pollution days

snow days i've had before.  pollution days are a new one.

it's been an interesting past couple of days.  later in the afternoon on wednesday, we could see this huge very black cloud of smoke billowing from one building, moved in the wind out and over the city, away from where i work and live.  the smoke mostly stayed together, moving in the wind.  it was so black and thick looking and there was lots of it.  then we found out that something in a nearby factory had exploded, causing a fire, and that there were possibly chemicals involved, which meant possibly toxic things were in that smoke that was in the air, so we all were sent home to stay indoors.

this is what the smoke looked like: (the pictures in this post are not mine, just ones that people are posting all over the internet about this incident)

my school cancelled classes for the next day and the following day, which left us with a four-day weekend.  by the same evening of the explosion, the fire was entirely put out and no new smoke was being produced.  i saw shown on a map online the next morning how the smoke had blown away from where i work and where i live across the city in the other direction, and across the lake.  it seemed like it was over to me.  but we still had all of that day and the next day (today) of no school.  i'm not complaining about no school.  it's like a gift of time, a mini-vacation that was unexpected.  seems like we will have to make up the days later though, but i don't know much about that yet.  anyway, for now i'm enjoying the mini vacation.

without going into too much detail, i found people's reactions to this incident interesting.  many foreign families found it necessary to leave the city because of the possible toxins in the air, even though the fire was already put out.  i suppose there was no way of knowing if there were really bad toxins in the air or not.   it was very difficult to get any direct information about this.  websites that report pollution levels in various cities don't necessarily take into account abnormal incidents like this in what they are measuring for in the air.  one website showed the day of the explosion had better quality air than the previous day.  there was no way of knowing what was really in the air.  how to get clear information about something is one interesting question that arose in my mind from this incident--how do you know when you have all the information you need?  how do you know if the information you have is accurate?  (this seems easier in the US than here, for sure, but even in the US, when are you getting all the information you want, and when are you only hearing part of the story?)

all the news articles i could find about the incident briefly explained what had happened and told that only 1 person had been injured, and then went on to discuss how the shutdown of the factory would affect production for the company and prices of cell phones, etc.  (i believe the factory works with semiconductors and produces memory storage devices for cell phones.)  it was kind of disturbing to read soooo much discussion about production and the market and stocks.  from my perspective, with people in my community working for the company, i want to know how families were affected, what about the poisonous gasses affecting the people who worked at the factory even if they weren't technically "injured"?

my city is always polluted.  i bet there are toxins in the air every day.  i bet by living here for four years i've exposed myself to more bad things in the air for sure than in that one day of this fire and explosion.  i wonder how many times some type of thing like this has happened in my city and we just didn't know about it because it happened to be in another part of the city.

but if people feel better leaving, then i suppose they should do what makes them feel better.  it's difficult because if you can't understand the news or get precise information about if the air quality is actually worse than normal or more dangerous, then what do you do?  err on the cautious side.  leave the city, maybe.  i personally just stayed inside until i knew the fire was all over and that the smoke was no longer near my part of the city, and then for a little longer after that.  how does one make decisions in a "crisis" situation?  how do you know if something is a "crisis" or not?  interesting questions.  the way my company erred on the side of caution is good, especially since families and children are involved.

i find myself considering how many different things certain foreigners who live overseas worry about.  some people worry about a lot more things than i worry about, related to living in a "foreign" country.  yet in the end, they don't end up living their life all that much differently than me in their actual actions.  but they seem a lot more stressed.  there is always something to get worked up about.  or maybe i just don't have as much information as these people about things that are actually worrisome?  but then i consider things like food--it's clear that food here in restaurants or served in public places is not prepared by the same standards as food in the US.  if that really bothered me, i could not eat out, i could cook all my own food at home, i could buy all imported food.  but i live here.  do i want to live here, live, or do i need to feel totally safe all the time?  what is safe anyway?

but anyway, if there was a really really real crisis, i think we would know, and there are plans in place for such things.