An alarm for every drop and every flurry

Every clip I talk to Greeks who near the state during the 2009-2015 indebtedness situation and are thinking astir coming back, I repetition the aforesaid warning, successful the aforesaid monotone: “In Greece, we wake up each greeting not knowing whether our time will beryllium smooth. We woody with problems present that person agelong been sorted retired successful organized Western societies.”

The caller rainfall is simply a bully example, or, much rarely, when it snows. At astir 3 p.m. connected Wednesday, cellphones crossed Attica sounded with an alarm from the 112 civilian extortion hotline warning of terrible storms. Outside the window, a light, astir romanticist drizzle was falling – of the benignant that would hardly merit an umbrella successful London, where a fewer stray drops of rainfall are a regular occurrence.

What compels the Civil Protection Agency to sprout disconnected warnings agogo astatine the archetypal hint of rainfall oregon snow? Why bash our cellphones shriek astatine us each clip the sky isn’t a sparkling, cloudless blue? Why has the state decided that there is thing to beryllium done astir the country’s infrastructure isolated from keeping citizens indoors? Shutting down schools, advising radical to work from location and canceling events is the fallback for the authorities’ fearfulness of work and accountability. “I’ll conscionable occurrence disconnected a connection to beryllium connected the harmless side. Better harmless than sorry.” And then, successful the lawsuit of fatalities oregon damages, the blasted tin beryllium passed connected to the citizen: “It’s not my fault,” responds the state. “I told you to stay put.”

The astir outrageous thing, however, is that we take the state’s inefficiency for granted. The directive, “avoid each unnecessary travel,” has travel to beryllium seen arsenic something normal, arsenic a mean effect to the nonaccomplishment to cleanable storm drains, to forestall streams from becoming rubbish tips and houses being built connected earthy waterways, to transportation retired flood-protection work and to guarantee that each the indispensable state services are astatine citizens’ disposal. No 1 reacts anymore. Rather than becoming trapped successful our cars connected a road due to the fact that of snow oregon struggling against knee-deep water trying to transverse a street, we conscionable stay home.

The occupation is that utmost weather will simply go much predominant arsenic clime alteration deepens – and the λύση cannot proceed to beryllium messages from 112 and a “Rupunzel” policy: keeping radical locked up successful the harmless castles.