Situation Awareness---Act on it!

 Murph has posted a couple of post-Ida stories over the last few days.  He's always had pretty good posts over the last several years, (even if they have been getting fewer and farther between-hint, hint) with a lot of good thoughts and stories.  If you haven't read him, you should.

In any case, his last few posts have been about the situation in the New Orleans area after the hurricane.  He made the decision early to ride the storm out and then proceeded to act on that decision, procuring the  necessary supplies (food, water, fuel, protection (not that he needed much of the latter) etc.) before the crowd went berserk.  As such, he successfully rode out the storm and was in a position post storm to help others not so lucky or not so ready.

Good on ya', Murph!  This post is about another couple of examples of good SA, if for no other reason than the participants are still alive and kickin'.

For purposes of this post, let's use Wikipedia's definition of Situational Awareness.

"Situational awareness or situation awareness is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status." Emphasis mine.

 

As many of you know, Mrs Juvat and I have a couple of guest houses on our property.  One is being used by our DIL to quarantine their dog Tex in preparation for a move to Hong Kong. The other we advertise on AirBnB and VRBO for short term rental.  It has been fairly regularly occupied so far this year, in the 70-80% range. Yay us!

But, because school has started back up in Texas (Yay, Gov Abbott!), during the week occupancies have slowed a bit.

In any case, it's Sunday, Aug 29th and we're stripping the beds and washing sheets, when Mrs J's phone gives the VRBO ding.  She looks at it and it's a reservation request.  She opens it up and it's for that night.  We've done quick turns before, but we've always known about it before that day.  In the request, the people said they were evacuating New Orleans and wouldn't be arriving until 10PM.

Ahh, No Sweat, plenty of time.  Usually, it only takes us an hour or so to turn it.  We approved the request.  Get up the next morning and take the dogs for a walk, happen to notice our guests on the porch, so we go over and introduce ourselves and ask if they need anything.  We get to chatting and I asked what time they'd gotten in. (We didn't see their vehicle parked when we hit the rack at about 10.)  They said about 2AM, I asked when they'd left New Orleans. About 7AM.  

19 hours!

Source

They were a younger couple, early 30's I'd say. Very nice.  He had EMT plates on his car and I asked him about that. He said that an EMT certification was required for what he did.  He's a Dive Medic for an oil company and works on the drill rigs in the gulf, providing medical assistance if needed to divers in the water.  They were an interesting and friendly couple and we talked for quite a while.  

I finally asked what prompted them to leave and why relatively late in the process.  He said they had originally planned to wait it out and had all the supplies and stuff they were likely to need to do so.  However, the last few hours before they left, they started getting an uneasy feeling about "things".  Nothing they could actually put a finger on, but things were different.  Different people in the neighborhood, strange phone calls with people hanging up when they answered, just strange.  Both of them had picked up the same vibes separately. Somehow it came up in conversation and they both said they thought the neighborhood was being cased for looting.

And that my friends, is a very good "real life" definition of Situation Awareness. That's the first part of the process. The second is acting on it.

So they loaded up their valuables, supplies, extra gas and food and their pets and left.  Took them awhile, but...they made it to safety.

Did they need to leave?  Who knows?  Could they have stayed? Again, who knows.  The only thing that matters is they're alive and safe now.

They stayed for the 3 nights we had open. Rented a climate controlled storage unit in town, parked much of their good stuff and a car in it and are going to spend the next week or two touring the west until things calm down and recover in New Orleans.

Sounds like a plan.

So...There I was* (and I may have told this story before, but that was pre-Beans, so here goes)

I'm a newly qualified Eagle Driver stationed at Kadena.  We've deployed down to Clark for Cope Thunder.  I'm only a wingman, so my duties are pretty easy. Fly formation, stay off the radio (except for "two", "Mayday" or "Lead you're on fire") so I don't have a lot of mission prep planning to do for the next day's morning go.

I decide I'm going to go shopping in downtown Angeles City.  Mrs J had given me a long list of items that she'd like me to pick up for her as well as gifts for the family, and the PI was the place to do that.

It's Oct 29, 1987, I take a taxi from Chamber's Hall (the visiting officers quarters (VOQ) for Clark) to the main gate.  The shopping district starts on the other side of the street.  Start making my way down the street and it's the usual PI routine.  Vendors coming up asking what I'm looking for, promising the lowest prices for the highest quality.  I work my way through them fairly quickly as the shop I want to get to is on the other end of the road, probably a quarter mile.  Lots of traffic on the streets and sidewalks.

AKA normal Angeles City activity.

Substitute Day for dusk and this is essentially what it looked like
Source

I get to the shop, say hello to the proprietor, and spend some time looking at the things she's showing me from Mrs J's list, haggling a bit, buying most.  Maybe half an hour has past.  Done shopping with a large bag of goodies in hand, I step back outside and start heading for the main gate.  I've gone about half a block when I get a nagging feeling that something's very wrong.  There are not anywhere near the same amount of people or traffic on the street as there was when I left the base. Also, the people that I did see seemed to be in a very big hurry to get somewhere.

It didn't take me a second to realize that I needed to be elsewhere. I ducked into the next store, walked to the back of the store, and sat down on the floor.  It was a Ladies Lingerie store.  Sat there for about 10 minutes then heard some sirens and the sound of a tracked vehicle going down the street, another 5 minutes or so, the Lady who owned the shop came to where I was seated and said "You can go now, the police have secured the area." I thanked her, dropped a $20 on the counter (for taking up valuable floor space), and hot footed it back to the base.

Asked the Security Policemen what had happened, after he VERY carefully checked my ID before letting me in.  He said that three Americans had been killed less than a half mile from where I'd done my shopping.

That night, at the Club whilst sipping on a medicinal Scotch, I came to believe that my Guardian Angel didn't want to go through Eternity being heckled by the other Angels as the one that didn't protect his assigned Fighter Pilot from being assassinated in a Lady's Lingerie store, so gave me a little heads up.  

I whispered a "Thank You!"

Turns out that one of the guys that had been in my squadron from Moody and now assigned to Clark, had been driving home from Clark and approached the normal checkpoint for his housing area when his SA alarms started going off.  He recognized none of the armed guards and their uniforms were "not quite right." He decided that discretion was the better part of valor and that it would be better to apologize the next day for being wrong than to be dead.  (Simple and inarguable logic there.) So, he floored his Camaro and leaned over into the passenger seat and ran the gate.  Turns out his instincts were right.  A communist "sparrow" (hit squad) had killed the guards and were going to kill any Americans that came through the check point.

He was the captain mentioned in the article I linked to a couple of paragraphs above.

Situational Awareness, if something doesn't seem right, act as if it isn't right. The worst that can happen is you act slightly foolish. Failure to act can be much worse.

Peace out, y'all.