飓风桑迪给一位企业家的启示

    周二一早醒来，我们发现仍然没有通电。于是，我通过发电机冲了咖啡，用WaterBob中存的水冲马桶，还给一家连锁酒店打电话，在纽约预订了一个房间，就在新出现的SoPo（“South of Power”的简称）的北部。

    但我犯了第一个大错误。我按照每晚约200美元的价格订了一个房间，但只订了两个晚上，因为我认为到周四，一切就能恢复正常。

    结果，到了周四还是没有改观。我爬了22层黑漆漆的楼梯，回到断电的公寓去多取一些衣服和应急物品，还有女儿的宠物鼠。结果过了周四，酒店已经客满。整个纽约市唯一还有房间的地方是西30街的一家寒酸的低级酒店，而且每晚房费高达600美元。

    我为什么不提前预订10个晚上，等到电力恢复之后再取消呢？

    答案就是，我认为情况没有这么糟糕。

    这是我们面临“新常态”时所犯的最大的错误。我们都会低估情况的严重程度。我们都认为下次断电不会比这一次更糟糕，不会再发生一次恐怖袭击，不会有网络战，黄石火山（怀俄明州所谓的黄石超级火山）不会爆发，也从没想过西班牙加纳利群岛的活火山维亚火山崩塌会引发一场巨大的海啸。

    紧急服务人员的努力让东海岸居民在短时间内就恢复了正常生活，证明我们有能力、也有足够的复原能力来应对危机。然而，我们所见证的那些损失和悲剧同时也说明：面对一种新常态，如果我们能未雨绸缪，做好更充分的准备，未来应对灾难时就会更加从容。

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    When we woke on Tuesday morning to the power still on the blink, I made coffee with my generator, flushed the toilets with water from the WaterBob, and called a hotel chain to book a room in New York north of the newly christened SoPo ("South of Power").

    And I made my first major mistake. I took a room for around $200 a night for two nights, assuming we would be fine by Thursday.

    We were not fine by Thursday. As I climbed up those 22 darkened flights of stairs to our powerless apartment to retrieve more clothes and emergency supplies and my daughter's pet mouse, the hotel was unavailable past Thursday. The only place with rooms in New York City, a crummy dive in the far West 30s, was asking $600 a night.

    Why hadn't I booked the room for 10 nights and cancelled when power returned?

    The answer is, I didn't think it would be that bad.

    That's the biggest mistake we are all making during our new normal. We don't think it will be that bad. We don't think that the next time the power goes out, it could be even worse. We don't think that there could be another terrorist attack, let alone a cyber war, an eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera—the so-called Yellowstone Supervolcano in Wyoming--or a mega-tsunami triggered by the collapse of Cumbre Vieja, an active volcanic ridge on Spain's Canary Islands.

    The massive and back-breaking efforts by emergency service workers, who got life back to near normal across the East coast in a short time, showed us that we are capable and resilient enough to deal with crises. But the loss and heartbreak we've seen also revealed something: The more we can anticipate and prepare for a new normal, the better off we'll be.