Disaster meets History

Continuing with our following of the Calgary Floods, today we’re going to talk about ignoring the past.

Now, I’m really into history but I’ve gotta say, if people looked at history more closely and heeded it a bit better, a lot of modern disasters wouldn’t occur. Now, it’s easy to say. Unfortunately, a lot of historians are just academics and most people aren’t historians. Awkward, huh,

Apparently, where the floods occurred where generally flood plains, places where people knew the risks of flooding were greater. It’d happened in the past. Yet, for one reason or another, people ignore these warnings, say, ‘it wouldn’t happen to me’. Of course, all it does it turn into a game of Russian Roulette. And eventually somebody gets shot.

Now, it doesn’t always solve all the problems of the world, but do some research on what you’re heading into. It never hurts and, just possibly, you can see what didn’t work for somebody else in the past and change it so you don’t make a similar mistake.

After all, nothing’s more demeaning that getting screwed and then being told when you’re in hospital that you should’ve known because exactly the same thing happened thirty years earlier.

Talk to you next week,

Alex H.