Thursday, January 24, 2008

Populists fight earthquake building codes

This is why it's tough to prepare for earthquakes. You get a populist politician making an irrelevant sound bite about California versus the East. "Doing something about earthquakes hurts business" they scream.

I'm sure you would get the same reaction in Toronto. Those wonderful people at Emergency Measures Ontario (maybe I'm getting paid by them one day!), are rather isolated, even if they did lift a finger (ooops!). In these days of government organization bosses getting the sack if they offend anybody, I don't think they can do anything anymore.

Admitting we have an earthquake problem isn't going to cost the earth, or drive away business. But nobody is willing to take the first step.

No comments: