FROM THE FIELD
October 2005
When Wingtips Touch, What's Your Response?

At the Chicago Air & Water Show this year, two USAF Thunderbird F-16s touched wingtips during their performance. One of the aircraft lost a wingtip missile rail, which fell harmlessly into Lake Michigan. At no time was the beachfront crowd endangered. The aircraft landed safely. The pilots were unhurt.

In some ways, the incident was almost a non-event. The Thunderbirds routinely fly 2’ to 3’ apart. A little closer, 18”, is not unusual. So the incident really only reflected a small miscalculation.

And yet it was a warning. So rather than wait for a full-on disaster, the Thunderbirds took action. They announced they’d remain grounded pending investigations of what happened and how, if possible, to avoid a repeat event. It’s a simple concept, yet tempting to ignore: Learn, and adapt. Sometimes it’s expensive. But it’s less expensive than the alternative.

Most of us, as a culture, a nation and an industry, often take the opposite approach. We sweat the near-misses but don’t take much action, feeling a little lucky and betting on more of the same. We keep hanging chandeliers before the foundation is right. Hurricane Katrina proved that. FEMA, quietly underfunded for years because it was more tempting to spend the money elsewhere, fell apart. New Orleans, built below sea level and entirely dependent on nature’s good will, was destroyed in a disaster that had long been predicted.

Learn, and adapt. It’s less expensive than the alternative.

Today, oil and natural gas rigs in the Gulf are torn up. Refineries are torn up. Pipelines are damaged. Statistically small items in the global energy scheme, they’ve shown us just how delicate the balance really is. We’re very close to the edge at all times.

And what of the Port of New Orleans and the Port of South Louisiana? At this writing, the two—ranked fifth and first in tonnage among U.S. ports—are a wreck. Nothing’s moving, no imported produce, no U.S. grains for export, no ore, no petroleum. The Mississippi River is impassable.

So what’s it all got to do with you, in Ohio, or Nebraska, or Maine? First, stop assuming that someone, somewhere, is all set to take care of you in a disaster. Start making your own plans.

How many of you have backup generators to run refrigeration, if nothing else, during emergencies? How many of your food distributors have alternate plans for dealing with supplier shortages? How will you stay in business if supplies some day are stuck on a barge on the Mississippi, or the Missouri, or wherever?

And what about the energy? Have you developed contingency plans for catastrophic energy rates? We had the California calamity five years ago. We’ve had the Iraq war going for a couple years now. We have other big energy consumers coming online. We have some energy-industry experts concerned that peak oil production is very close, meaning supply growth won’t keep up with demand growth.

What, exactly, are you waiting for? Have you figured out how high your utility bills can go before you have to shut the lights off? You get utility bills every month. You can plug in some numbers and figure out at what point your profits would fall to zero.

Learn, and adapt. It’s less expensive than the alternative.

Brian Ward
Chief Editor