
Life only once can we live it,
what a great solemn thought.
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Quote of the Day
In the spring I have counted one hundred and
thirty-six different kinds of weather
inside of four and twenty hours.
~Mark Twain
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Joke of the Day
A man wrote a letter to the IRS: “I have been unable to sleep knowing that I have cheated on my income tax. I understated my taxable income and have enclosed a check for $200.00. If I still can’t sleep, I will send the rest.”
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An old, stingy lawyer was dying and was determined to prove wrong the old saying; "You can't take it with you." He told his wife to go down to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two pillowcases.
His plan: Put the bags directly over his bed and when he died grab them on his way up to heaven.
One day the old ambulance chaser died. When his wife was up cleaning in the attic one day, she came across the forgotten pillowcases.
She then said to herself, “That old fool. I knew he should have had me put them in the basement!"
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