Henrietta Hay's Column

The soothsayer advised Julius Caesar to "beware of the ides of March." Since today is the ides of March, I think I'll take the old man's advice. But no matter how cautious or how careful I am, I am always vulnerable to the randomness of disaster.

The American pioneers traveling across the mountains and the prairies in covered wagons had many dangers to face - Indians, mountain lions, blizzards, blazing sun, starvation, disease.

In the late twentieth century we would like to think we live in a safer world where we have controlled our environment. Our homes and offices are heated and air conditioned, our cars have air bags; our children are safe in their schools. Yeah, yeah, sure! The same randomness of disaster that dogged the pioneers is still with us.

In the space of one week we had the rescue of the missing skiers above Aspen and the explosion in the World Trade Center in New York. That made for pretty heavy reading and listening. There was not much in common between the two, except the randomness with people were selected to live or die.

When the skiers became lost in the blizzard we reacted emotionally. We were concerned, followed rescue efforts closely and were happy when the five people were rescued. Only random luck, however, had kept them alive. With a hundred avalanches roaring down around them, why did they not get buried in one? They were skillful and experienced skiers, but they didn't know where the snow slides would run. That all the slides missed the people was random luck.

And why did the avalanches miss the skiers, while just a few miles away four cars, whose drivers were simply trying to get home, get buried by an avalanche that closed I 70 for hours? Random disaster!

The skiers went knowingly into a dangerous situation and they lucked out. So does John Elway every Sunday during football season. Wayne Gretsky faces danger every time he skates out onto the rink and Olympic ski racers defy death on every run. So, for that matter, do the joggers I see on Horizon Drive. But most of the time they all survive and go home to dinner.

On the other hand, the secretary in an office on the 85th floor of the World Trade Center in New York was simply minding her own business and doing her job. The chief danger she faced, so she thought, was the anger of her boss if she blew an assignment. But when the building shook and the lights went out and she could smell smoke she felt herself, in a blinding moment of panic, completely isolated, and suspended high in space with no support. She walked down 85 flights of steps in smoke-filled stairwells and emerged safely on solid ground an hour or so later. Why her? Why did she get caught and not the secretary in the building across the street? People high in the air lived. People under the ground died. The bomb was not random, but its effects were.

Disasters are random. We don't know when they are coming or what form they will take, which makes it pretty hard to avoid them. Many of them are natural but many we have created for ourselves. Earthquakes and erupting volcanoes and avalanches we can't do a lot about, but tall buildings and skis and bombs we have made ourselves. I often wonder why we spend so much time trying to be perfectly safe.

Alar on apples sends us into a panic, while we think nothing of driving mountain roads in winter. I wonder whether the intrepid skiers eat only natural foods with no chemicals in order to be safe. The poor secretary probably carries mace to avoid being mugged on her way to work.

One of my friends claims that he is much too lazy and faint-hearted to do anything "dangerous." But he scarfs down chocolate and caffeine and buttered popcorn as he watches the danger on TV. If it is all random anyway, why worry? But just to be on the safe side, "Beware of the ides of March."