You were never meant to be here. Never forget this. You are an ape of the equator, built to run the savannah and swim in tropical waters. Whatever terms and conditions your body has, they are void here. Mother nature never certified to function in a Death World.
Enduring the cold is never a matter of “how much” as much at it is “how long”. Think of it as the water levels of the vieogames you have played. No matter what equipment enables you to remain longer, you can’t stay there indefinitely. The coat that keeps you warm and toasty for three hours in -15 is enough to keep you functional for an hour of -40.
Whatever the locals say, listen to them. Err to the side of caution if you must. You may not endure what they can endure, but you SURE AS FUCKING NOT cannot survive what they say cannot be endured.
That being said, alcohol is a filthy fucking liar and so is anyone who offers it to you. The warmth it gives is an illusion, and a sign of damage. You are worse off feeling comfortable with a mouthful of whiskey as you are freezing your gonads off stone cold sober.
Winter tires. Studded winter tiers are a MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH when you drive on a frozen road. That being said, whatever the locals tell you that your car will need to run as theirs do, take it. Taking the risk of being pranked is worth survival, and you can always stab their tires in the spring if they were shitting you.
Eat. For the love of god, make sure that you eat. Heavier meals might be unpalatable at first for someone used to lighter nutrition, but maintaining bodily warmth in a cold climate takes up a lot of energy, and you will feel tired and drowsy for a long while shile your metabolism adjusts to producing more heat than Mother Nature ever intended. The skinny people in your party are especially vulnerable, ensure their well-being on a regular basis.
If you have a smartphone/other essential technology on your body, keep them close to your body to keep them warm. They were not designed to be frozen any more than you were.
Sleep is death. SLEEP IS DEATH. Never, ever stop to rest in the cold, if you do not have the means to make a fire/otherwise produce heat. The cold tires you out because keeping warm takes energy, but taking a rest will not return your energy. If you feel the need to sit down and rest because you are tired because of the cold, call for help. This is not a hyperbole, if you feel like you are too tired to go on in a cold climate, CALL A FUCKING AMBULANCE. If you fall asleep in the snow, you will not wake up. Hypothermia can and will literally kill you.
Avoid skin-to-snow-contact if you can. It hurts because you were not supposed to do it. Consider ice to be like acid. Touching is bad for you.
Feel free to add to the list if you feel like I missed something.
Some things to add from a native northerner moved south who’s surrounded by people who know fuck-all about harsh winter weather:
If you are expecting severe weather that might take out your electricity, and you can afford a generator, GET ONE. They aren’t terribly cheap but you can find one in the $400-500 range at Home Depot or any other store like it really.
Gas up your car. Seriously. If your power goes out and you need to move because your current residence is in the sub-fucking-zeros you need to have fuel to get where your going. Not only that but even IF you don’t have anywhere to go, sitting in a car with the heat running is much better than freezing your ass to death in your house.
Stock up on water bottles and canned goods. You will need both if you get snowed in. Eating is absolutely essential to staying alive, because as OP stated, keeping warm burns a LOT of calories.
If you have time before the storm hits, buy some good, thick blankets. Wool or fleece are your two best bets. Hell, if you can’t find a good place to get blankets, go to Walmart and buy straight up fabric. The more, the better.
If you have a pet reptile, and the power goes out and the temperature inside your house is very cold, don’t feed them, and don’t leave them in their tank. Take them out, put them on your chest, and wrap yourself in a blanket with them. The best way at this point to keep them alive will be to share the body heat you have.
Bring your pets inside. Yes, I’m looking at you, Nancy with the “outdoor cat”. Their cute little toe beans will freeze the fuck off and they’ll die of hypothermia. I don’t care if your 300 pound Tibetan Mastiff isn’t housebroken, unless you wanna explain to your 2-year old why Captain Fluffball is frozen to your front porch, bring him in.
If you have a fireplace, utilize it, but don’t set a fire inside your house that you can’t control. And don’t use fucking gasoline. That’s how you blow shit up.
If you’re stuck out in the cold and you start to feel tired and strangely warm, you have hypothermia. Get the fuck to a place with actual warmth. Leave your clothes on. The cold is lying to you. You’re not hot, you’re slowly freezing to death. If you can, call a fucking ambulance.
