We need to be more careful!

Newspapers here are saying that insufficient safety checks were carried out on the seating structure that collapsed in the concert down in the port in Vigo. I had heard emergency vehicles screeching past our flats late that night. I assume that’s where they were all going. They do concerts there every year. Maybe somebody got complacent. After all, it only takes one screw missing or not properly fastened to cause havoc.

And in Genoa, Italy, they have had a bridge collapse, killing dozens of people. It seems warnings have been going out since 2013 about a possible collapse but the government dismissed them as a “favoletta”, an Italian word meaning a children’s fantasy tale or fairy story. The bridge was built in the 1960s and some people are saying that there were “design flaws”. That’s putting the blame on the designers then. But surely the major design flaw is that it was built for 1960s traffic and has been dealing with 21st century traffic.

We don’t seem to be looking after our world very well at present. The hot weather continues in places that normally don't expect hot summers. One report I read said this:

“The world is likely to see more extreme temperatures in the coming four years as natural warming reinforces manmade climate change, according to a new global forecasting system. Following a summer of heatwaves and forest fires in the northern hemisphere, the study in the journal Nature Communications suggests there will be little respite for the planet until at least 2022, and possibly not even then.”

In the short term we can enjoy the summer weather but if this pattern continues, surely it will lead to more bits of the world becoming uninhabitable and greater waves of refugees seeking somewhere else to live. The wealthy will be fine whatever happens unless, of course, a major revolution takes place. But inequalities are already showing.

In the Canadian province of Quebec, the heatwave has shown clearly the differences between the haves and the have-nots. The richer residents of Montreal all had their air-conditioning working nicely at home and in the workplace. The homeless had no way of escaping the heat, especially as they are not usually welcome in nice cool shopping malls. Benedict Labre House, a day centre for homeless people in Montreal, wasn’t able to secure a donated air-conditioning unit until five days into the heatwave. “You can imagine when you have 40 or 50 people in an enclosed space and it’s so hot, it’s very hard to deal with,” says Francine Nadler, clinical coordinator at the facility. People have been dying. That’s the difference!

If that’s happening in Canada, similar things will be going on elsewhere.

It’s time for a bit of joined up thinking!