Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Making the rounds on Twitter…

Thursday’s in-flight death of Continental Airlines pilot, Craig Lenell, may have been a surprise to passengers, but it’s not the first time a pilot has died in-flight. As recently as 2007, another Continental pilot died en route from Houston to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  An MSNBC list of other instances where pilots died or passed out in-flight is published here.

Lenell, who served 32 years as a Continental pilot, was 60 and apparently healthy (per FAA rules, commercial pilots over 40 are required to undergo twice-yearly physicals). He died of a heart attack. According to CNN, of the five pilots who have died in-flight since 1994 (when the FAA began tracking this information) all were filed under the category “cardiac.”

Just like more firefighters die from heart-related conditions than fires, more pilots die from heart attacks than plane crashes. In this case, it’s hard to say if age was a factor. Up until two years ago, Lenell would have been forced to retire at 60. But in 2007, Congress voted to raise the mandatory retirement age to 65. Proponents of the change say that age is a positive, rather than a negative: more experienced pilots are typically safer pilots. The average age of pilots in the US has been gradually rising (check out the FAA stats here), and CNN predicts that Thursday’s death will revive the debate over pilots’ mandatory retirement age. 

Introducing a new, highly portable Unthinkable. Fifty percent lighter. New bonus section on How to Boost your Survival Odds and assorted other updates. More book, less money. Ta-da! 

For what may be the first time in my life, I’m looking forward to going to Crystal City, VA. On Aug. 10, I’ll be talking at the National Conference on Community Preparedness. This year, the conference is all about Citizen Corps. I am looking forward to hearing if, under a new administration, Citizen Corps will finally get the kind of support it deserves… It’s a powerful concept that most people, unfortunately, still know little or nothing about.

Citizen Corps was created after 9/11. In some towns and states, Citizen Corps is doing remarkable things--building rock-solid resilience by mobilizing and connecting regular people to take more responsibility for their own preparedness and survival. In other places, it’s, well, somewhat less impressive.

The organizers are also expecting Craig Fugate, the new head of FEMA, to talk, along with an audience of about 750 state and local officials, emergency management, first responders, private business and industry, advocacy groups, and members of the public. Stay tuned…

Wherever I go to talk about the brain in disasters, I get asked one question in particular: What about children? How does a child’s brain respond to a disaster? Is it different than an adult’s brain?

Yes, very different. And the differences make children both better and worse at responding to disasters. It depends on the age of the child and the type of disaster, of course, along with a million other caveats. But here’s what we know:

* Before a disaster strikes—Young children have extremely plastic brains. They can learn faster than adults, making them ideal targets for hands-on training. They are also free of the baggage that adults carry--the fear of looking foolish or overreacting. That’s why firefighters visit schools. Children stop, drop and roll. They don’t just talk about it. And the brain learns much better by doing than by talking. To quote this Time story on a child’s brain:

“While new synapses continue to form throughout life, and even adults continually refurbish their minds through reading and learning, never again will the brain be able to master new skills so readily or rebound from setbacks so easily.”

* During a disaster—As with adults, children will draw upon whatever patterns were in their heads before a disaster strikes. They have fewer patterns in there, however, which can help or hurt. In fires, frightened children sometimes hide in closets--making them hard for firefighters to find. They may be afraid when they see a firefighter in full gear. But again, there is opportunity. If a child has rehearsed evacuating her house from her bedroom in advance, that will help. If a child has seen a firefighter in full gear, that gives the brain something to work with. You can now buy smoke detectors that let you record a voice message. This is a fabulous idea. A child will respond much better to a parent’s specific, aggressive command--in a very serious voice--than to a loud beeping squawk.

* After a disaster—Research into why children develop posttraumatic stress disorder is actually very encouraging, I think. It shows that the two things that correlate with stress symptoms are under our control: 1) Amount of TV coverage of the disaster viewed by the child and 2) Parental distress.

Those two factors can matter more than almost anything else. If a child sees TV coverage of a building collapse, that child may think the building is collapsing over and over again. If it were up to me, CNN and FOX would run ticker warnings to this effect during coverage of disasters. That’s how dangerous this footage can be.

Likewise, if a parent over-shares his fear and anger over a terrorist attack with a child, the child may have no way to put that into perspective. As the National Center for PTSD explains in an extremely helpful fact sheet:

“Although you yourself may be anxious or scared, children need to know that attacks are rare events. They also need to know that the world is generally a safe place.”

After Katrina, Congress created a National Commission on Children and Disasters to study how we can build children into smarter preparedness and response plans. They are supposed to send their recommendations to Congress next year. I look forward to seeing what they come up with. Here’s hoping they are creative--and built around the way children’s brains actually work.