Remember that extremities freeze first. That means your toes, your nose, and your fingers. Layer the fuck UP. If I have to go out in the snow, I usually wear a pair of knit/fleece gloves under a pair of snow gloves. And then I duct-tape that shit to the sleeves of my coat. It looks silly but it keeps moisture from getting stuck in there and freezing my hands off. For shoes, wear boots and like, 3 pairs of socks. The warmer and fuzzier, the better. Your feet will thank you. If you have a ski mask, use it. If not, wear a scarf and wrap that shit as tight around your face as you can.
On the topic of moisture, if any part of you gets wet while you’re outside, locate the nearest warm place you can go to and take the wet garment off and dry that shit. I don’t care if it’s your socks, your shirt, or your undies. Get em off and get em dry. Wet clothes are a fast way to get yourself frozen to death.
If you absolutely need to do shit outside, velcro or duct tape your gloves and boots to your sleeves and pants. I know it will limit your movements a bit. I know that it will look stupid. I know it will be hard to get off. But duct tape doesn’t let SHIT through it. And as I’ve mentioned before, you don’t want ANYTHING you’re wearing to get wet.
If you do have a portable heater or fire or heat in your home or whatever, have a fan blowing too. It will spread the warm air around faster. It might not feel warm at first, but it’s circulating the air. It will heat up eventually.
If you’re with other people, huddle up with them. Share your body warmth. Have a nice cuddle session with your friends/family/neighbors. It might just save you.
IF A CHILD IS IN THE SNOW, THEY WILL FREEZE A WHOLE FUCKIN LOT FASTER THAN YOU WILL. This doesn’t mean be chivalrous and give them your coat. It means you pick their tiny ass up and shove them IN your coat or hold them as close as you can while you try to get to a warmer area. The smaller they are, the faster they freeze. Time is absolutely critical. And if your kid is out in the snow, you need to be out there with them and keep your eyes on them at all times.
Finally, invest in a blow dryer. If your hair gets wet and you gotta go back out in the cold, you’re going to be miserable as fuck. Blow dry your hair so it can be nice, warm, and voluminous when you go back out to punch Jack Frost in the face.
(I’ve been reading so many posts about earth being Space Australia the Death World that I didn’t even notice there weren’t aliens in this one until my third read-through, so I’m counting it for the blog theme.)
A few further points from me, having grown up in Canada’s coldest major city:
The wind can be even more dangerous than the cold, and if your skin is exposed to it, it can freeze and even necrotise. Frostbite is a serious medical problem. So bundle up; wear a touque, wear your hood up, wear a balaclava or hike your scarf up over your nose because you could lose it otherwise. If the wind gets in your face, walk backwards. That’s not a prank; walk backwards.
If it’s really cold, your gloves aren’t going to do shit; you’ll want mittens and handwarmers. It’s not convenient but at least you won’t be dropping fingercicles on the frozen pavement.
There is no such thing as winter chic. Not in a place with a real winter. You’re going to look like a bundle of cloth if you dress properly anyways, so there’s no sense in trying to be stylish about it. There is no fashionable/unfashionable, there’s only practical/impractical
Get a block heater for your car; if you come from a cold place, it’s probably standard equipment.
If you fall through ice into frozen water and can’t climb out, allow yourself to freeze to the ice – someone might see you and save you, even if you pass out.
Snow is a great insulator and if you need to, you can build shelter out of it. A quinzee is fastest. It can keep you alive if you are lost.
PUT A SHOVEL IN YOUR CAR. PUT AN EMERGENCY WINTER SUPPLY KIT IN YOUR CAR.
In a blizzard, do not travel. I know you’d rather be home than stuck at work overnight. But low visibility in a blizzard is not the same as low visibility in fog. You can get easily twisted around in areas that you know like the back of your hand, and no one will be able to see you to help you if you need it. Do not travel in blizzards.
Related to this: the normal rules do not apply in the cold. You can knock on a stranger’s door for help; you can take strangers in to warm up. You can approach a stranger in the cold and offer them rides if they look like they need help. Children should know that if forced to choose “talking to strangers to ask for help” and “freezing to death,” they are to choose “talking to strangers.”
If you ARE too warm in your many layers, but it is still deathly cold out, DO NOT unzip your coat. Lowering the temperature of your core is dangerous. You can easily cool down by removing a mitt or glove. You can lose fingers and toes if your extremities aren’t protected, but if your core gets too cold you can die.
Do not go ANYWHERE without appropriate winter gear, even if you think it’ll only be a quick jaunt from here to there. You never know when your car will break down or get stuck. You need that coat.
