Ready for the Big One?

Clallam Bay just opened up the back of the town to the next tsunami or typhoon, with nary a tree buffer in sight. Basically, they've recreated the conditions for the 1700 tsunami (recorded in Japanese records) that came down the Wyaatch river valley and hit Neah Bay from the back. There was nothing to stop it, or at least buffer the force.

Evidently some "American Logger" show is spreading their "forest science," which is basically 19th-century excuse-making. Helping wildlife, my ass. Look,  you can tell when a forestry "scientist" is lying - his mouth is open.

As for helping wildlife - somebody posted a picture of a pileated woodpecker in her feeder. That's right, this secretive deep-forest bird was driven out of its home and hungry enough to approach humans. A woman photographed one of these birds eating sunflower seeds out of her feeder. Another refugee, with nothing to eat and no home. 

Thanks to her for feeding it - but now how or where does it nest and find enough food for the family? These birds eat grubs and other insects in trees. It's eating sunflower seeds like your cat eats dry food pellets; because it can't get anything else. This reminds me of the scene in that movie with Peter O'Toole as the SS general, telling his men to carry food for the children of a bombed-out town. 

Anyway, I'm going to go cover the senior class tsunami drills Thursday - and I think I might hint that it may very well be a good idea to re-think putting the town refuge at the top of the hill south of town, in the expresso-stand parking log/storage. Not only would a tsunami meet no trees to take the brunt of the force - but it would be channeled right through that valley into town. It's going to be bigger and stronger and hit harder where it hits. And we won't even talk about the next typhoon winds through that valley; they'll deepen and speed up like the narrow mouth of a river. What goes around comes around.

Then again, everybody in America seems to have a death wish. I'm getting tired of eating popcorn, watching the rising weather smacking down all over the place. Oh, well. Bad DNA will just have to get cleaned out. It always does.

You heard it here, first.