Mudslides Should Be Renamed... They Are NOT a Cute Drink or a Kid's Game... It's Basically a Tsunami. We Need to Do Better!

There's a song that goes "I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain" but there are very few songs about mudslides. Make that a "Facebook Challenge" and you won't get far. Yes, songs about Flood and the "earth move under my feet" as Earthquakes get into the public psyche but sadly..not much about using Mud Slides that are poorly named and should be Mud Tsunamis as they work much more like Tsunamis than a Mud Slide.

A "Mud Slide" sounds like a milkshake or a child's game. It's one of the most deadly, fastest moving and most difficult to predict in specifics than any other natural disaster. It's easy to know that after fires you have the dangers of mud slides, if you have lived in California for a long time....and many people have not as they drift in and drift out often never really experiencing the actual catastrophe. You see the "FIRES" denude the landscape. But it doesn't always rain like a typhoon in California. In fact as the song goes "it never rains in Southern California" right?  Nope, not true but you can go 300 days between such heavy rains and until it rains you don't know your roof leaks or the creek up in the mountains far from your home is about to go on an earthen, mud tsunami and rush down into the home you have treasured and finally paid off. Or perhaps you have just moved in during the dry season (most of the year) and it rained... suddenly you find out what happens when it really does rain heavy in Southern California after the fires destroyed all the plants that had roots that held the dirt and soil together.

And the confusion before this disaster was at record levels. Some people lived in areas that were mandatory evacuation zones on some maps and not on others. Some social media warnings did not work as they should have... who reads their Gmail anymore? Do you really check your town's Facebook Site every few hours for information (Seriously???) and one phone carrier seems not to have been on board with the emergency warning that most likely came way too late... as the mud began to flow. Once the mud flows and takes with it cars, parts of homes, trees and dead bodies moving at fast speed it's hard to out run a mud slide. Remember those videos of tsunamis? Yeah, it's like that ...

And speaking of Tsunamis... The very strong Earthquake in the Caribbean required Tsunami Warnings for many of the islands from Cuba to Puerto Rico and I'd venture to say that the Tsunami Warnings got more attention on Twitter and Facebook than the warnings the meteorologists had been screaming into the wind for days that the strong storm was moving into the area and there would be life threatening mud slides.

Perhaps we need some really hot, smart, sexy meteorologists who have their own cosmetic line and Reality TV Shows that could...would warn the general public about a possible deadly MUDFLOW that could happen after the strong storm without a name and more people would take it seriously. Celebrity News is so big and I'm pretty sure if Kristina Kardashian was a meteorologist she would have so many people following her and taking her seriously.  I may be sounding sarcastic here but I'm serious. It seems "Celebrity News" sells but meteorologists from the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE warning of life threatening dangers is like screaming into the proverbial wind. And, I've said it before many times sadly no one puts the NWS people on TV nonstop the way they put the NHC people on to discuss a Hurricane that JUST LEFT AFRICA  about possible concerns for Florida or Texas. No... regular weather warnings just don't get the lead time and only after the mud begins to flow does the lead bleed and the media switches from an Agenda Based "News Platform" to showing pictures of 3 year olds who were swept away by a sudden flow of mud along with people in their 80s and everyone in between. Youtube starts showing awesome video and slowly story by story the media is all over it. After the barn door was left open and not given the air time it should have had before it began to rain. There was no tracking the storm... no cone... no fancy name that would be retired the way the hurricanes are tracked. But MUDSLIDES are just as deadly and more sudden than a tornado.

Lastly ... until the creek starts to rise and overflow and join with another creek that overflows into a street and moves downhill faster than you get start recording your video.. you don't know for sure which street will get the mud. There are so many variables across a wide expanse of land.

We need to do better. We need to find a better way.

In South Florida the debris is cleaned up and a few roof tops here and there are decorated with new bright blue tarps. Trees are growing back and the sun is shining bright and beautiful. The breeze blows and it's going to be 80 degrees today. I woke up last night to the sound of heavy rain on the rooftop sounding only the way it does in Miami in the early morning hours. Okay a few shutters are down and it hits the shutters sounding musical. The streets shone silvery and the sky looked golden.

In California in areas where the mud flowed the way a Tsunami flows they are digging out looking for bodies. People there were not warned the way people in Florida are warned of an incoming, landfalling Category 4 hurricane. The "mudslides" were catastrophically on the same level. The story got lost between which A List Super Popular male STAR got more more money than a less popular actress ...the Kardashian Pregnancy Drama and what Trump said or didn't say today. The MUDSLIDES should be renamed, named and given the same press attention as Hurricane HARVEY, IRMA and MARIA for days before hand.

Just my opinion.

We need to do better

Besos BobbiStorm

Ps... I'm on Grandma/Mommy watch and there may or may not be a few typos and a lot is going on here. Having a blast as always having breakfast and dinner usually on Hollywood Blvd or at some place by the Bay or a cute Kosher Israeli Restaurant touching base with all the people I need to touch base with... but the story of the disaster in California hits me personally. I've lived in LA and I've seen what happens when it finally pours... I love California but no one covers it's disasters until after the fact. This time people needed warning better, faster and more specifically direct. It's a Tsunami... not a cute drink with an umbrella in it. Sorry for any typos .. I'll fix later. Family is caslling...