Drawn to Disaster

When I was about ten, I began reading every book on the Titanic I could find. I also watched every movie that popped up on TV: A Night to Remember, SOS Titanic, etc. In fact, I strongly disliked the Cameron version because of its inaccuracies, which shows what a Titanic geek I had become. And of course, a pilgrim of peril, I journeyed to two Titanic museum exhibits.

My interest in disasters has not been limited to the Titanic. I’ve read books on ship fires, explosions, disappearances…...also, non-maritime disasters such as circus and coal mine fires….In fact, I’ve perused books on about every conceivable disaster that’s occurred to (sometimes caused by) humans. Every summer I read at least one gripping account of people attempting to escape a terrible fate. Right now, I’m reading about the great Peshtigo fire.

Why would I do this to myself, you might ask? Most people pick up Danielle Steele or John Grisham for their summer reads. I suspect the answer lies in my birth. I was born in the early 1960s, when babies didn’t always survive difficult births. I nearly died of asthma at birth, later nearly drawing my last breath once again at age two. When I was a teenager working the breakfast shift at McDonald’s, I looked both ways at a sleepy rural intersection. It was 5 a.m.—but my father always taught me to look both ways. A truck barreled through a red light from the other direction—and had I not looked, I would have been dead instantly. In my twenties, I took a propeller plane from Oahu to Molokai; this same plane crashed with a total loss of life shortly thereafter. Just a few days ago, a woman died when railroad cars carrying ethanol derailed, sending up a wall of flame. I have passed this same intersection many times, often at the very time this accident occurred.

I think these occurrences, at least in part, explain why I am drawn to disasters. I don’t like to read about pain or death…..but I do like to read about survivors. How do some people manage to elude the Grim Reaper? Sometimes it’s sheer luck, but other times it’s due to a refusal to give up or by keeping a clear head. Sometimes in my life, I was purely lucky to escape injury or death, but in the cause of the asthma attacks, I stubbornly held on to life, like a survivor hanging onto a life raft after her ship has sunk.

Perhaps this is the reason I don’t like to read about disasters or tragedies without survivors, such as Pompei or the 9-11 airplanes. Survivors’ stories are often exciting and varied—and something about their narratives connects to the part of me that fought for every breath as a baby.