Weathering the Storms
Nature has the power to bring our best-laid travel plans to a halt
As this publication goes to press, the rains have stopped and the floodwaters have begun to recede in Florida. The destruction wrought by Hurricane Irma stretches from the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda – which was left‘virtually uninhabitable’according to some reports – through the heavily damaged Florida Keys, ripping up the state’s western shores. And all this just days after Hurricane Harvey had pounded Houston and southeast Texas in similar fashion. It was a real one-two punch for the Gulf Coast.
Events such as these produce a groundswell of compassion and an outpouring of kindness. The breathtaking extent of the disasters were often brought down to human scale by individual stories of heroism and generosity – of first responders, family members, neighbors and friends who went above and beyond. It goes without saying that our thoughts and prayers are with all those who were in the path of these fierce storms.
Such phenomena also remind us of our own vulnerability in the face of nature. Travel as an enterprise is particularly susceptible. In all the news coverage of both Irma and Harvey, some of the more memorable pictures were of travel and transport caught in the storms; a gigantic cargo ship laden with containers, bobbing helplessly like a cork on the waves; multi-lane Interstate highways, completely inundated; airports like Miami, Houston and Atlanta – the busiest in the world – abandoned ghost towns.
One of the more compelling images was not a photo but a composite radar map from flightradar24.com of flights in United States airspace. Typically these maps are crowded with aircraft icons representing the thousands of flights in the air at any one time. On the day Irma struck the Keys, not a single icon could be found anywhere over the state of Florida. It was as if a gigantic Irmashaped hole had been carved out of the sky.
On the one hand, this is hardly surprising, given that airplanes and bad weather are a notoriously dangerous concoction. But it does give us a striking picture of what happens to the air traffic system when for whatever reasons a large chunk of it is taken‘offline.’The ripple effects throughout the airspace – and eventually throughout the economy – reach across the globe and out in time for hours or even days.
Over the years my travels have taken me into the paths of disasters long after the storms had passed. Homestead, FL, many years after Hurricane Andrew still had foundations with no houses, just empty debris fields. Eastern North Carolina, a decade after Hurricane Floyd still had homes with broken windows and halfnaked walls where the waters had flooded in. New Orleans is still recovering from Katrina ten years on.
The flood waters recede and so will the memories of disaster – except for those directly affected. As the headlines fade, so does our awareness of the needs many still face in these communities.
It is, I suppose, the nature of our lives (abetted by the constant churn of the 24-hour news cycle) to move on – to the next headline, the next political crisis, the next world-shaking event. And in some ways, that’s a good thing; it’s more hopeful to look ahead than live life in the rear view mirror. But let’s not forget those caught in these storms who still need our help, and will for years to come. The scars of catastrophes like Harvey and Irma do not heal themselves except over time, and with great effort.
An effort in which we all should, and must, take part.