Natural Disasters Expose Technological Pluses, Minuses

Technology has been both great and surprisingly ineffective this weekend during the earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunamis hitting multiple continents.

On the plus side, even from Missouri where we had traveled for the weekend for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday, we were able to use e-mail and Facebook via smartphone to stay in touch with family in California, Missouri and Michigan and friends in Japan while monitoring reports on CNN and online.

We have a close cousin and his wife who live in Sendai, the closest major city to the earthquake and tsunami, where we visited two years ago this month, with my cousin’s office a train ride away in downtown Sendai. Meanwhile, we were staying in Missouri with my sister-in-law and her husband, whose first home is a condo on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. They were concerned about the tsunami heading to the islands. After a few hours we learned that Honolulu escaped serious damage.

The disappointing thing on Friday was how little communication of any kind was coming from Japan. While we had an e-mail and saw a Facebook posting from our friend who lives in Wakayama, Japan--well inland southwest of Sendai–who told us she was fine, we had no word all day from our cousin. Apparently all cell phone service was immediately lost over there.

It was only after an interminable 18 hours that his daughter, Rie, living in the L.A. area, finally got a very brief call from our cousin. To all of our relief, she immediately posted on Facebook that our cousin and his wife were fine and together in their home that survived the quake and tsunami, though they have no water, electricity or gas, with no hope of getting any of those services anytime soon.

That’s about all she has heard except for one other communication Sunday–two days later–from her uncle in another part of Japan.

Apparently, not only is cell phone service down, but even if it was working, there also is no electricity to keep cell phones charged. No electricity (and apparently little landline phone service) also means no Internet service, at least for the average person.

If all of us are becoming more reliant on cell and mobile phones from audio and Internet communication, shouldn’t we have in place a way to ensure we can utilize these devices at some level during natural disasters and emergencies? Maybe once we get past the human loss and nuclear meltdown concerns, this disaster will also serve as a wake-up call for our technological preparedness.

Read more by Scott Hettrick at ArcadiasBest.com.