“Do you remember what you were doing, this time eight years ago in the August of 2001?”

August 14, 2009

“Do you remember what you were doing, this time eight years ago in the August of 2001?”

Summer is a mixture of lazy vacations and busy preparations. This is especially true for the month of August.

Chantal and Dean; hurricanes Erin, Felix and Gabrielle forming and dissipating. With the exception of Gabrielle’s crossing of Florida, most of the effort was in the watching.

Parents were surely preparing for the first day of school when students would return to classes. Baseball pennant races were on and both college and professional football teams were practicing for their fall debuts. Current events focused on the controversial removal of a 10 Commandments monument from the Alabama Judiciary building and President Bush’s position on stem cell research.

No matter what your focus was, it surely didn’t include consideration of the events looming this time eight years ago. As a nation, we did not include terrorism in our daily list of concerns, but soon enough it would become the number one discussed threat. For those of us in South Florida there was so much more we were overlooking.

The agents for the 9/11 bombings were living and preparing in our neighborhoods. Maybe you have never thought about it, but many of us certainly passed one or more of them in stores, restaurants and on the streets. Just like the countless conversations struck up with strangers in public, many South Floridians came in contact with these soon-to-be infamous villains.

Among the lessons we should have learned, but may have been eclipsed in the tragedy, is that no one knows what dangers they encounter and fortunately avoid on a daily basis. Throughout our lives, each of us pass within the reach of disaster whether it is someone seeking a target for a crime, a brewing natural disaster or a freak accident waiting to happen. Many times we are spared just by the sake of timing.

This is not to advocate paranoia or isolationism but vigilance and awareness. There are many things in our life we cannot control and rightly we should not dwell on it. However, that is not an excuse for common misconceptions such as “that will never happen to me” or “that only happens in the movies”. Bad things do happen every day; unthinkable things and they happen to perfectly ordinary people like you and me.

What will tomorrows headlines hold which we are unable to predict today? What surprises will have media agencies across the country scrambling to cover tomorrow, next week or next month? As a Business Continuity planner I ask myself these questions as part of my nature. For the average person it is not in their makeup, but it should become part of their routine, to be aware of their surroundings, current events and breaking news. Ignorance is never protection against disaster. Today is a good day to remember when we were blissfully ignorant of the future and how we felt when ignorance became misfortune.

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