Praying for Haiti

Tonight, as Zee was preparing to say the family prayer, Bradley mentioned that maybe Zee should make sure he prayed for the people of Haiti. Bradley then explained why:

Bradley: They had a big earthquake in Haiti--you know what an earthquake is, right?
Zee: It's when a lot of rocks fall down and knock stuff over.
Bradley: Not quite. It's when the earth actually moves.
Zee: Did everyone in Haiti die?
Bradley: Not everyone, but a lot of people died, and a lot of houses are all broken up.
Zee: You mean they don't have any place to live?
Bradley: Yes.
Zee: They better build new houses, so they can have a place to pee and to get a drink of water.

He shows a pretty good understanding for why they need new houses, doesn't he? Sanitation and clean drinking water, all in terms a six-year-old can easily grasp.

So then Zee began his prayer: "Dear Heavenly Father, Please bless the people who live in Haiti. Please bless them that millions of builders--maybe even thousands--can get them new houses really soon. Please bless that they don't have any earthquakes, and please bless than we don't ever have an earthquake here..."

Okay, so maybe he doesn't understand that thousands is less than millions. But his heart is in the right place.

Speaking of earthquakes here in Utah, there's a great article in the Deseret News about what a 7.0 magnitude earthquake would do here on the Wasatch Front. My least favorite part:

He said fatalities would be greater during the night because many older homes in Utah are "unreinforced masonry buildings," made of bricks on bricks without reinforcing steel. The brittle structures don't flex well in quakes and can snap like chalk. Upgrades — such as better attaching of roofs to walls — can make them safer.

It's my least favorite because I live in an unreinforced masonry house built in 1944. Ugh. I won't pretend I don't have nightmares occasionally about this. But this is because I am a geology nerd. I don't worry about liquefaction because we aren't near enough to Utah Lake, and I don't worry about landslides because we aren't near enough to the mountains, and I don't worry about dams breaking up the canyon because A) there aren't any big dams up Spanish Fork Canyon and B) we live pretty far above (elevation wise) the river bottoms. Really, I live in a pretty good place for earthquake country.