The yellow means a lot of frustrated people.
Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on air travel to the Northeast earlier this week, with over 14,000 flight delays. My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected and still dealing with the aftermath of the major storm. I have a hard time, when major events like this happen, to fully understand at an emotional level, what is going on. It feels so distant and “unreal.” I wonder if others struggle with this.
Flying from O’Hare this week, it was pretty sobering to see what was at least a hundred jets parked in random places around the airport, displaced from their normal route by the storm. You can see things on the news, you can read about it online, but it is so strange how it seems completely abstract when you look out your window and your life is business as usual. Until you see something that is a directly caused from the catastrophe, “Why are all those planes parked over there, oh yeah…” Then it makes it more “real.”
Every time there is a major weather event, the first thing I do when I arrive at the airport is look at the departure board. On a normal operating day, all of the flights are white, meaning “on time.” But on a bad weather day, especially when there is a major weather system that affects a huge swath of the country, all of the flights are highlighted yellow as either “delayed” or “cancelled.” Usually I am looking at the board with selfish interest. If the board is yellow, that means my day as a pilot is going to be a mess as well. The best I can hope for is that they cancel my flights (I told you it was with selfish interest). If I actually have to fly, it means that my day is going to be a lot longer than expected with a lot of delays, a lot of sitting on airplanes not going anywhere, and a lot of people wanting to know, “When are we going somewhere?” Although I hate all of the waiting around, a sick part of me likes these bad weather days (I realize that calling Sandy, a bad weather day, is like calling the Civil War a “disagreement”), because it means things are going to be in constant change and flux. At the very least the day will be memorable, stories will come out of this day.
Looking through this selfish lens of “How does this affect me?” it is easy for me to forget the actual misery that people are suffering through (more than just my petty annoyance of having to hang out in the crew room for five hours, until they let me go home). On Monday all of the flights to New York and D.C. were highlighted yellow as cancelled. The terminal was a mess with people stranded by the storm. I realized, “Wow I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be stuck in an airport, seven hundred miles from home, not only stressing about, ‘Am I going to get home?’, but also, ‘Is my home going to be there when I get there?’
On Monday I was flying to Asheville, North Carolina. Which at the moment I was arriving, Sandy was just hitting the east coast. Ashville itself was on the outer edge of the pressure bands of the storm, and the jet was being knocked around pretty good. On the final approach winds guste upwards of forty knots. In my brain though, I wanted to get closer. I wanted to fly take the controls, go off the flight plan and fly north east. I wanted to see “it” up close. I wanted to feel the winds and the power and try to understand exactly what people would be talking about the next couple of days. I wanted to feel the storm in its full fury. I am sure you are maybe thinking, “Marc something is wrong with you,” and I would agree, but it is so hard as a human being to fully comprehend something unless you actually experience it. I guess if you have experienced something like it, like if you were in Hurricane Katrina, you could honestly say, “I know what they are going through.” If your me though, you have no idea. I am blessed for that.
I know these events are personalized when you have a friend or loved one directly affected by something you are hearing about on the news. When it’s just ” a lot of people way over there” without power, food and shelter, it seems so abstract. It’s easy to think, “Sucks to be them, I could use a pizza slice. ” When you actually know somebody, a friend or a loved one, or even a loved one of a friend, you realize, “Wow, real people are being affected by this.” I know this makes it more “real”.
I feel like in our modern world, with constant video and images and 24 hour coverage, we delude ourselves into thinking we “understand”, we “get it”, we are “practically there.” But we are seeing these things from our sofas and desks and iPhones and for us life goes on for us as normal. We dig deep and try to find compassion and empathy and connect with those people actually going through it, but we can just go back to drinking our coffee and worrying about the morning commute. I guess this is how it’s always been, to truly understand, “you had to be there.” I think the difference is, in our modern world, we have the illusion that we were.
Who do you know who has affected by the storm? Do you have any personal stories? Here’s a link to help out the people in need:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/hurricane-sandy–how-to-help.html
