At first I dismissed it as typical hype, and worse, another example of a vexing condition from which we suffer. But first let me tell what prompted it all.
The New Day, or El Nuevo Día, as everybody else calls it, is the island’s largest newspaper. And today, it took the sensible step of telling us all how to cope in the event of nuclear fallout or rain.
Well, I remember the t-shirt from the sixties, which had more succinct and trenchant instructions. “Close all windows,” the t-shirt counseled, “sit in the middle of the room, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.”
Well, the New Day acted more professionally, today; they gave several intelligent pieces of advice. We should all have an emergency plan, including a meeting point in the event that a disaster happens when we are not at home. We’re supposed to have cash on hand, food for at least a week, water, extra medicines, insurance policies and identification documents. Then, we maintain ourselves informed—sorry, these Latin constructions are creeping in to my English—as well, of course, as tranquil (¿bíjte?).
Now then, in the event of an evacuation, we should have sleeping bags—time to run out to Wal-Mart—and also cages or carrying cases for all animals. Oh, and remember, you’ll need to check out whether the shelter will accept animals.
This is, you understand, just slightly surreal. We have four cats, one of whom is virtually impossible to put in a cage. And don’t even think about putting more than one cat per cage. So am I really supposed to go and buy two sleeping bags (in Puerto Rico? It’s early April and the temperature is already in the high 80’s) and three more cat carrying cases?
Somehow, it reminded me of Jack, my father, who got it into his head in the early ‘60’s that nuclear attack was imminent, and so he had to be prepared. Which meant that he got up one Saturday morning, headed down to the basement, and began beating the hell out of one of the walls with a pick ax. Then came the backhoe, and in a month’s time we had our bunker—a room about ten feet by twenty feet, with two single beds. Since there were five of us at the time, it wasn’t exactly certain how this arrangement would work—would we sleep in shifts?
Another problem, which Johnny—of course it would be he—pointed out, was that it wasn’t much of a secret around the neighborhood what we were up to; nobody could really believe that the backhoe was there for the garden, could they? So what to do about the neighbors, their children in their arms, who come running to our house when the A bomb hits? Would we let the Goodriches in, but not the Baumans?
And what was the point, asked Johnny, of the little stove pipe in the corner of the shelter that communicated with the outside? Was Jack really going to open that up, all the better to breathe in radiation-laden air?
Jack covered the pipe with a piece of plywood the next day.
So now the New Day has fulfilled its mission—in the event that a madman in North Korea decides to unload a missile on South Korea or Guam we readers are informed and ready to take necessary procedures to safeguard life and property. Oh, and fear not, because in the event of an disaster, the government—which barely works in normal times—will activate the emergency management team, and everything will be well under control. Wow!
The New Day did point out a few more things. Yes, it’s unlikely that North Korea will do a direct strike on the financial district of San Juan. But if it zaps South Korea, it may well contaminate the entire region, and guess what? We get a lot of our food from there.
Then there’s the little problem of radiation in seawater. In fact, a month ago fishermen off the coast of California pulled up a tuna contaminated with radiation. One wonders—how did they know? Are Geiger counters standard equipment on fishing boats nowadays? Or was the tuna merely glowing?
Oh, and the BBC reported that the Japanese nuclear reactor, Fukushima (always loved that name), had reported a leak yesterday. Well, that seemed sufficiently important to check out, and I’m happy to say it’s not true. In fact, Fukushima may have had THREE leaks since Saturday. And here’s what one writer for the BBC said, after touring the plant last March:
The scale of their task is daunting, and it will decades before anyone can truly say the Fukushima disaster is over, and the threat from the plant contained.
There is still a reactor—Number Three—that is so highly radioactive that no one can go into it. So how are they getting the rods out? By using remotely controlled cranes. Another reactor—Number Four—still has 1500 spent fuel rods, and the building may collapse if there’s another earthquake. And there are thousands of tons of highly contaminated water sitting in tanks that now, apparently, are leaking.
“Puerto Rico is an island surrounded by mirrors,” goes an old saying, “and when on occasion we look out to see the world, we can only see ourselves.” That’s what occurred to me this morning—a crisis is imminent a world away, and The New Day was worried about how it might affect us. In fact, it’s not improbable that the crisis happened two years ago in Japan, and anything North Korea does will only make it infinitely, infinitely worse.
