On Earthquakes and Buildings

On  Sunday, we were told a storm named Barbara was on its way  from Greece to Israel, and will hit us on Monday morning.   In the meantime, at middnight, a deadly earthquake occurred in Turkey and was felt in the whole region: Syria, Lebanon. Cyprus, Israel. 

On Monday, at about midday, a second quake struck. Thousands of casualties in Turkey and Syria. Countries are offering to send teams with humanitarian aid, but the wintry weather is not cooperating with the search and rescue efforts. Terrible  tragedy!

Turkey has had her share of earthquakes in the past, and has learned important lessons from them, yet every new quake is  surprising and devastating.

One thing is for sure, we israelis, are not prepared at all  should a major quake strike closer to us. There's a lot of talk about strenghtening existing buildings. Some of it has already been done here and there.  New buildings are checked, before approval,  for specially designed features that will make them earthquake proof  buildings. So they say. I don't know how seriously things are done, if at all.

There's ,of course, no complete immunity to these buildings, given the unpredictability of intensity and ocurrence of the earthquakes, but it's the best we can do to bring damage and loss of life to a bare minimum.

Anyway, things look quite scary.

The Syrian Saga

                                                         (web picture)

Syria is a small country which might, God forbid, become the cradle of a big disaster called World War 3.

Those who think, how noble on the part of Europe to open its gates to syrian refugees - think again. It would have been more noble if Europe had done something real to restore the order in Syria, and  thus prevent the flood of refugees which is bad for all parties: Europe feels 'invaded" by people of another religion and mentality, the syrian refugees , unrooted from their natural environment, are planted in places where they'll loose their identity and dignity, becoming second-hand citizens  for life.

Putin is trying now to do something about restoring that order. It's a bit late, but better late than never, as they say.  His chances to succeed , that's entirely another matter. He's not alone, the iranians are there too;  their main concern is to consolidate Assad's regime, and so, bring some kind of stability to the region where they also do have interests of their own.

It might work , if  the americans won't interfere. It is the americans who have started the whole  thing with the "arab spring' concept, and the naive demand for democracy to replace the heads of Mubarak, Khaddafi, Assad - the result being total chaos followed by the appearance in the area of the new, barbaric player called Daesh.

My guess is that Obama ,won't leave office in 2016 without  first bringing about an armed conflict with Russia , conflict which might eventually escalate into a world war. The clash has started with the sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine dispute, and is now going on with the russians' effort to save Assad which is not what the americans want.  I can only hope my guess turns out to be wrong. 

Anyway, as an  israeli, I don't trust any of the above (russians, americans, certainly not iranians)). We'll just have to wait and see how things evolve.