Don’t leave either your children or your pets in your car while you go into a store, or my god what is WRONG with you?
Everyone who has grown up in a cold climate knows what it feels like to be so cold you can’t bend your fingers or feel your face, knows what it’s like to be so cold that touching anything warm burns, to be so cold it takes hours to warm up, to be genuinely worried that they’ll lose their fingers or toes. No one will judge you for being so cold you start crying only to have your eyelashes freeze together. We’ve all been there. We will help.
Fun fact – after moving to a much colder area I’ve gained 6 kilos. Skinny people can and will store additional fat – it’s to help them survive after changing climate zones. If you are moving to another climate area (namely, colder climate area), invest in a better wardrobe. Boots with thick sole. In Russia we have valenki and we wear woolen socks underneath
Wool is your friend. The fluffier the better. The more fluff the better insulation. Skiing clothes are also a good help, especially coupled with other layers and wool. And, oh! If you can, get one of those:
Woolen shawls like these ones are usually handmade, so as to preserve the fluff, and they are wonderful for heat insulation. You can use one for yourself, you can bundle up your kid, and it’s gonna be warm and snug. Like, I wore one when we hit a -30C streak a while ago, and it was nice.
GUARD YOUR HIPS! I mean, it’s pretty easy to bundle up your torso, but your hips and thighs and knees… Yep. Not so much. If you have some woolen kneewarmers for arthritis, or you can procure some for yourself – do it.
Okay wear does one acquire such a shawl because I a) need that for aesthetic reasons and b) it’s so fucken cold in my house help
(Google tells me that this is an Orenburg Shawl)
The reason wool is great is because it stays warm when wet, polar fleece does too but never seems as toasty.
If you allergic to wool and can afford it get silk long underwear and sock/glove liners and wear them under woolens. If you can’t afford it try to find a cheaper alternative. Also figure out which kind of wool you are least reactive to because even with a base layer you are going to get itchy.
Back to pets: if you have fish and the power goes out cover the tank with space and wool blankets right away. Every once in a while check the temp, if it is falling below ideal scoop out some of the water and warm it over a camp stove, not too hot, then gently pour the water back in. This will also help aerate the tank a little. plus it gives you something to do if you’re bored.
Also, if you know the powers is likely to go out you should fill the tub/buckets with as much water as you can. You can boil it for warm drinks and bucket flush the toilet, which you’re going to want.
Edited to add: this is no joke. My cousin’s friend fell asleep in his car a couple winters back and froze to death. It happens. Be safe.
I have had several friends move to Canada and not realize that you can lose fingers. Also, if it doesn’t look like you gained 30 pounds its not a winter coat.
Canadian here: A good winter coat isn’t necessarily “you gained 30 lbs” unless you’re north of the tree line, but that’s a good guideline. Personally I swear by military-issue wool trenchcoats as a nice combination of thin, flexible, full-coverage, water-tolerant (and mildly resistant), warm, and usable in the summer – but keep in mind that we bottom out at -20 here in a typical winter. (Our big problem is that it’s wet and windy.)
A few tiny details I can add:
When shopping for a coat, check the fastenings (zipper, buttonholes, etc) for a cover flap that can be anchored in place (on a zipper, generally by velcroing to the other side of the zipper; on my trenchcoat it’s sewn over the buttons). Even if it looks like a good coat otherwise, this is a dealbreaker – without it, the wind will stab you directly in the chest with a thousand needles at the slightest provocation.
That thing above about the blow drier? Downplays how miserable wet hair is. It will freeze. Into icicles. Directly on your neck/face. And insult to injury, you will lose hair if and when you break one.
Get a backup battery for your phone. When traveling, keep it in a pocket against your body. Your phone is your only lifeline in an emergency, when you need help you will need it now, and cold eats batteries for breakfast. Having a warm battery can make the difference.
Do not drive faster than the locals, unless you have no particular will to live. Ever. Of particular note, 4WD/AWD doesn’t make a single fucking bit of difference on ice. Every year in my area a couple people get killed because they forgot that.
On a related note: If you have to drive in the snow, your instinct will be to follow the tracks of the last guy. This is generally good advice – in most snow conditions it will improve traction – but be careful. There have been a few times I almost followed someone’s tracks right into their accident.
Layer with different materials. Wool is a great insulator, but knit wool in particular is extremely porous; you want something tighter either below or above it.
