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WMN Editors

Disaster and the Urban Wilderness

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At 4:55 p.m. on October 17, 1989, Buck Helm,
a 57-year-old longshoremen’s union clerk in Oakland, California, left work in his car to get something to eat. Nine minutes later, fifty-seven miles to the south and deep beneath the surface of the earth, the Pacific and North American tectonic plates shifted against each other and sent subterranean shock-waves out like ripples in a pond. In moments, the shock-waves reached the multi-level, elevated portion of Interstate 880 that runs along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. They turned the highway into a concrete monster that writhed and undulated as the continent-sized plates far below tried to settle their differences.

ISSN-1059-6518

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WMN Editors

Survival & Self Preservation in Disaster Response

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More and more individuals are responding to long-term rescue efforts around the world. Whether the disasters are caused by nature or man, rescuers responding to these far-off places need to know how to take care of themselves from the moment they land, to the time they return home.

March/April 2005   ISSN-1059-6518    Volume 18 Number 2

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WMN Editors

Managing a Backcountry Fatality

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“The meaning of life is that it ends.”

Franz Kafka

Kafka’s somewhat grim perspective reminds us that life is a precious and finite commodity. Many of us enrich our quality of life by spending as much of it as possible in the beauty of the wilderness. It stands to reason: by spending so much of our lives in the wilderness we increase the chance of them ending there.

 

March/April 2002 ISSN-1059-6518 Volume 15, Number 2

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WMN Editors

A Brief History of Wilderness Medicine

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January/February 2002 ISSN-1059-6518 Volume 15, Number 1

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