Vital lessons must be learned from the cataclysmic disaster in Asia

It is hard not to wonder, when you look at the horrific coverage of tsunamis wiping away ravaged towns in northeast Japan, what kind of perils Bermuda could face, how we would respond and if we could do anything but perish bravely.

How would we manage if our airport got swept away, if our docks were inaccessible or if our communications were cut off?

We have managed well in the wake of serious hurricanes but it was never more than a few days before our airport was running, ships were arriving and electricity was flowing.

How would we manage if the damage was worse and our isolation and discomfort lasted longer?

We live and build on the edge of a precipice. A few months ago, the media regularly had images of environmentalists and residents expressing alarm about development at the top of the South Shore cliffs in Warwick.

This is the site of the Grand Atlantic, where low-cost housing is being built and a luxury hotel is supposed to follow. The images showed David Wingate and others standing near the water at the bottom of a soft, crumbling 60ft cliff. The houses — hopefully well insured at someone else’s expense — are being built at the top.

Mr. Wingate explained that these cliffs are really dunes, loosely cemented together over 80,000 years.

So the houses are not built on rock, so much as on hardened sand.

This is a serious matter for the people who will settle in to low-cost housing at the top of the cliffs.

Hurricanes

It matters, too, that ocean levels today are rising and that hurricanes are getting more intense and frequent.

But it does not matter to Mother Nature. She does not care. She does what she does.

There is pretty persuasive evidence that we humans are not only getting in the way of nature’s outbursts but exacerbating them by contributing to global warming.

Lessons learned from the horrendous natural and man-made cataclysms in Japan are applicable here in Bermuda.

They include reminders to stay away from the edge of the cliffs, build our buildings small but strong and generally be modest in what we own, what we build and how much space we take up.

It makes sense to use as little electricity as possible, so we need as few electrical plants as possible.

Where we do need to generate electricity, the disasters in Japan should warn us to do it in ways that will cause little environmental damage if they get smashed to smithereens by earthquake, tsunami, fire or hurricane.

It is a tedious environmental message but a true one.

We often describe nature as being angry but she is what she is and what she has been since the beginning of time.

 If anybody needs to change their behaviour, it is us.