Ten years ago our lives changed forever.
It doesn't matter if you were the 50-year-old CEO of a Fortune 500 company in lower Manhattan trying to get in touch with your family; a 40-year-old HR manager of a mid-sized business in Kansas City reaching out to a stunned work force; or a 30-year-old stay-at-home dad in between journalism jobs hugging his two confused toddlers so tight they started to cry.
When those towers fell, so did our way of life, as we knew it. We lost more than a symbol of our way of life and thousands of innocent lives and heroic first responders, we lost our sense of security and what normal is in our everyday lives.
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And it goes far beyond the TSA and the Patriot Act. It practically gave birth to our 24-hour news cycle and the talking heads that tagged along. When something happens now – whether it deserves it (the debt ceiling) or not (some politicians' inappropriate tweets) – it gets covered like a security blanket. And maybe that's what we're looking for.
I bring this up a few days early not because of any inherent disregard for the Labor Day holiday or because those same toddlers are now in middle school without any idea what life was like before. In fact, that day cut me in such a way that I've never been able to really write about it before.
No, I write this with a growing sense of dread that despite the historic tragedy that day shoved down our throats, we still don't get it.
Never mind that there's no single bandwidth on which first responders can communicate, which would have saved dozens – if not hundreds – of lives that day. And forget about all those close calls we've had since then with crazed religious zealots trying to blow up shoe bombs with cardboard matches.
As if that's not enough, a new SHRM survey reveals only 76 percent of organizations have formal disaster plan in place – a 22 percent jump since 9/11. And despite even that bump, only a third of them feel "very" prepared for a similar event.
What do else do you need to happen? A crazed ex-employee marching in with a semiautomatic? Check. How about a hurricane, earthquake or raging wildfire? Check.
So what are you waiting for?
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