The Great Gadfly

A Bridge Too Near

This will be just a quick jab at reality. The Memorial Day weekend experience with our new traffic configuration at the Sagamore Bridge proved interesting.  People seemed to find the new arrangement faster and easier as the visiting hoards drove onto the Cape from Thursday evening through Saturday morning. Of course, when most of them decided to leave on Monday (one day instead of three) the  predictable backup extended nearly to the Orleans rotary. Imagine that...a large portion of the world's population, or so it seemed,  trying to make speedy crossings on a two-lane bridge. Tens of thousands of cars versus a two-lane escape route. Even if  all four lanes of the bridge were used for leaving the Cape things would have been ugly.

My point is this: we have zero chance of evacuating the Cape if we ever have to...zero. Our regional planning agency has consumed available federal disater planning funds to tinker with seaside zoning, keeping all the money for themselves and sharing none of it with local public safety officials when asked to do so. Is it not time for us to plan how we can keep a few hundred thousand people (summer) or at least a little over 200,000 (winter) safe and secure someplace where they can find dry shelter, food and medical care if the worst ever happens? In 1635 a thirty-foot wave swept across the length of Buzzards Bay. We have no adequate shelters planned or available; no stocks of food, water and clothing; no bedding ; no plans for emergency power generation; nothing. Do you know where your nearest shelter would be if we had a Katrina-strength storm? A cloud of poison chemicals from an offshore maritime disaster? A total failure of our electric grid? (These always seem to coincide with awful weather and severe cold.) 

How silly of me...now we can get over the bridge a lot faster! Someone is asleep at the switch.

All for now, Gadfly...