Do not cross running water without a bridge, or still water without an experienced guide or a clear manmade trail. (Do not drive across a body of water period. This is an advanced skill, and failing will kill you. You are not a local.) You’d think this would be obvious, but every year when I lived in Truro at least one person would get to watch their car floating away on an ice floe – if they were lucky.
The Norwegian Mountain Code is a short list of basic rules to follow when TRAVELLING IN HARSH, COLD TERRAIN.
If you need to take a rest while out and there is deep snow, MAKE A SNOW CAVE. Snow is airy. It will insulate. Make sure the entry is BELOW THE SPACE WHERE YOU WILL REST as warm air travels upwards. The smaller the cave, the less air for you to lose body heat to. MARK THE CAVE with skis, branches, anything tall. Call for help. It helps to know where you are – a GPS is useful, your phone will do.
BRING THE SHOVEL INSIDE. You might need to re-open the entrance if it’s windy. You can always use your skis to dig a cave if needed be.
You can make a sitting/laying place inside the snow cave from twigs or branches to avoid contact with the snow.
When dressing, ALWAYS layer:
innermost layer is wool. Always.
outermost layer waterproof. Windproof inside of that one.
remember that clothes will not keep you warm. AIR KEEPS YOU WARM. Make sure your layers are not too tight – you want your clothes to TRAP AIR between you and the environment to minimise heat loss.
Re-emphasizing the ‘Cold Sucks The Life Out of your Battery’ – I don’t know how many times my car battery died due to the bitter cold. Like, it just went ‘nope, too cold’ and refused to start my car.
My friend has to go take pictures for work, even in the winter – She makes sure to have her phone plugged into an external battery tucked inside her bra, cord strung through her coat sleeve, because her phone battery alone goes from ‘100%’ charged to ‘10% charged, plug in!’ with zero apps running, in less than a half hour. I have watched it happen. Warmth saves your batteries. cold kills it.
ALSO: WOOL, NOT COTTON! Wool wicks water away from your skin, and stays warm even when wet. Cotton will hold that soggy foot sweat right to your skin, and suck all your heat away. Tends to give you boot blisters faster, too. That cotton T-shirt getting sweaty is going to drop your core heat fast af if you open your coat.
Relevant, I believe, to current attitudes to the ACLU.
Why are people so boneheadedly optimistic about authority? Surely, understanding that the government in general isn’t particularly fair to minorities, even about laws that concern them is baseline SJ?
There are the demands for the same police who, as people keep pointing out, have a terrible record of ‘accidentally’ murdering people to have more power to stop protests?
It’s a position that, dare I say, smacks of the thoughtlessness of privilege.
i saw a post encouraging new artists to practice and then other people discussing how it’s intimidating, and kind of condescending, to be told to practice without being told how or why. and i thought i would chime in to say that what works for me is to think of it as studying.
it’s like this: if you are in class, you take notes, right? drawing from life, practicing, studying, it’s just like that. your notes aren’t an essay. they’re not a finished work. they’re definitely not an authoritative document. they’re just your observations on the subject. you’re talking to yourself about what you’re learning: summarizing here, elaborating here, jotting down reminders there, trying to get a handle on new material.
take some paper and a pen, and approach virtually anything, from a cat to a flower to a trash can, as if you were making notes on it. but now your notes are visual.
draw the leaves of the flower, observe the veins, the stem, the petals, the shadows. cross out what seems wrong, try a couple times to get some detail right, focus on different parts, try different angles of approach. you’re not trying to Draw A Beautiful Flower, you’re just talking to yourself about what makes that flower a flower. you’re free of the terrible pressure of Making An Art: instead, you’re just studying. it’s okay to take your time, throw away the notes that don’t work, fill up a whole journal on leaves that don’t look good.
the best way to get good at anything is to embrace the process of learning, and to do that you have to recontextualize ‘failing’ as part of the process of discovery.
so when people tell you to practice, don’t get frustrated, and don’t give up. you’re not making one bad drawing after another. you’re just taking notes on the way to whatever comes next.
I don’t think I’ll ever be over the concept of, like
cars seen from a biological perspective. you open the door and sit behind the wheel and suddenly as far as Mother Nature is concerned you’ve received a five-tier upgrade from Weird Bipedal Primate to Superlarge Armored Quadruped But With Cheetah Speed.
it’s just straight-up cheating
It’s honestly so fucked up that I have to worry in leftist spaces that talking about rehabilitative justice will lose me friends.
