Cyber disaster

I am still trying to wrap my head around what happened in Japan just a few days ago. Each day brings new pictures and videos and stories, making me feel closer to and yet helplessly far away from the indescribable destruction and chaos that an 8.9 earthquake and enormous tsunami leave in their path.

I have been in earthquakes. Some dinky, some moderate, some pretty big. I have stood in doorways. I have dived under tables. I have watched household items fall and fly. I have been without utilities. I have been desperate to leave town but been trapped by landslides and an empty gas tank. I have been shaken to the very edge of my sanity by hourly and daily aftershocks. This is my frame of reference as I watch images from Japan and yet I cannot begin to imagine what the survivors are surviving.

As I try to understand what is happening an ocean away, I am also struck by how today’s technology-infused, socially networked world has changed forever how we experience a natural disaster together, as a global family.

Rob and I were sitting quietly in our living room last Wednesday night, each on our laptops, when he suddenly grabbed the TV remote and switched on CNN. The news of the earthquake was very fresh. Rob had been alerted to it by an active email group of local weather geeks. Only a brief headline appeared on Yahoo.

The images on TV were incredible. The vantage point was historical. I am intrigued by whatever decisions lead to there being a helicopter with a high-quality video camera circling above the affected area, capturing the flood of water as it overtook lives and communities. That video is science and will undoubtedly be analyzed for decades. The stream of cars on a roadway trying desperately to outrun the water…the crowd of people stranded on the top of an airport terminal…the woman frantically waving a white sheet at the helicopter as a plea for rescue. A vantage point in the moment never seen before.

Within minutes, my news feed on Facebook exploded with comments and sadness and requests for prayers for the people of Japan. A much-loved local family traveling in Malaysia were immediately in the hearts of their friends at home, proven by posts begging for replies of awareness and safety. There was a tangible sigh of relief when the wife updated her status several hours later.

We finally went to bed and woke up to a tsunami warning on the Oregon coast. Oregon’s governor sent out a message to his citizens to heed warnings and follow directions of authorities. He sent his message the one way he knew would best reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible. He put it on Twitter.

Through Facebook, I also experienced the destruction of part of a harbor in the town I went to college in, courtesy of a friend who lives very near and posted updates. I also had the privilege of praying for a man named Dave…a friend of a friend who is an airline pilot and was stuck in a tall Tokyo hotel with only water and his cell phone and aftershocks and the sound of the hotel’s I-beams creaking. I am now joining the real awe and virtual celebration that he was eventually able to fly 300 people out of harm’s way and is now safely home with his family.

Video footage of a tsunami-induced whirlpool. Vivid before and after pictures of the devastation thanks to images from Google Earth. Color photos from NASA showing that Japan’s coast moved 8 feet. All this available within days of the disaster. All of this made know to me by friends on Facebook.