Personalizing Disaster

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to distance yourself from a tragedy when you don’t know anyone involved? A tsunami halfway around the world. An earthquake in China. A car bomb in Iraq. A plane flying into the Pentagon. A train wreck in Silver Spring.

It’s almost a relief to say, “But I didn’t know anyone.” And that’s usually true.

But tonight at our book club meeting, we learned that our neighbors’ daughter had been in the train that recently crashed in Silver Spring. She was coming home from her summer internship on the Red Line. She was in the 3rd car. Her parents were in Spain.

She was slammed into the seat, but she wasn’t hurt other than being left in a state of shock. The people in her car knew others had died because they had phones and iPhones and Blackberries and any manner of other devices that connected them electronically to what the world was saying about they disaster they found themselves in.

The response efforts to those affected but not injured was not at all adequate. They told them they could leave. But where could they go and how? It was two hours later that they sent buses to pick them up.

Meanwhile this young woman whose birth we well remember had called her parents in Spain to let them know she was one of the survivors.

I suddenly felt a new connection to a disaster I had almost brushed aside because I didn’t know anyone involved. Why should that be?