Day 478 - October 6 - Tsunami

I'm sure y'all heard about the tsunami last week in the South Pacific. A big earthquake struck near Samoa, and the resulting tsunami swept across the Pacific, causing damage particularly in Samoa and American Samoa. I had the opportunity to be part of that developing story, although not in any big way, and I've been pondering one thing that happened during that situation for the last few days.

You see, the place that I work provides ATC services not only to Northern California and Nevada, but we also control all the airspace over most of the Pacific Ocean. The area in which I work controls over 18 million square miles of airspace in the Pacific, sharing boundaries with Seattle, Vancouver, and Anchorage Centers, and with facilities in Tokyo, Okinawa, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, Samoa, the Fiji Islands, New Zealand, Tahiti and Mexico. If you fly pretty much anywhere in the Pacific north of the Equator, you're in our airspace. I actually found an rough map of our oceanic airspace online, if you can imagine such a thing -



- so you can see how I might have gotten involved with the tsunami.

We got a notification that morning that an earthquake had occurred, and that there was a good chance of a tsunami spreading across the ocean. Now, we provide ATC services to a whole bunch of islands out there that you probably have heard of - Midway, Wake, Kwajalein, Truk, and Christmas Islands, to name a few, so our team jumped on the phones to make sure that everybody in the projected path with whom we dealt would know about it. Communications being what they are in that region, sometimes the only link of contact that exists is pretty tenuous - for example, the only way we have to contact the airport personnel at Christmas Island is that we call a phone number in Hawaii, which sets up a HF radio link with the Captain Cook Hotel on Christmas Island, an employee of which runs across the way and gets the airport guy to come talk to us. No, I'm not kidding! (Don't worry though - there's not a lot of traffic to Christmas Island!)

So, anyway, back to my story. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has put out projections for when they think the tsunami will pass each of these many islands, so we're trying to call the ones under our jurisdiction to make sure they have a heads-up, and that's when the thing that I mentioned earlier happened. We got in contact with the personnel at Wake Island and told them about the tsunami that might be headed their way, and their response was "Yeah, you're like the 20th person that's called to tell us". No "thanks", no "appreciate the call", no nothing. It was just really odd.

I've been thinking about that now for a few days, and I think I see the disconnect. You see, we believed we were helping because we called. We really were trying to help, trying to do one of the very few things you can do to help prepare for a potential tidal wave from 5000 miles away. So we called. But the guys at Wake, the guys sitting in the path of said tsunami on an island with an elevation of about 15 feet, they had a different perspective than we did. We weren't any help to them at all - just another bunch of people interfering with their preparations.

Now to be fair, we didn't have any way of knowing they already had the information. In fact, we were the ones that got the news of the tsunami to the folks at Christmas Island only 30 minutes before it was scheduled to hit (thank God it turned out to not be serious there - they had no warning at all). So we couldn't have known that Wake already knew. But the end result was "we weren't much help to them". The only way we could have been of real help to them was if we were there, on scene, lending a hand to prepare (and incidentally, sharing the danger as well).

How does this tie in to anything? Well, let me tell you!

When crisis strikes people around you - whether it is a tsunami, or a job loss, or death or sickness or God forbid a broken neck - where are you? Are you phoning from afar, wishing them well and hoping all works out for the best? Or are you on scene, lending your hands to the actual effort of dealing with the tragedy? I couldn't hop on a plane and get to Wake to help out; but what if it had been closer to home? What if the tragedy was striking the person next to me? What then? Would I make up an excuse that I didn't want to interfere or intrude? Would I find an excuse to not get my hands dirty? Would I shrink back from doing the work that would make me uncomfortable? I hope not. I hope when the time comes I will step in to actually help, instead of just offer my well wishes. And what about you? Are you thinking about this? What is your response when the people you know meet crisis and tragedy?

Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not talking about us, or your response to our situation, or anything like that. This isn't coming from a sense that anyone's not helped us personally - it's coming from that situation last week, and the questions in my head and my heart since then. I'm just challenged by the question of how I respond to the things that happen around me, and quite honestly, I fall short a lot of the time. I don't like being uncomfortable, and stepping into crisis with someone is often uncomfortable. So, no thrown stones from me. But maybe just a word of encouragement - to think ahead of time about how you'll respond when the emergency arises.

Because when it does, you'll base your actions on what you have previously decided to do. And I'm hoping that you will step into that gap for the folks around you and fill their point of need. Christ would - will you and I?

OK, enough preaching. Connor had a rough day yesterday. He's struggling with different kinds of pain in his body, along with various medical problems that I won't go into right now. I would ask that you continue to lift him up. He's having a rough go of it this week.

God knows what he needs. Thanks for staying with us.

E.

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