Situational Awareness

A practice called situational awareness is a key part of emergency operations.  In simple terms, it means being aware of what is going on that might affect what you are doing. I’m sure that the emergency management teams responding to Hurricane Florence have included this in their work.  When I was the “commander” of an emergency management team, we had at least two people assigned to situational awareness.  Their job was to take note of the wider environment – the weather forecast, traffic conditions, upcoming events, reports from state officials, and things like that.  This information helped others on the team solve problems and respond effectively in their assigned areas.  

When you are in a crisis mode, it is all too easy to develop tunnel vision.  You focus so intently on the problem in front of you that you miss the bigger picture. For example, if you fail to note that a road has been closed, you may not be able to get your supplies where they need to go.  Or if you are unaware that a road has reopened, you may waste energy and effort on an unnecessary detour.  (The book Five Days at Memorial details a chilling view of failure resulting from lack of situational awareness among other things post-Katrina.) 

As a somewhat trivial example, we were isolated for a time during the aftermath of Florence by flooded and washed out roads; we were like a little island.  I became so focused on feeding us with what I had in the house that I was not paying attention to when roads began opening with new detour routes to the grocery store. 

It is easy in a disaster to focus on what we need to do to survive and recover.  That is important and necessary.  Those who have lost everything are rightfully attending to their own problems.  But they, too, need situational awareness. They don’t have to do everything themselves.  There are organizations and agencies and individuals who can help.  

And, I think, in this time we could also use some spiritual situational awareness.  It is easy to focus on our own needs, our own problems, our own issues, or those of our nearest and dearest, and pray for those.  That is important and right.  But might we also widen our circle of concern to those we don’t know, praying for them, too? Might we reach out to strangers, here at home and around the world, with tangible support – money, cleanup supplies, hands-on help where possible?  

The flood waters here are slowly receding.  The full scope of the devastation is yet to be known. One early estimate is that over 5000 structures in our county are destroyed.  There will be years and years of recovery, and some will never recover. And a world away in Indonesia, a tsunami has wiped out a whole landscape.  Hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, are dead.  Spiritual situational awareness calls us to focus on events and conditions in our wider world, to care for those in need wherever they are. 

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor is the one in need.  The first two who passed by the wounded stranger were focused on their own situations, perhaps bound by the requirements of their religion to avoid contamination.  The third man, the Samaritan, focused on the other rather than himself.  He was aware of the wider situation.  And at his own expense, he reached out to help a stranger.  

Many have done that in these recent weeks.  At their own expense – of time, money, effort, convenience – they have reached out to help strangers.  May we all find a way to do that, to focus on others with the same intensity as we focus on ourselves.  And may God bless our feeble efforts to help a hurting world.