Ft Lauderdale Airport Shooting: Real Lessons from an Imaginary Crisis

Don't worry, I'm not some crazy false flag conspiracy theorist.  I assure you, the shooting at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport on January 6, 2017, which left five people dead, was quite real. I know, because my wife and I were at the airport at the time; however, while the shooting was an unspeakable tragedy for the people involved and those close to them, the fact is that it was a pretty minor disruption for everyone else, including us. The shooter immediately surrendered, passengers returned to the terminal, and flights had begun to take off and land again.

Then, about an hour after the shooting, a panic started over a second shooter or perhaps multiple shooters.  That's what caused the complete evacuation and shutdown of the airport, and that's what turned it from a disruption into a crisis.  In the end, that second shooter turned out to be completely imaginary, and the evacuation and closing of the airport completely unnecessary.  Once Esteban Santiago-Ruiz was in custody, there was no danger whatsoever.  Of all the news agencies, the only one I've found that reported what happened accurately was the New York Times (more about reporting shortly).

We were in another terminal, and we know now that we were never in any actual danger - except perhaps the danger of tripping and hurting ourselves or perhaps having a heart attack, but that doesn't mean it didn't seem real at the time.  In the end, the whole thing was an eye-opening experience in a lot of ways.

Our Story

On Friday, January 6, 2017, my wife and I were changing planes in Terminal 1 of the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, on our way from Chicago to Key West. We were sitting near a window by gate C8, which looked out onto Terminal 2.

Suddenly, my wife saw people running out of that terminal onto the tarmac.  Here's a picture...

We had no idea what had happened, and assumed it was a fire or possibly a bomb threat.  There was a buzz about a shooter, but we didn't take it seriously until we started to see it on the news feeds.  At that point, there was an announcement in our terminal that there had been "an incident", but that it was under control and had been fully confined to Terminal 2. We were assured we were in no danger, and that flights would resume shortly.  We watched passengers return to Terminal 2, and when the tarmac was cleared, flights began to take of and land again.  We estimated that we would have a half hour to an hour delay, so we headed to the bar and started watching the story on the news, grimly watching the death toll rise from one to five.

Suddenly, as we were watching the television, the CNN live feed showed the SWAT team running back into the building.  At that moment, we saw passengers from Terminal 2 rush back onto the tarmac.  We barely had time to register this when we heard screaming, and saw people running down our concourse, shouting that there was a shooter following them.  We thought we heard shots, and honestly believed we might die.  We jumped behind the bar, abandoning my phone and our carry on bags.  

We saw a way to get to the exit door without exposing ourselves, so along with all the other passengers, we evacuated to the tarmac.  We had our wallets and my wife's phone, but decided not to risk exposing ourselves to grab the other stuff.  We used the phone to contact our family, to let them know we were OK, but things weren't over.  Later, they moved us to a far corner of the tarmac, where we spent the next five or six hours waiting, with very little information.  The airport was entirely surrounded by police cars.  There were also SWAT teams, helicopters, fire trucks, and a whole lot of ambulances coming and going.  All the indications were that there was still a least one active shooter, and we were very puzzled that the news wasn't saying anything about it.

Eventually, they told us they would not be opening the airport, we would not be allowed to retrieve our items, and that buses would be arriving to take us to the port, at which point we would be on our own.  We used some of our small amount of remaining phone battery to text my stepdaughter and have her make a hotel reservation for us near the port.   We were told that our belongings would be gathered by a contractor and returned to us over the next several days.

The evacuation was complete chaos.  At first, they told us the FBI wanted a record of all of our names, which they tried to do by having two police officers mingle among the people with legal pads.  When it became clear this would take all night they simply gave up.  Buses picked up a few people, then they announced that the pickup would be moved to the other side.  We were walked through the airport to the front, where we realized how many other people had been squirreled away in other parts of the airport.

They had conscripted all manner of buses: airport buses, city buses, and even sheriff's buses with little slit windows, used for transporting prisoners.  There was no crowd management at all, so it was by sheer luck that we made it onto the next round of buses.  As we exited the airport, it looked like the evacuation of Saigon.  There were thousands of people still waiting, and would guess it was early morning before all of them got out.  The roads were so crowded that our bus got completely stuck in traffic for a half hour, at which point we got out and walked the last half mile to our hotel.  Lucky we had reservations, because by that point, everything was sold out.  When we turned on the television in our room, they showed huge crowds still stranded at the airport. 

We got a flight out the next afternoon.  Miraculously, our luggage made it with us, and we had a wonderful vacation in Key West.  They did finally identify the belongings we left behind, and shipped them back home, where we picked them up at the local FedEx office the day after we returned.  In the end, all that was lost was a $10 portable charger, which is not bad, all thing considered - particularly when you remember that five people who lost their lives.

Lessons Learned

Although the second shooter turned out to be completely imaginary, we still learned a lot of interesting things that day...

• A disaster can happen anywhere and at any time: The moment when we thought a shooter was coming down the concourse will be forever seared into my memory.  It wasn't real, but it could have been, and we genuinely believed we might be about to die.  When I finally got my phone back, I found I was in the middle of a FaceBook post when it happened.  That could have been my last act.  I'll probably never go to a public place again without mentally formulating an exit plan in case something terrible happens.
• It takes very little to cause a panic: How did the panic start?  Did someone think they saw a gun or a bomb? Was someone freaked out when they heard a foreign language?  Did someone make a bad joke?  As far as I can tell, no one knows, and what's more disturbing, no one really seems to care.   We've seen the video of the real shooter over and over on the news, but nobody seems to be interested in studying the surveillance tapes to see how the panic started, to figure out how to prevent something similar from happening in the future.  Sadly, we see videos of shootings all the time, but it would be really interesting to see the spontaneous creation of a panicked mob on this scale, because that represents a genuine risk, for which the authorities need to prepare. 
• Imaginations are really powerful: I could swear I heard gunfire.  Lots of other people I talked to swore they heard gunfire.  Some claimed heard glass breaking. A guy who claimed to be a cop and "know what gunfire sounds like" said he heard gunfire.  There was no gunfire. The courts know witnesses are unreliable.  Now we know that, too.
  
