What will you do when disaster strikes?
That may sound melodramatic, but this article by the lonely planet gives a little food for thought when encountering unfortunate circumstances while you’re traveling. The article discusses the current shut down of airports across Europe after the volcanic eruption in Iceland. It probably (hopefully) won’t happen to you, but if it does, what will you do?
There’s really no way to prepare for every possible event that could go wrong while you’re traveling. It’s important to make sure you’re as flexible as possible with your travel plans and try to stay calm. When something comes up, decide what’s important to you. The businessman in the Lonely Planet article paid a cab driver over three thousand dollars to get him to Spain where his pregnant wife was waiting. It was important to him to catch a flight as soon as possible given his family situation.
If you have a little leeway in your plans, and you can take your time and evaluate your options, everything will probably work out a little better. Make sure you’ve built extra cash into your budget just in case the worse does happen. Really, even a missed flight or an unfortunate cancellation can end up costing you quite a bit more than you planned on spending, much less a disaster of this proportions.
When I was in Ireland, they had an unusually rainy couple of weeks that happened to coincide with changes in the dam system to prevent flooding further into town. At around 11:00 at night, the river and canal next to my flat flooded over. By 3:00am, there was 2 feet of water in the building, and around 4 at places on the street. The water took a couple of days to fully recede, and we were evacuated to different lodging. The experience would have been much worse if we hadn’t been flexible, and as calm as possible given the circumstances.
Funny I never thought to consider the possibility of some sort of natural disaster while traveling. Making a permanent mental note about that — thanks!
By: Joe B. on 29/04/2010
at 09:11
I would RUN AWAY!
But seriously, I would probably inform those important enough of the disaster and take it one day at a time.
By: histmk on 29/04/2010
at 11:29
I like your discussion on the topic of natural disasters because when you travel, you don’t think about anything going wrong. With earthquakes, fires, floods, typhoons , volcanoes and many others you never know when it will happen and it very well could while your on vacation. Overall, your blog was really interesting and helpful!
By: Kevin Marshall on 29/04/2010
at 11:32
I’m really not sure how calm I would be if there was a natural disaster while I was traveling because I like having plans. I blame my mother because everything is always planned but now I’ll keep that in the back of my mind.
By: Alex D. on 29/04/2010
at 11:36