Nothing like a little mass distruction to start the day.

I woke Friday morning to the sound of my favorite radio deejay's voice calmly advising that there would be a tsunami arriving at 8 and that I should check the news for details. Her message was brief, without substantiating details. My first groggy thought was, "Is it April 1st? Is she trying to fool us?" Quickly becoming alert, I convinced myself that, no, it was still March. So I went to the computer to see what I could learn. Little did I know then what a wake up call this was.

There had been a massive earthquake in Japan and the entire Pacific bowl was to be affected by a tsunami. I quickly gathered what information I could to first determine my own safety, then set out to get a better picture of the bigger story.

Family okay, check.
Others in my community okay, check.
Then I heard that schools were closed. I've heard of snow days, but tsunami days?!

I put two and two together, realizing that a couple of our local schools are shelter locations during events such as this and drove down to the local elementary school to see if I could lend a hand. A representative from the American Red Cross assured me that they had only about twenty evacuees and that they had plenty of support for that number of people. He suggested that how I could really help would be to become directly involved with disaster relief in my area. You see, said he, most of the volunteers had to come from miles away to support this morning's evacuation effort. Had this turned out to be a real large-scale disaster, one where people are not just temporarily displaced, but homes are destroyed, infrastructure is disrupted or damaged and all things are thrown into a shocking state of mayhem, he and they would not have been able to get here so easily, at least not without a helicopter. Seriously.

So that got me to thinking as I was listening to my fear shouting, "We've got to do something!" My fear fed by remembering all the criticism over how long it took FEMA to get clean water to the communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina, or the utter helplessness I feel when I hear, "what are they going to do about those over-heating nuclear reactors?" The hackles of idealism are going up along the ridge of my back as I type. Something's got to be done. Just who is this they anyway? It's really all about me, us, and we, when it comes down to it. Isn't it? The way I see it, having better and more local safeguards in place, including being personally prepared, is critical in ensuring that disaster victims are cared for quickly and effectively. No matter where you live, there's some real threat of something happening that can devastate your life, your family, your home, your community. Any of us could be a disaster victim. I know you need no convincing that the threat is real!

...and here I am all up in arms and at the same time full of anxiety over the sheer insignificance that I feel when I consider the size of the role that I alone play in all this. In the midst of knowing I'm safe and others are in sheer tumult. I've got to do something and I could be doing so much more. Taking a big, deep breath, there's a swell of relief that comes when I realize that I'm not alone, it is we who are at work here. ... and WE make a difference every time we increase our awareness and open our hearts toward others. We care, we can't help it. These small actions of compassionate listening empower us to know what to do in times like these by improving our ability to respond and to feel the significance of the profound ripple effect each of our efforts has on the healing of the whole.

I'm going to start small and work outward from there. I've decided I will engage in a conversation with my husband to come up with a disaster preparedness plan for our household, something we haven't done formally. I want to have a plan for what we'll do if disaster strikes and we're apart when it happens. ...and I want to have this plan in place by the end of this week. What if we can't reach each other by phone and panic begins to take hold? I know for us, having an agreement about what we'll do so that we can count on certain behavior from one another is key. I will start there. The Red Cross has all kinds of information about disaster preparedness and is a wonderful resource for you to find ways to help, too. I hope you'll join me in taking some actions this week to ensure that we're even more ready to protect ourselves and to care for each other when disaster strikes again. All I'm asking is that you decide to do something to prepare yourself just a bit better. Join me and develop a disaster preparedness plan for yourself. Are you in? Let me know what you decide by leaving a comment.