Category: this is south africa

Cruise Ship Accident Exercise – Tuesday 12th March

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Disseminating this sort of information will do no good. It never does. Twitter will still be buzzing with “OMG!” and “What’s going on?” tweets on Tuesday morning. Facebook will catch up by next week.

Remember those fire drills at school? Well, they’re going to have a cruise ship disaster drill off Mouille Point tomorrow:

The City of Cape Town wishes to inform residents that a simulated major cruise ship ‘accident’ close to the Port of Cape Town will be conducted on Tuesday 12 March 2013.
The exercise will test the preparedness and ability of the authorities and related agencies to respond to an incident involving an international cruise ship running aground.
Code-named ‘Beachy’, the joint scenario exercise will be led by the City’s Disaster Risk Management Centre.

Of course, even in these days of modern technology when you wouldn’t expect maritime disasters to even be possible, you don’t have to go too far back to remember the last time a cruise ship ran aground.

Italy Ship Aground

So this sort of preparedness is to be applauded.

The accident will take place off-shore from the Mouille Point Lighthouse and a verification and mass-care centre will be established at the Cape Town Stadium to assist survivors of the cruise liner disaster.
Residents living in the vicinity are alerted that the exercise will involve a large contingent of armed forces, law enforcement agencies and emergency and disaster management personnel.
Helicopters from the SA Air Force and the Western Cape Government Health: Emergency Medical Services  will be utilised to evacuate ‘casualties’ from the ship.

If you’ve got a camera and the ability to walk (sadly, I have neither right now), it might be worth going down there and having a look.

But if you can’t get down there, share this post, educate your friends and prevent unnecessary widespread panic on the streets of the Atlantic Seaboard tomorrow.

Cape Town Morph

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It’s often difficult to know what people think when I post stuff like this. The reasoning behind my confusion is that is seems that many of my readers are tech-savvy, early-adopter, social media users.
And I first caught sight of this short video yesterday evening. Which means that they probably did too.

Fortunately, most of them don’t have the time, energy or inclination to leave a comment saying “Saw this ages ago – boring!” or whatever. There are those, however, who don’t live in Cape Town or South Africa (and will therefore probably not be interested anyway) or don’t hang around on Twitter or Facebook and will not have seen this.

Therefore, I am posting this for them. Oh, and for me.

This is 129 years in 30 seconds (I nearly typed “30 seconds in 129 years” then, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as interesting) and here’s the story:

I was recently commissioned to recreate a panorama of Cape Town and Table Mountain, captured from Signal Hill in 1884 by W.F.H. Pocock.

Fortunately I managed to find the exact same spot where the original photos were captured, so I was able to shoot my modern version of Mr. Pocock’s amazing 1884 panorama. And fortunately I correctly guessed the focal length that was used to capture the original photos, so my panorama came out looking almost exactly the same as the original.

Lots of fortuity there, and lots more detail here, including the phrase “Then I had this crazy idea…”.

Not all like that

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And then, amongst all the madness and bad press from the Oscar Pistorious case, (his dad hasn’t helped) a bit of sense from Amanda Willard in the Huffington Post:

On any level this is heartbreaking but what we need to leave behind is the belief, created by a bloodthirsty media on the scent of an emotive story, that this all happened against the backdrop of the most violent country in the world. Quite simply it isn’t.

When it comes to gun-related homicide, South Africa comes in at no.12 with many South American and Caribbean countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Belize and El Salvador significantly ranking way above it.

Holiday destinations such as Jamaica are much higher up the list. Even the location for the 2016 Olympics and the next FIFA World Cup, Brazil, a country comparable in many ways for the gap between rich and poor in society, is above South Africa in this table.

I have visited this beautiful country roughly ten times and travelled from the tropical heat of the KwaZulu-Natal, to the urban excitement of Johannesburg. From the stunning beaches of the Cape to experiencing sunsets on safari. It’s unbeatable.

Once again, it’s not so much the “revelation” that there are problems here in SA, it’s more the exceptionalism and disproportionate and sensationalist reporting that is doing the harm.

Full text here, including full on Apocalypse predictions in the dramatic comments section.

Enjoy!