In 2010 I took a class called Terrorism in the Modern World, which was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. We learned all about the causes and cyclical effects of terrorism, about why people get seduced by dangerous worldviews, about how we cannot possibly offer more than palliative solutions until we reckon with the task of trying to understand them. About how futile America’s endless escalations have been. It was awesome.
The following year, when Osama bin Laden was killed, all my liberal friends joined me in reminding the world that he might have done terrible evil, but he was still a human being. We huddled together to grin smugly about how much more empathetic we were than those evil hawkish conservatives. Not that I endorse that, but we were 18. Point is, at the time we construed liberalism, and leftism more broadly, as an explicit rejection of the vengeful, punitive ethic that was blanketing our world. And I know we were not alone in that. Liberals around me talked about prison reform, about transitions from criminal dysfunction back to a productive life, about reaching out to the people who were hardest to reach. I was, at that time, proud to call myself a bleeding-heart liberal.
And now I’m seeing them, the very same leftists who joined me in calling for empathy with our enemies, posting endless diatribes against those they deem too far gone for any kind of understanding. The same people who stood up in a sea of patriotic zeal and reminded us that terrorists were real human beings with motivations beyond mustache-twirling villainy are the people I see calling Trump supporters garbage, calling them worthless, calling any attempt to understand them “collusion with the oppressor”. I’m over here advocating the same exact outreach I’ve advocated all my life, the same outreach you once praised me for, but now because it’s your pet enemy I’m evil and weak and awful for it.
These were once my people, and now I don’t recognize them. I’m horrified to see them acting exactly like post-9/11 nationalist zealots, dismissing any attempt at understanding or empathy as spineless, as cowardly, as oppressive. You think I haven’t heard this all before? I’ve heard it all my life. I was a child when 9/11 happened. I don’t remember a United States not at war in the Middle East. My whole life I’ve been a pacifist, raised by pacifist parents in a pacifist community, and my whole life I’ve heard that trying to understand and reach out to your enemy instead of fucking annihilating them was weak and cowardly and siding with the terrorists. The difference is that I once had the left on my side.
Your principles do not cease to apply when it’s your pet enemy on the chopping block. Believe it or not, people who got cruel and hawkish in the face of terrorism were exactly as scared and powerless-feeling as you are now. They weren’t spouting martial rhetoric out of pure evil – there was real fear there, but they let it make them into hateful people with no sense of empathy or common humanity. Like hell I’m going to let that happen to people I once called mine.
Holy fuck, this.
The reason I don’t want to punch Nazis today is because I had all the violent graphic appalling vengeance fantasies about bin Laden…
…and by the time we got him I didn’t believe in war any more.
If we believe that extremism is seductive, why do we want to punch the people it seduces? Does half of Tumblr have some weird belief that a good whack on the head will dislodge it, like curing a mindwiped character in a cartoon show?
Thiiiiiiiiiiiiis
I can respect people who draw their lines for “When is punching the guy considered an act of defense, rather than offense?” in a different place than I do. But a lot of what I’m seeing on the Left (not just on Tumblr, but in a lot of Leftist spaces) is straight up warmongering on a small scale.
Now, I’m a Filthy Liberal, not a true Leftist, so maybe this is one of those idealogical differences that I didn’t pick up on until I understood the distinction between those two things, but…I seem to recall a time when pacifism (real pacifism, not the Batman kind) was considered a virtue on the Left.
And I can’t help but see a connection between the fact that the people who really loudly advocate punching Nazis (and honestly, I find myself struggling to care about whether or not Nazis get punched. It’s the people who merely Look Sortof Like Nazis I’m worried about) are the same people who call shippers Actual Child Molesting Pedophiles. And then those same people move from sending anon hate to doxxing and organizing mass calls to people’s bosses and to CPS and shit.
And now we’re right back to punching Nazis, except that we’re trying to ruin the lives of child molesters, except that anyone we don’t like is a Nazi or a child molester, except that when that stops working we’ll call them something else (maybe we’ll call them terrorists), and really we don’t even know who we’re shooting at anymore but goddamn it feels good to pull that trigger.
And in my head? All I’m seeing is scared, angry redneck neighbors threatening a terrified woman in a headscarf because she sortof looks like what the warmongers told us the wives of the people who attacked New York City might have looked like, and that’s enough to brand her Terrorist ‘round these parts and we don’t hold with Terrorists here.
