Limelight: When nature roars By Lubna Abdel-Aziz What is Mother Nature up to? Why is she unleashing such rage and wrath against us poor mortals of planet earth? Without warning, rhyme or reason our Mother marches up and down our globe mercilessly ranting and raving, dispatching her messengers and envoys to wreak havoc and despair among us, leaving us writhing and reeling from her blows. What have we done now to deserve such scathing punishment? Our early ancestors offered penance and sacrifice to appease her fire and fury. How can we make amends? Earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, fires and storms strike again and again leaving death and destruction in their path. Even on the great and prosperous American continent, with all her sophisticated meteorologists, climatologists, and technologists, satellites and computers, Nature is forever dealing her calamitous blows, devouring homes, businesses, crops and lives as they watch helplessly. On their East coast lies the state of Florida, where every American dreams of spending his/her last days on earth. So rich in beauty and bounty, so mild in climate and temperament, its swaying palm trees and warm ocean breezes have earned it the nickname "The Sunshine State". But is it? In the last four weeks, three back to back hurricanes have hit the state "spreading ruin and scattering ban", costing over $15 billion. Hurricanes are nothing new to Florida lying along their path across the Atlantic Ocean. It expects their visits every summer and fall from June till November, some minor, others major as in 1926, 1928, 1941, 1964, 1992, but three within a span of four weeks is unprecedented. First came Charley showing off his might; on his tail came sister Frances, no sissy was she; and now Ivan, the sixth strongest ever to hit the Atlantic proving he is truly the "terrible" one killing 68 on his way to the Yucatak Peninsula, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, even Texas. Caribbean islands near Florida also fall prey. Granada has been wiped out, the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Cayman Islands and Cuba have all been hit. The birth place of hurricanes is in the tropics, areas where the ocean temperatures reach 26 Centigrade degrees during summer and fall. The name is derived from the "Taino" word Hurricane, meaning evil spirit. Caribbean's call it "god of all evils", and when he comes Caribbean's hide. Way on the other side, West of the continent is the biggest, richest, most populous state in the Union. Its warm dry climate lasts all year. First in agriculture, timber, minerals, as well as almost everything else, California also has a break in the earth which extends from North to South -- it is called the San Andreas Fault. Movement of the earth's crust along this fault causes earthquakes. When a monster called El Niño (a disruption in the atmospheric system in the tropical Pacific) comes a-visiting he brings chaos and ruin to the Golden State. When El Niño is busy elsewhere, Nature hurries to dispatch her wildest fires to burn up her national forests and parklands, not to mention multi-million dollar mansions , businesses, valuable property. Northern California is the home of the great wine industry at Sonoma Valley. Thousands of acres at Sonoma are burning as you read these lines, and the "terminator" himself Governor Schwarzenegger is unable to terminate them. Between Florida and California lie the Mideast and Midwest, often flattened by floods, tornadoes, blizzards, hailstorms, twisters and volcanic eruptions. Nature blessed the continent with incredible bounty and beauty, but to whom she gives much, much is also taken, making it hard to determine whether "she is a kind mother or a merciless stepmother." Across the Pacific from the California coast, Japan has been struck both by typhoons and earthquakes. At least 22 people have been killed in southern Japan, leaving millions without electricity and 60,000 homeless. Typhoons and hurricanes are one and the same, they are tropical cyclones called hurricanes on the Atlantic and typhoons on the Pacific. Only on the Indian ocean are cyclones called by their own name. Typhoon Songda, the strongest since 1937, was the seventh typhoon to land in Japan in 2004, a record number in a calendar year. Buildings collapsed, factories closed down, ships sank, sailors drowned, flights were cancelled, trains halted, schools closed. Typhoons are among Nature's mighty ambassadors, but there are others. Western Japan has been struck by five earthquakes in two days killing 38 people. Another major earthquake could devastate the Tokai region around Mount Fuji. In Russia the Karmyska volcanoes on Kamshatka unexpectedly discharged ashes to the altitude of four kilometres above sea level. About 200 earthquakes were registered in the area in one single day. Nature does not sleep. Earthquakes occur somewhere on earth every 30 seconds. In China floods unleashed by torrential rains have killed at least 114 people and left dozens missing in the Southwest. In Szechwan 81 people were confirmed dead, 42 missing, and five days of continual landslides and floods have caused great damage to hundreds of thousands; more than 3,000 people are left homeless, 87,000 still trapped by high waters, and 100,000 left without drinking water. Each year the amount of rainfall increases; each year Nature astounds and bewilders. Those loud emissaries sent to right the wrong, or wrong the right, are vexed and irritable, loud and noisy, wrathful and irascible; but Nature is served by others. They are her silent ambassadors, quiet and orderly, deaf and dumb and their toll on human life is the saddest. They are called droughts, famines, pestilence and plagues, and are far more deadly than their noisy cousins. Droughts are unusual periods of dryness, damaging food crops causing starvation, disease and death. Two decades ago in East Africa, droughts killed 10 million people. The "Great Potato Famine" of Ireland (1845-9), was the result of a fungus that destroyed the potato crop, mainstay of the Irish diet, killing 1.5 million people, and moving millions more to the New World. Pestilence is an even greater killer; some can escape the famine but once struck with her deadly disease there is no escape. The "Bubonic Plague", or "Black Death" spread throughout Europe, transmitted by fleas from old English black rats, producing black blotches on the victims' bodies. The plague killed 90 per cent of those exposed and appeared in the sixth, fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Total deaths reached 137 million, the worst epidemic of all time. You would assume that Nature could not top that, but Nature could and did. Following WWI (1918 --19) a benign virus called Influenza broke out in the US and spread to Europe. With no antibiotics, pneumonia was the outcome resulting in the highest number of deaths, 20 million within a year. During the last century 30 major natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, famines, volcano eruptions, etc, killed more than 62 million people. This does not include man-made disasters caused by wars, plane crashes, nuclear explosions, gas leaks, sunk ships, and various other explosions and acts of terrorism. The new century is off to a roaring start. Disasters are great subjects for the big screen. Apart from their imaginary futuristic scenarios of asteroids hitting earth ( Deep Impact, 1998), and aliens invading earth ( Independence Day, 1996), filmmakers have adopted Nature's disasters, such as volcanoes ( Dante's Peak, 1997 , Volcano, 1997), Hurricane (1937), Earthquake (1974) , Twister (1996) , and The Perfect Storm (2000), a near-perfect film by Wolfgang Petersen. Based on the true story of 1991's notorious "Storm of the Century", it launched the career of a perfect super star, George Clooney. Is Nature satisfied with her punishment of Earth's mortal fools? Has their advanced science been able to check, stop or prevent her from her journey of death and destruction? Not quite! We can measure and weigh, describe and analyse, but the art of prevention cannot yet be applied to Mother Nature. From her we have perfected only the art of destroying each other, but never her. "Diseased Nature often time breaks forth in strange symptoms." Now she has come up with her Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) a mass murderer for decades, but only identified in 1981, spreading rapidly from Africa to Asia, Europe, and America, killing approximately 250,000 a year. We have much to learn, much to do -- for Nature teaches as well as she preaches -- but her tricks are many, her power unmatched and when angered, her scorn is mighty. Is she really our mother, or: To man the earth seems altogether No more a mother, but a stepdame rather -- Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544 -- 1590)
