Who needs terrorists?

terrorism /0ˈtɛrərɪz(ə)m/ noun. [ORIGIN French terrorisme, from Latin terror: see terror, -ism.] Terrorist principles and practices; the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims; the fact of terrorizing or being terrorized. [Oxford Dictionary]

Terrorism, of course, has two end results. The first is usually death or at least serious injury for a large number of disinterested or uninvolved people. The second is chaos and disorder.

Over the past couple of weeks here in Washington, DC, a city that has been identified by those that know better as one of the hot spots for potential terrorism, we have been going through our out level of chaos and disorder, brought on, not by Al-Queda, but by our own human frailties and general mismanagement of resources.

Over the past week, we have had massive storms, which have included micro-bursts and tornadoes, high, oppressive heat and humidity, resulting in temperatures around 100 degrees and a minor train derailment. All of these factors have lead to a week of long commutes in an area where commuting is a contact sport and people spend far too much time doing it, as well as scattered power outages across a while swath of the region. Sadly, many of the problems, resulting from this round of natural and man-made incidents could have easily been prevented with a little forethought.

For example. In the DC area, most of the wires that supply everything from power to Internet connections are above ground, surrounded by trees. As the first round of storms (and in fact the flooding rains we had last month) have show, trees fall down when subjected to sustained foul weather, whether that is rain or wind or both. When they fall, they tend to ignore everything that may be in their path between vertical and the ground, so as a result, they bring down power lines, many of which are secured to poles with little more than staples. Live power line on the ground cause injury and death and when they are severed, they case blackouts and failures. Sometimes this is to a house, a block or the city, depending on the grid and size of the outage. We also saw that trees, planted along the Metro (subway) lines (above ground) fell across the tracks, blocking train travel. In the name of cost savings, we continue to do it to ourselves.

If the last few weeks have proven anything, it is that Al-Queda really would not have to work all that hard to bring the Nations Capital to its collective knees. Whether that is a reflection on our shortsightedness or just our own hubris is yet to be seen.