Our Year of Natural Disasters
This past year has seen the perfect storm of forest fires, floods and even a recent tornado off the coast of B.C. for the first time ever. A couple of days before the mass flooding event across the Fraser Valley damaged all our major highways beyond use, we also had a freighter ship tip its load into the Pacific near Victoria. British Columbians are starting to wonder what’s next. After Covid, the only thing left would seem to be locusts.
What have we learned from these events? Well, since our roadways have cut us off from the rest of Canada, we have felt isolated for the first time. Hoarding began again, as the shelves were quickly cleared of toilet paper and groceries in a general panic. Then we realized that with the American border re-opened, we could get food supplied from the States and everyone calmed down.
Meanwhile, the airlines have started price gouging travel between our provincial cities, knowing that people will pay double or triple the usual fare to see their relatives in the interior this holiday season. I know the airlines have suffered terribly through Covid, but now the average family is paying the penalty to try and make up their shortfall.
Fuel rationing was implemented because our pipeline from Alberta was also under water and therefore shut down. People were only allowed to fill thirty liters at a time for the past month. This has motivated me to want to replace my car with an electric vehicle even sooner than I had planned. I am jealous of my friend who can just plug in at home and off she goes.
Many Christmas items are in short supply, like wrapping paper and certain toys that were on that container ship. People are starting to improvise, and I will be using some grocery bags to wrap presents. There may be some difficult explanations coming into play for children who can’t get that particular toy they wanted, never mind the poor families whose homes are flooded and may be stuck in hotels or shelters for Christmas.
One woman at my weekly writers group said she thinks these natural disasters have brought out the worst in people, but I disagree. Especially in the small towns, we have seen on the news tremendous acts of heroism between neighbors, such as animal rescue, sandbagging teams, volunteers staffing temporary shelters and truck drivers delivering medicine to displaced seniors. Some of the local mayors on TV have been in tears because they care so much about their constituents.
So, we should all be grateful this Christmas for what we have, even if it’s less than usual. We can make do and improvise with different ingredients if there is a poultry shortage. At least we can invite someone over to share a meal now, whereas last year we couldn’t because of Covid. Let’s count our blessings and try to help others less fortunate.
