September 29th, 10:48 a.m. PDT. Seismologists report a
substantial earthquake epicentered on the ocean floor 120 miles
south of the tiny bacon-strip island of American Samoa.
Within minutes the earthquake had spawned a tsunami with
terrifying consequences.
By 8:00 p.m. PDT, the news was shattering. Cars, homes, personal
possessions were destroyed or swept away by the massive waves.
And there were deaths. Those too old to heed the tsunami warning
and children ambling to school oblivious of the danger descending
upon them disproportionately accounted for the dead.
Back in the U.S. a snap decision was made to mount and launch a
disaster relief mission to fly much needed supplies and help to
the beleaguered island.
At a moment’s notice all available hands were called into action.
Enthusiastic discipline prevailed. First, the aircraft schedule
was shuffled to provide a plane. Check. Second, the situation at
ground-zero was assessed to ensure the plane could land on the
runway and that the fuel for the return flight had not been
contaminated by the tsunami. Check. The FAA and TSA were
contacted to ensure all systems go. Check.
With that, volunteers were urgently sought and over 100 quickly
came forward to fill just 34 spots. Relief supplies were assessed
and instantly purchased with a phone call to Wal-Mart’s regional
headquarters. Some 40,000 pounds of water, food, medical supplies
and more were sorted, loaded and delivered to the awaiting
aircraft. Logistics for smooth distribution upon landing were
planned in great detail.
Communications experts and equipment — satellite phones,
computers, IT cables — were quickly procured and brought
onboard. A call went out that the unoccupied seats would be made
available for any medical or government personnel and even the
media. A medical disaster team, FEMA, the Coast Guard, two
newspapers, and three television stations eagerly accepted the
offer of transportation. Volunteers packed sheets and pillows
with the full expectation of sleeping rough for a night or two.
September 30th, 4:00 p.m. PDT. A mere eighteen hours after the
initial decision, the plane took off precisely at this
pre-established time. A government operation? A launch from a
military base?
No, it was a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767. I was one of the
volunteers and in full disclosure, I am married to an employee.
On the ground the destruction was absolute, shocking. As if Atlas
himself had picked up the houses like toy-boxes, flipped them
upside down, applied a fire-hose and shaken the contents with
such destructive might that nothing was left intact. A bathroom
sink in a living room with the soaking mattress on top. Roofs
wrapping around vehicles now impaled against trees and even in
window holes. Sand-filled microwaves and irons in the yard buried
in mud. Structurally, it was like a raging bulldozer had
unremorsefully dissected interiors, transforming walls and
ceilings into a helter-skelter piles of twisted wood, plaster,
and wallboard. Windows became holes with no shred of curtains or
blinds remaining. There were no half-measures, either the waves
had failed to reach your elevation or they destroyed everything
in their way.
On the slab concrete foundation of what had a morning earlier
been a small store a bouquet of flowers wreathed the photo of a
missing six-year-old girl. Her father sat catatonically
nearby.
It is not a surprise that among the very first on the scene with
life-sustaining supplies was a company from the private sector.
Why? Because the culture of initiative and risk-taking is
critical to a successful business and precisely the attributes
required to put together a plan against unknown circumstances and
uncertain outcomes. Companies aren’t saddled with the
paralyzing bureaucracy of the government. For the most part, they
don’t get entangled in the self-defeating morass of regulations
and the government’s bloated chains of command — like FEMA
during Katrina — when making decisions. Nor do they march to the
drum of political necessity. Decisions are based on market-based
needs, not what votes they’ll bring in.
No better illustration can be had than in Samoa where a mid-sized
airline — with no experience or responsibility for relief
operations — responded more quickly and boldly than most
governmental and non-governmental institutions whose very
raison d’être is disaster relief.
A risk culture does not imply the wanton risks of the
over-leveraged Lehmans of the world that create huge
vulnerability. Rather, it’s the unencumbered thinking that
enables a couple of companies to buy $20,000 of supplies without
having to go through a hierarchical ladder of head-scratching
decision-makers checking off regulations every step of the way.
It’s the unmitigated “yes we can” — from the Bank of Hawaii —
which made their branches available as distribution points
because… they’re not under TARP. This bank was wise enough to
stay away from the government-backed subprime mortgage fiasco,
further enabling them to freely match the purchase of relief
supplies.
It’s the fluid ability that allowed Wal-Mart to overnight gather
40,000 pounds of goods into cargo palettes, load it onto trucks
for delivery to the Moby Dick–sized belly of that purple-tailed
767 and Webco, a successful small-business in Honolulu, to
proudly offer its goods. Without hesitation.
Indeed, Max Weber the 19th-century sociologist couldn’t have said
it better: “The individual bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the
apparatus in which he is harnessed.” This is precisely what the
people’s opposition to the government’s control of banks, health
care reform and so on is railing against. Our ancestors didn’t
take the enormous risk of traveling across the Atlantic to
inhabit a new world that would be a carbon-copy of the
rules-shackled society they left behind.
Like Hawaiian Airlines, they wanted to take off — running with
the freedom to be enterprising.
