324 Big pictures
Much of the debris from the exploded power plant was buried nearby, especially
in a floodplain where groundwater is now contaminated. Strontium, cesium,
and heavy plutonium fell on agricultural land. Radioactive soil later blew over
extensive areas including Kiev, where radioactivity threatens children, adults,
and wildlife (Henry A. Nix and David Hulse, personal communications). Cher-
nobyl is humanity’s most indelible big stain on Earth -- a 25 000 year legacy.Bombing
Bombs dropped from aircraft have been used to destroy major portions
of cities, such as London in 1942, Cologne (Germany) in 1942, and Hanoi in
the1960s. Resulting fires caused considerable damage as well. Atomic bombs
destroyed much ofHiroshima and Nagasaki(Japan) in 1945, and residual radiation
caused illness and death for decades thereafter. The 2001 destruction of the
World Trade Center by plane crashes killed about 3000 people at one spot in
NewYork, yet the resulting clouds of pollutants spread widely causing illness
and temporary physical damage across the city.Disease outbreak
The fourteenth century Black Death or Plague spread rapidly through
Medieval Europe, often cutting a city’s population by a third or half. Rats and
fleas and people were packed together in walled cities so transmission of the
bacterial disease was rapid. The 1917--18 influenza virus pandemic killed millions
in cities worldwide. With half the world’s population urban today, and perhaps
three-quarters a generation from now, disease outbreaks that easily outrace med-
ical research may be disasters just ahead.What can be done in urban regions in the face of the ‘‘ten bad ones”? First,
try drawing a large donut on a piece of paper, with one edge of the donut
somewhat flattened, and a line perpendicular to the flattened edge that cuts the
donut in half (Chapter11). The donut’s hole represents a metropolitan area, the
yummy part is the urban-region ring, the flattened side a seacoast, and the line
amajorriverbisecting the metro area. Now draw arrows for themajor directional
flows:prevailing entering wind; river water entering from higher land; tsunami
from the sea; hurricane/cyclone; water pushed upriver by the hurricane; and
any others. The goal is to identify and map the areas in the urban region that
are particularly susceptible to disasters, and areas that are not. For example,
radiation release on the upwind side of the donut’s hole spreads over the city,
whereas air pollution from an industry on the downwind side is less likely a
problem. Perhaps place red checkers or marks on the areas most susceptible to
disasters, and black checkers on the best places for locating key structures. In
effect, directional flows across the urban region are a key to hazard reduction.