Human Resilience Vs Mother Nature

From time to time, mother nature has her own way of telling us that she is more powerful than us. But humans have our own way to respond back that we will bounce back and stand up. I witnessed a standing example of this tug-of-war this past week.

A couple of days back (09/22/2010), there was a severe thunder storm in Pittsburgh but lasted for just 30 mins. But 30 mins was all that our mother nature needed to leave behind 52000 homes without electricity. Many trees fell down and power lines were down. It took a couple of days to restore power.

Obviously in a country like US where electricity plays a major role in our day to day life, it was not so easy to cope with the situation where we did not have electricity for two days. We could not cook at home because the stove was electricity based. We could not walk out of our apartment to use the staircase to go in and out of the building because there is no alternative light source in the walkway even during the day… so it is pitch darkness…  If you dont have a flash light its a very tough situation (A moment that reminded me what a difficult life people who are blind actually lead.. It is really tough) So mother nature clearly told us that she is bigger than us and can simply put our normal life in jeopardy in no time.

But it was the human’s turn to respond back to mother nature politely that we have a strong will that can help us bounce back. One of my friends who lives in a different community which had power restored offered to help us – they were very magnanimous to accomodate our whole family till the power was restored in our apartment. Similarly people from different regions who had power offered to help other people who did not have electricity. Infact there were a group of families who got together, went and bought a camp stove (propane gas stove) and cooked for the whole group and spend a couple of days.

Be it hurricane devastation, volcanic erruption or power shut down or any other natural calamity, mother nature does tell us that she is more powerful. But humans do bounce back…