Disasters remind us not to take good times for granted

The guessing here is that more than a few Merrimack Valley residents were planning to settle in for an evening of riveting TV storm coverage when, in the blink of an eye, they found themselves in a role reversal that left them feeling helpless, too.

We watch southerners cope with hurricanes the way they watch us deal with blizzards; the resilience of fellow Americans is stirring.

But unlike Hurricane Florence, which at least gave ample warning before it began pounding the Carolinas, the conflagration that erupted Thursday in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover arrived like a thief in the night, devouring quiet neighborhoods.

It had the appearance of a wartime bombing, something you might see in Baghdad or Beirut, but surely not along the I-95 corridor.

Authorities will soon determine what caused those gas lines to malfunction, and corrections will be made. If only it were that easy to repair lives.

Indeed, those residents whose lives were ravaged suddenly found themselves in the role of refugees. In a moment no one saw coming, their lives were traumatized. Instead of sitting down for supper they wound up hunkering down in shelters.

One moment: That’s all it takes for everything to change.

In 2007 a similarly apocalyptic event occurred in Minneapolis where, during the evening rush hour, the heavily traveled I-35W bridge collapsed, sending cars tumbling into the Mississippi River, killing 13 and injuring 145.

One motorist was spared, however, as her car precariously teetered on the ruptured roadway while the car ahead of her plummeted into the water.

Just before that bridge collapsed, she later told an interviewer, she was furious at her dry cleaner for having done a poor job of pressing the pleats on a skirt she planned to wear that evening.

The next thing she knew she was dangling at the door to eternity where, presumably, pleats are not all that important.

Perhaps someone who came home to Thursday’s disaster had a similar annoyance festering in his or her head just before seeing the flames and hearing the explosions.

How important must that annoyance seem this morning?

Meanwhile, we’ll hear vows of “thoughts and prayers” offered to the afflicted by mawkish TV reporters down south all weekend, which is really a futile acknowledgment that we have no control of the bad times.

But Thursday should have reminded us we don’t control the good times either.

Each day is a gift, plain and simple.

Just ask our Merrimack Valley neighbors.