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Landing a spot at the inauguration

25 Jan 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday's second reading Saint Paul alerts the church at Corinth that "time is running out." U.S. Airways Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger sent a similar message to air traffic controllers last Thursday before bringing an Airbus A320 down for an emergency landing in the Hudson River. President Obama spoke with the California pilot on Monday, and Sullenberger told him, "Me and my crew, we were just doing our job.' " Said Obama on Monday, "And it made me think, if everybody did their job-whatever that job was-as well as that pilot did his job, we'd be in pretty good shape." Obama invited Sullenberger and his crew and family to attend Tuesday's inauguration. The probe into the crash landing of the jetliner may take a year, but the lessons learned from the spectacular accident will last much longer, a senior investigator said this week. "I think this one is going to be studied for decades," said Robert Benzon, chief investigator on the case for the National Transportation Safety Board. Benzon said the fact that all 155 people aboard the plane survived removes the guilt and finger-pointing that sometimes accompany aviation accidents. He said lessons learned from the successful ditching into the Hudson River could improve air safety. "In one like this, I think there's potential for a lot of good to come out of it, long-term good," he said. Source: An article by Larry Neumeister for the Associated Press

new york city chesley sullenberger us airways hudson river robert benzon national transportation safety board crashes aviation accidents
Tragic end to schoolchildren’s Alpine ski outing

18 Mar 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

During their exile the Jewish people “sat and wept” by the streams of Babylon when they remembered Zion. Parents in Belgium wept at the news that a tour bus carrying schoolchildren home from a class ski trip slammed head-on into a tunnel wall in the Swiss Alps, killing 22 Belgian students and six adults late Tuesday night. As authorities tried to piece together what happened, parents, classmates, and rescue workers struggled to grasp the awful turn of events. Only days earlier the children had updated a lively blog about the highlights of their adventure: ravioli and meatball dinners, cable-car rides, and sing-a-longs. Police said the bus was not speeding and everyone aboard had been wearing seat belts when it crashed inside the 1.5-mile Tunnel de Geronde on a highway near the southern Swiss tourist town of Sierre. No other vehicles were involved. Belgian authorities flew anxious parents and relatives to the site and called for a day of mourning. Investigators were still trying to determine how a modern bus, a rested driver, and a seemingly safe tunnel could produce one of the deadliest highway crashes in Swiss history. Dr. Jean-Pierre Deslarzes, medical director of the local Swiss rescue service OCVS, said first-responders were traumatized because so many of the victims were children around 12 years old. The accident virtually shredded the front end of the bus, leaving only small, barely recognizable pieces in place. Passengers were trapped inside. “We found an apocalyptic situation when we arrived,” said police commander Christian Varone. Sources: An article by Frank Jordans, Raf Casert, and Robert Wielaard for the Associated Press

Children switzerland alps tunnel de geronde sierre bus crashes belgium accidents
Rising from the ashes of Navy jet crash

15 Apr 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The psalmist’s words this Sunday, “I was hard pressed and was falling, but the Lord helped me . . . he has been my savior," could have been uttered by two U.S. Navy jet pilots who survived a spectacular crash along with residents of a large apartment complex wiped out by the accident last Friday. The mayor of Virginia Beach, Virginia called it a "Good Friday miracle" and pilots marveled at how a failed training flight that engulfed buildings in flames managed to go down without killing anyone. An F/A-18D Hornet suffered a massive mechanical problem while soaring above Virginia Beach last Friday, sending it plunging into the Mayfair Mews apartment complex and taking out dozens of units. All residents had been accounted for early Saturday after careful apartment checks, fire department Capt. Tim Riley said. A student pilot, his instructor, and five on the ground were hurt, but all were out of the hospital by last Saturday. Investigators said multiple factors were at play in the surprising lack of fatalities: Most of the F/A-18D jet's fuel was dumped before the crash, causing less of an explosion; the Navy credited neighbors and citizens with pulling pilots away from the flames after they safely ejected; the plane crashed into the apartment complex's empty courtyard, and two days before Easter in the middle of the day most residents weren't home. Source: An article by Zinie Chen Sampson for the Associated Press

crashes us navy jets virginia beach
Highway fatalities still in overdrive

31 Jul 2016 - Preaching the News for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Our mortality is front and center in this Sunday’s readings, as the psalmist reminds us that God turns us “back to dust,” while Ecclesiastes speaks of days of “sorrow and grief” and Jesus tells the parable of the shortsighted rich man who apparently forgot that the day would come when the Lord would say to him “this night your life will be demanded of you.” Though we normally don’t think about our mortality when we get behind the wheel of our cars, the sobering truth is that more people die in car crashes each year in the United States than in any other developed nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent report. In 2013, more than 32,000 people died on U.S. roads, roughly 90 fatalities a day, according to the CDC. While the United States has seen a 31 percent reduction in its motor vehicle death rate per capita over the past 13 years, the United States has the slowest decrease when compared with 19 other wealthy countries that declined an average of 56 percent during the same period. Road death rates in countries such as Spain and Denmark have dropped 75.1 percent and 63.5 percent, respectively. If the United States had reduced its death rate to the average of other countries, 18,000 more lives would have been saved, according to the CDC report. The United States also performed badly in other measures. It ranks first in crash deaths per 100,000 people and per 10,000 registered vehicles. It's the second-highest, after Canada, in the percentage of deaths involving alcohol (at 31 percent). And the United States is the third lowest, after Austria and Belgium, in national front seat belt use (at 87 percent) among the 20 countries. “It is important to compare us not to our past but to our potential. Seeing that other high-income countries are doing better, we know we can do better too,” Dr. Debra Houry, director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said in a news release. “People of our nation deserve better and safer transport.” The findings come in the wake of another alarming federal report on traffic deaths, which found motor vehicle fatalities in the United States spiked 7.7 percent in 2015, jumping from 32,600 in 2014 to 35,200 last year, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Houry acknowledged the startling statistics but called it a “winnable” public health battle. “We can do better, using strategies we know work,” said Houry, who is also an emergency room physician. “It’s really important to compare us not only to our past, but our potential.” Lessons drawn from the readings The reading from the Book of Colossians encourages us, even in the face of our human mortality, to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth” and to remember that the story doesn’t end with our physical mortality, and that in fact we already “have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” Final thought in light of the news We clearly can and should do better in terms of highway safety. Cracking down on drunk driving, texting on the road, and careless driving is a must. But while we need to keep our eyes on the road for sure, we also should keep our eyes on the prize. We live and die and live again in Christ.

automobiles car crashes motor vehicle fatalities safety