Kathy Gilbeaux's blog

submitted by Emi Kiyota

Ibasho means "a place where you can feel like yourself" in Japanese.  At Ibasho we believe this is what every person should have as they age - a place to live in safety, comfort and dignity, where he or she is valued as a person full of history or experience.

submitted by Tom McGinn

The New York Times - by Gardiner Harris - March 21, 2011

When the Three Mile Island nuclear generating station along the Susquehanna River seemed on the verge of a full meltdown in March 1979, Gov. Richard L. Thornburgh of Pennsylvania asked a trusted aide to make sure that the evacuation plans for the surrounding counties would work.

The aide came back ashen faced. Dauphin County, on the eastern shore of the river, planned to send its populace west to safety over the Harvey Taylor Bridge.

“All well and good,” Mr. Thornburgh said in a recent speech, “except for the fact that Cumberland County on the west shore of the river had adopted an evacuation plan that would funnel all exiting traffic eastbound over — you guessed it — the same Harvey Taylor Bridge.”

Nearly 250,000 people would have been sent in opposite directions over the same narrow bridge.

Mr. Thornburgh quickly corrected the plans, but more problems would soon arise — just as they have in many other disasters. As the Japanese are learning, the science behind herding thousands, sometimes millions, of people from danger to safety is uncertain at best. And the lessons learned from one disaster can both hurt and help with the next.