Be Prepared, Emergency vs Disaster, a Short Story

Here is a short story I wrote for you.

We are about to start discussing how to face and overcome disasters, but before we do, it is important to understand the nature of disasters, how to prevent them and the importance of being prepared as discussed earlier.

While all the planning and preparation activities spoken about in other parts of this site might not seem particularly exciting or perhaps may be considered too much work, it is interesting to note that if a situation occurs that you are prepared for, it may never even become a disaster. Think about that for a second, because emergency situations can be predicted and effective action can be taken to prepare for them and thus disasters can be avoided.

Consider a person going out into the snowy countryside or mountains in their car for a day of leisurely driving to take in the scenery. We’ll call him Joe. Let’s say Joe recently had to use his spare and hasn’t gotten a new tire or the old one repaired yet, or perhaps his emergency tools were lent out and never returned. He doesn’t dress too warmly because he’ll be staying in the car and doesn’t mention to anyone where he is going. He “never gets lost” so doesn’t bother bringing a map.

Can you see the formula for disaster starting to develop here?

So off Joe goes, deep into the mountains and has a great time, the place is isolated, pristine and beautiful with not another soul in sight all day! He starts to get a bit hungry and realizes that he forgot to bring some candy bars and drank the last of his coke a while ago, anyways it’s getting late so he should start heading back and he can just stop at a restaurant once he gets back to civilization.

He carefully turns the car around and heads in the direction he came from. After a while he begins to realize that he doesn’t recognize anything around here and doesn’t remember coming in on this dirt road, which he keeps seeing in patches through the snow as he drives along. He stops the car and gets out. It’s startling cold outside the car. With his foggy breath enveloping him he gazes around, trying to orient himself through the trees on either side of the small, snow covered dirt road and with a sinking, slightly worried feeling he hears a little voice in his head
saying meekly, “I think I’m lost.”

And now dusk is falling.

Shaking off the uneasy feeling steadily growing in the pit of his stomach, Joe gets back into the car, turns the heat way up and, after warming his fingers a little, turns around again and starts back-tracking. He is determined not to embarrass himself by using his cell phone to call for help. After driving quite a while, distracted by the constant rumblings in his stomach, tired, thirsty and aching from tensely leaning forward to follow the road peering into the darkness and dense snow falling through the beams of his headlight, he is beginning to think he should have taken the other fork in the road, some miles back. He keeps repeating to himself that he never gets lost and tries to cheer himself up with thoughts of finally being on an adventure. Suddenly he is startled when his car hits a sharp rock protruding into the side of the road. Slowing to a stop he hears the loud hiss of air escaping one of his tires. He closes his eyes and, groaning, lowers his head to rest on the steering wheel. “Great,” he thinks to himself, lightly
banging his head up and down on the steering wheel, “now I am truly screwed in trouble.”

He sets the parking brake, turns off the engine and reluctantly opens the door and gets out. After standing there for a few moments, he sighs heavily, shakes his head and trudges forlornly along the side of the car to look at the damage to his tire, that he knows he has no way of replacing. Having studied it a few minutes as best he could, crouched down in the driving snow and darkness, he heads to the trunk at the back of the car, opens it and gazes at the flat tire in there, perhaps hoping that by some miracle it had repaired and re-inflated itself. No such luck. By now the cold is starting to seep through his tennis shoes and his feet are freezing, his hands are already numb and he notices he is shivering. Time to get back in the warm car.

After getting warm again he brightens up a bit, figuring he can still at least make very slow progress with the car, so he gets it rolling, but after ten feet it stops. The flat tire has come partly off the rim and the wheel is just spinning in the snow. He decides the time has come to swallow his pride and call for help, takes out his cell phone… he is out of range. Well at least he has a car to stay warm in, he glances at the fuel gauge, almost empty.

In this particular story our Joe does not die. The next morning some people driving an SUV to their mountain lodge are surprised to find a car stopped in the middle of the road, covered in ice and snow, the inside of the glass heavily coated with frozen condensation and Joe curled up, shivering, in the back seat. In the end Joe was lucky.

It took Joe almost two weeks to fully recover from that one night. But he learned his lesson and never again invited disaster by not being prepared.

The moral of the story is that an emergency only truly becomes a disaster when you haven’t in some way predicted it and taken effective action to prepare for it.

BE PREPARED!