Japan earthquake and tsunami today reminds us how important communication is

Today’s 8.9 earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunami reinforce how interconnected we all are. It reminds us of the famous Butterfly Effect, which hypothesizes that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can affect the weather in New York.

After the initial quake and tsunami occurred near Sendai, Japan the global alerting safety network sprung into action. As tsunami’s were anticipated from Hawaii to the Western U.S., cities, counties, banks, hospitals, universities, all sprang into action and put their warning systems to work. This morning, messages quickly began to fly across the globe to already affected areas, so areas that were projected to be in harm’s way. The subjects of these alerts ranged from “be prepared” to “evacuate to higher ground,” and then to concluding messages as the waves subsided asking “are you ok?” While we cannot measure easily or put a price on the number of lives saved or tragedies averted by all of these notifications, we can simply look inward and ask ourselves how much better would we feel if we had received a message warning us about the potential danger or been checked on to make sure we were ok? Let those messages fly.