When they say “violence begets violence,” they don’t mean the people you punch are gonna punch you back. They mean that when you run out of people to punch (or can’t reach the dude you really wanna mangle,) you’re gonna broaden the criteria for who’s an acceptable target. Osama Bin Laden becomes All Terrorists becomes Anyone Who Looks Vaguely Middle Eastern.
I wonder if the reason we’re seeing this same logic among Leftists and Liberals now is because so many of them are the kids who grew up post 9/11; in the era of warmongers telling us all to punch an amorphous and difficult to identify Enemy for the good of American Decency. And even if they recognized that the “looks like a terrorist” criteria is bullshit, they still internalized the underlying message: Violence Against the Enemy is Righteous.
All they needed was a different enemy.
I wonder if the reason we’re seeing this same logic among Leftists and
Liberals now is because so many of them are the kids who grew up post
9/11; in the era of warmongers telling us all to punch an amorphous and
difficult to identify Enemy for the good of American Decency. And even
if they recognized that the “looks like a terrorist” criteria is
bullshit, they still internalized the underlying message: Violence
Against the Enemy is Righteous.
I believe in rehabilitative justice because I’ve seen it work, honestly.
And I’ve seen so many people who were nominally defending me or people like me end up broadening the “people I can attack” criteria until they included me… You know after a while the pattern sinks in.
the highlighted area is where Jason Derulo knows what the girls want. london to taiwan.
new york to haiti
greenland is right out
ummm no offense but new york to haiti should be measured as the area between the two latitudes, not the longitudes. this graph is incorrect and vastly underestimates the total region of the earth in which Jason Derulo knows what the girls want
Even measuring that way, Greenland remains right out, as does the entirity of Brazil.
Have we considered measuring by neither latitude nor longitude but in all area that would extend perpendicular from the diagonal of the two places?
There are many different interpretations of the data, and until more is available, we ought not conclude anything at this point.
In light of that, I posit this alternative map of regions where Jason Derulo is potentially claiming where he knows what girls want:
As we can see, if we assume that model, the vast majority of the area where Jason Derulo knows what girls want is either open ocean (the Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea) or sparsely populated (the northern Sahara, the northern Arabian Desert, various desert portions of Iran and Afghanistan, and the southern Tibetan Plateau). Four of the ten most populated countries on the planet have no territory in it (Nigeria, Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia), and two which do have relatively little territory in it (the US and Russia). It is suggested that for all his boasting, Jason Derulo does not know what a probable majority of the world’s girls want.
Perhaps Jason Derulo’s intention was never to proclaim to be omnipotent to the interests of the female gender. Perhaps he was instead expressing his humanity, or the limits of his knowledge. I applaud Jason Derulo. Jason Derulo is not just another 2 dimensional character. Jason Derulo has depth.Jason Derulo has limitations and has come to terms with them. Jason Derulo knows Jason Derulo. Thats why he makes it a point to say his name so much.
After the tragic Hurricane Katrina of 2005, many individuals returned to their homes which were marked with large X’s. Some houses, abandoned or not, still bare these symbols today.
The “Katrina Cross” or X-codes were painted on the houses by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after searching the houses during the storm’s aftermath. The X-code is simple: Going clockwise, the first quadrant contains the date the house was searched. The second quadrant notes any hazards inside the house. The third quadrant notes if anyone, dead or alive, was found inside the house. The fourth quadrant identifies the rescue team that searched the house.
Some abbreviations used for the hazard quadrant:
NE-No entry
GL-Gas leak
TFW-Toxic flood water
F/W-Food and water (left for pets)
EXT-Exterior surveyed
Some abbreviations for the body count quadrant:
0A or 0D-No one found
A-Alive
D-Dead
LV-Live
DOA-Dead on Arrival
0-0-No survivors
Some abbreviations for the rescue team quadrant:
HSUS-Humane Society of the United States
NOPD-New Orleans Police Department
TX-Texas National Guard
D-Mor-Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team
LSP-Lousiana State Police
An incomplete X or a dash signals a search in progress. An X in a square means the house is dangerous and should not be entered. A lone square signals it is safe for rescue teams to enter. A dash in a square means the house may have significant damage and should be entered with caution. An X with a filled circle in the center means the search was terminated before its completion.
Woah. This post really resonated with me. If anyone else is interested in looking into this a little bit deeper, here’s a couple links with some more information: