10.16.06
News from the Pacific
I am in Hawaii, having survived yesterdays earthquake, and had some observations I shared with my graduate students. Here is the posting from their class blog:
I had mentioned in class that I would be gone most of this week presenting a paper at a conference. The conference is ELearn 2006, an international conference on ELearning, held this year here in Hawaii. I arrived late Thursday and my presentation was yesterday. At 7 yesterday morning, local time, we had a 6.5 magnitude earthquake. My room is on the 14th floor and it was a wild ride for about 10-15 seconds. Of course, before going to bed the night before I watched a Discovery Channel documentary on the 2004 tsunami and so the first thing that entered my mind, since our hotel is right on the beach at Waikiki, was that. There turned out to be no tsumani because of the depth of the quake (about 12 miles down), but had there been one, it would have arrived here only 20 minutes after the quake. Power went out and was out for over 14 hours before finally being restored about 9:30 last night. By the way, I did give my presentation, but without electricity. Our meeting rooms here have large windows that open, as all face the sea. We opened all the windows, had plenty of natural light and a nice sea breeze, and went ahead with the conference sessions (without, of course, our computers, PowerPoint slides, etc.). I think it turned out OK, though, because the sessions were more informal, allowed for more interaction, and weren’t tied to the canned presentations as much. When it became dark and the power had still not returned, the hotel issued us all light sticks (like kids use on Halloween). They worked fine and we got by.
I wanted to comment on a few observations I had with regard to technology and our dependence upon it. These are small examples that happened here:
- One of the biggest problems at the airport was the toilets. The autoflush systems need power to operate and there is no manual flush backup. Nobody at the airport could use them, and people were stuck there all day (of course, we didn’t know about any of this at the time, since we didn’t have power … I read it in the Honolulu paper this morning)
- Cell phones worked sporadically on auxiliary power, so I got all my news by calling my wife in Illinois, having her look at CNN.com on the Internet, and report to me what was happening here! She wanted to know what was going on, but we were clueless here because we had no communications (TV, Internet, etc.) except cell phones. So she told me what was going on around me because I had no way of finding out.
- When you lack communication with the outside world, you become a community of your own, operating independently of that outside world. Most all of the guests in this hotel (which is a considerable number … it is 25 floors with hundreds of rooms) stayed here, since venturing out was dangerous (no traffic lights since all power on the island was out). Many rumours flew around with no way to verify any of them unless you could get through on a cell call. Without cell phones, it’s hard to say how we would have found out anything. People talked, made friends with total strangers, and just sat around and relaxed. It was really something you don’t see much of any more under normal circumstances.
- People are very resilient and can adapt quickly to unforseen and unanticipated situations.
- We have a great reliance on technology. If it weren’t for the disaster preparedness plan that this hotel has, things would have been a lot worse. They broke out supplies of water, food, and kept us fed all day even though there was no supply coming from the outside into the hotel. They had auxiliary power and knew exactly which things to keep powered and which to shut down. We had lighting in the emergency stairwells and all hallways, but all other lights were off. They kept the ice machines in their kitchens powered so they would have ice for us, and minimal power to be able to cook. They also powered their refrigerators and food stores so that they could provide us with food, having no idea how long the power would be out, as well as the speaker system when they needed to talk to us. They had the supply of light sticks to give us so that we could navigate in our rooms after dark and their employees were well-trained on what to do, moving right into disaster mode without missing a beat. The employees had battery-powered lanterns to cook and work by and they had really planned ahead for this contingency. So while we didn’t have elevators, Internet, radio, or TV, we got along fine as a group and got through it all unscathed.
Today, everything is pretty much back to normal, but a few hours without technology was, actually, quite refreshing. I wouldn’t recommend the earthquake to anyone, but getting away from technology for awhile is good for the psyche.
See you next Monday.
Dr. Garrett
