The American spirit of community becomes very evident when a local disaster becomes a national relief effort. The circle of damage may be relatively small like a flooded street, or a Hurricane Sandy that ravaged almost the entire east coast. The response of help from businesses and individuals draws from all communities from east to west north to south. Caution is quickly thrown aside by the empathy of helping fellow countrymen in trouble. [Read more…]
Extreme Weather, Natural Disasters Can Hinder Medical Assistance
Scenes from Boston in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
When storms hit a populated area, like Hurricane Sandy did in late 2012, we usually think of devastation like what’s pictured above. We can imagine that it’s hard for emergency vehicles to get through, and that there’s chaos at hospitals across the affected areas.
But did you ever stop to think about how flooding and/or fire can affect the actual tools of the medical industry? Think of how many sterilized products go into just a simple, routine blood test, or even a throat swab. Now think about how you would perform these procedures when you’re entire storage facility has been flooded with rank stormwater, causing all of your hypodermic needles, gauze and other implements to be completely useless. [Read more…]
Sandy Survivors Still Victims…to Mold
Mold on the abandoned house on Staten Island, NY.
Here in California, Hurricane Sandy is but a distant, pre-election, pre-2013 blip on the weather map. But to most of the people on the Eastern Seaboard, the after effects of Hurricane Sandy are still felt on a daily basis.
Take Pat Scala of New Dorp Beach in Staten Island, New York. She’s not so concerned about her own home, but more about the two abandoned houses next door. You’d think the dead animals would bother her—and they do—but what scares her more is the mold growing on the inside and outside of the houses. [Read more…]
Preventing Flooding in Your Home This Winter: 4 Tips from PDR
It was difficult for us in Southern California to understand the devastation left behind on the East Coast by Hurricane Sandy, especially as the Inland Empire’s residents were enjoying record temperatures in October and November. We actually went out to New Jersey to help, and it was no joke—the Eastern Seaboard got hit hard.
But just think back to two Decembers ago, when downtown Laguna Beach was under four feet of water right before the Christmas holiday. Although not as bad as a hurricane by any means, that storm devastated south Orange County, and had people being rescued from their roofs, homes were destroyed and old-growth trees uprooted. Then there were the windstorms last year at this time that were sweeping the Southland, causing millions in damages to homes, businesses and cities. [Read more…]