I’ve begun to wonder recently how our country might react if there was ever a major emergency. I don’t even know what kind of an emergency I’m talking about here folks, but let’s just go along with the fact that it would be major.
Okay, okay, let’s pretend that President Obama rolled over and instead of hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock he accidently hit that dreaded red button.
Yeah, I know, it’s unlikely that he’d have it on his bedside locker, but hey what if there was a surprise attack in the middle of the night?
Umm, ok so I admit he probably would get up, but let’s pretend and anyway where the button is is not all that important anyway.
The thing is, if there is an emergency, a really difficult and urgent situation and we have to deal with it, you know I’m not really sure how we’d cope.
I say this partly as a result of the widespread panic and mayhem caused by this week’s snowfall across Donegal.
In some places where there were drifts I think it might have even got to three inches deep!
Seriously folks, did you ever see anything quite as ridiculous in all your life as our response to a few wee flakes of snow.
Total gridlock, panic, schools closed, people sent home from work and even people abandoning their cars and walking.
I mean, come on now folks, you know it’s bad when people would actually rather walk than take the car.
And before anybody says – nobody did that this time, well ahem, I know I did.
But how bad was the snow folks?
I know it came down thick and fast for a wee while on Saturday night and it was snowing pretty heavily for a while tonight (Tuesday), but seriously, how bad was it?
Did we get like six or seven inches, or a foot of snow?
No, we didn’t. We got a few inches at most and it would have been great if we’d gone into meltdown because that would have got rid of the problem.
Instead we went into whatever the cold version of meltdown is, freezedown or something like that.
Our response to snow, has got me worried about our potential response to any impending emergencies we might face, but then I looked at our history and realised we have managed big problems before.
Looking back I discovered that while many countries across Europe and indeed the world were engaged in World War II, all we had here was ‘The Emergency.’
A teeny wee country on the edge of Europe, we had decided on a policy of neutrality, a kinda sure we’ll wait and see what way the oul ball bounces before we’d make any commitments one way or another.
Some might say it wasn’t much of a response to a world crisis, but you know at least it looks like it might have been a laid back way of responding.
Compare that to lthe recent absolute panic and come on now folks it was hardly a case of a sneak attack.
I mean it had snowed on Saturday night, it was cold all day on Sunday, the weather forecasters had told us there could and probably would be snow again and there would be frost and fog and, well more snow.
This was not something that should have come as a surprise.
But it seems like it did.
People were jamming the lines on Highland radio complaining that their road wasn’t gritted and that they pay road tax too as yer man in the King and I said etc etc etc...
All in all our response to snow is pretty dismal, I mean if you cast your mind back to the start of the year we had the hilarious situation where dammit even the snowploughs got stuck.
Oh yeah, but not in the snow folks…they got stuck in the traffic stuck in the snow!
All in all you know I think it’s pretty okay for me to be worried.
Than again I guess if Mr. Obama accidentally did hit that button we’d just declare another ‘emergency.’
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