PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

VOLCANIC ASH CLOSES AIRPORTS: IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

Unless you have plans to travel to Europe, the shutdown of major airports in England and across northern Europe doesn’t mean that much. Just another news story, right?

Well, if we pay attention, there is an important message for all Americans in this event and it is this: don’t put all your transportation eggs in one basket. Don’t rely too heavily on air transport, as we do in the US, to meet all of your long haul needs.

You see, we have volcanos around here, too, We have a lot of things, including terrorism, that could shutdown air travel for weeks or months. If this happened in the US, what we would do?

First, we would jam the highways with traffic. We’ve got a great interstate highway systems in the US and enough roads to run to the moon and back several times. Yet, the highways have their limits. So do the food joints along the highways. The roads are generally unpleasant places if you have to travel more than a thousand miles and traffic jams make them that way even for shorter distances.

We don’t have great bus service and we don’t have much at all in the way of rail transportation, so people you don’t have easy access to a car would be out of luck. There would be a lot of people trying to hitch rides from city to city and maybe some people would pick them up, maybe not.

Business in America would be heavily challenged by a medium or long term shutdown in air travel. Competitors who could travel by car because they were close enough to their customers would have a clear advantage. Companies would have to come up with whole new methods of spreading sales reps around the country within reach of customers.

FedEx and UPS and a lot of the mail would shutdown along with the passenger service. So would air shipping. It would be, in short, a royal mess.  People and companies that rely on quick air shipment would be damaged. Amazon and eBay would be crippled, turned into cyber ghost businesses. That fate would hit hundreds of other online businesses, too.

So, let’s watch closely what happens in Europe over the next few days. Word is that some airports will be reopened today. I have heard no mention of whether prop aircraft can fly through the volcanic shoot, but there aren’t enough of those to make up for the loss of jets. What’s more, no one wants to ride across the Atlantic in a slow moving prop, but it could happen. 

We are very accustomed to the way things are and we get up in the morning expecting to operate, as citizens, businesses and governments, the way things were the day before. In Europe, they are getting at least a short lesson in why that is not always a good idea. If this lasts a week or more, massive adaptation will be required. Almost all other issues will take a back seat.

We should not assume that it can’t happen here. It can. Does anyone think that the terrorists from the middle east are not watching these events and studying them for clues? As for our own volcanos, the entire Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming sits atop a volcanic system. Who says that will never erupt? Who says it won’t erupt in our life times?

We have put most of our faith in air travel and neglected rail as a means of short and medium range travel. Southwest Airlines even went to court years ago to stop a high speed rail links between major cities in Texas. Now, we have a rail system that is much worse than that which was available in the late 19th century. When you put all your bets on one number, sometimes that number comes up in your favor. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

We don’t have contingency plans for things like this. Nor do we have plans for what to do if major ports are closed for weeks on end. We count on things staying the way they have always been. We have extended our interdependent tentacles of business, shipping and communications around the world. What happens if they break?

Doug Terry, 416.10

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