• The authorities are much better at handing real crises than imaginary crises: As I said, the real shooter was dealt with quickly and professionally, and airport operations were rapidly returning to normal.  In contrast, they were obviously completely flummoxed by the fact they couldn't find a cause for the panic.  They ended up doing a complete sweep of the airport, looking for bombs, even though it was obvious a bomb didn't cause the panic.  They even blew up a "suspicious package" in the afternoon, which at least broke the monotony.  When they couldn't find any danger, they made the somewhat perplexing choice to completely close the airport for the rest of the day.
• You never know how people will behave in a crisis until it happens:  Given the fact we believed were being shot at, I think my wife and I behaved in a pretty sensible manner.  We took cover, I didn't expose myself to get our belongings that were in the open, we identified the safest path to the exit, and we kept down as we ran for it. If the shooter had been real, I don't think we could have done any better. Not everyone was so logical.  Some just froze up and had to be dragged to the door.  One woman inexplicably decided we shouldn't be going out the emergency exit, and started piling chairs in front of it.  I had to pick up a little girl who was screaming because she couldn't get over them.   
• Panic turns to boredom really fast: When we were evacuated to the tarmac, we could see a unbelievably massive police presence all around us, so we still very much believed there was an active shooter, or perhaps more than one.  We also realized that out there in the open, we were basically a shooting gallery.  In spite of that, we pretty quickly relaxed, joke, made small talk, and waited for the time to pass. I swear, when we got out of the terminal, my first thought was "Now I guess I won't have to pay for those drinks.".
  
  Of course, some people were a little more shook up, but others were quick to comfort them and try to calm them down.  All in all, everyone was very well behaved.  If I'm ever involved in a real shooting, I hope I'm with as pleasant a crowd. 
• Don't put too much faith in "disaster plans": Like all airports, Ft. Lauderdale had a federally approved set of disaster plans.  I can't speak for other airports, but whatever "plan" the airport had, it was pretty clear they were mostly just winging it.  You don't have to an expert to realize that above all else, a disaster plan needs a clear chain of command, and a way to disseminate information.  They had neither.  In the six hours on the tarmac, they never managed to round up a megaphone or PA system to make announcements.  Information was passed in a game of telephone from one person to another.  A lot of things that happened were clearly because individuals simply took initiative.  Southwest started to hand out snacks and drinks, and I believe it was a Southwest pilot who convinced operations that they really needed to get some port-a-potties onto the tarmac, after they had blocked access to the ones on the construction area that people had been using. That man is a true hero. 
  
  It's also clear that the communication problem extended to the authorities themselves.  At the very least, the TSA, police, and FBI were involved, and they were all saying different things.  The sheriffs told us we could go back to the terminal to retrieve our belongings, but when we tried, a heavily armed FBI agent blocked our path.  We tried our best to be well behaved, but it did get very frustrating. 
• One person's crisis is another person's opportunity:  We were told that our belongings would be collected by "a professional contractor specializing in this sort of thing".  A moment of thought will make you realize how ridiculous that description is.  They used a company called "BMS CAT", who advertise themselves as a "professional cleaning service" - not really "this sort of thing" at all.  Basically, they were just a company with the chutzpah to step up and say "Yeah, we'll do this" - and then try to figure out how to do it.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad someone stepped up to do it, and we did eventually get our stuff back. On the other hand, there's no evidence they brought any unique expertise to the table.  They couldn't set up a call center adequate to handle the volume, even four days after the incident they couldn't give any indication of the time scale of the effort, and more than a week later, there still isn't a status website.  Here's how they packed our belongings.  When the FedEx guy picked it up, our bags fell out the bottom, so it's lucky we got them at all.

• (Most) news services will gladly sacrifice accuracy for the sake of a good story: Let's make one thing clear: like us, the first responders believed there was a shooter, or perhaps more than one shooter, in the airport.  The difference is that while we ran out, they ran in.  That takes courage, and the fact the shooter turned out not to exist doesn't change that one bit.  On the other hand, it doesn't make a good story, so most news services finessed the story to play down the fact that it wasn't the real shooter, but the imaginary one,  that caused all the trouble.  This article at CNN is pretty typical.  There's a brief mention of the imaginary second shooter, but no indication that that's what caused all the problems.   Like I said, as far as I can tell, only The New York Times got it right.  Even the Wikipedia article isn't accurate yet, although I plan to work on that. 
  
  In the future, I'll read reports on every tragedy with a large grain of salt.  At the end of the day, news is primarily entertainment, and well they may not lie outright, they'll certainly massage the story to get a better narrative. 

Above all, I learned that the end can come at any time.  For a moment, we thought "Something terrible is happening, and we might die".  It tuned out to be a false alarm, but just an hour earlier, some other people had had the same thought, and not only did they tun out to be right, but it ended up being their last thought on this earth.  Of course, it's unlikely that such a thing would happen in so dramatic a fashion.  Sudden death is more likely to be a car accident, a sudden heart attack, or something else that wouldn't make the news.  Still, we should do our best to make sure that if it does happen, we have left as little as possible undone. 

Dalai Lama Rant

OK, this might offend some people, but I promised my son I would write it, so here it is...

I've always found the fascination of Western liberals with the Dalai Lama to be somewhat tiresome and annoying, particularly coming as it does from people who claim to value democracy and religious freedom, since he represents neither of those things.  On the other hand, in the unlikely event you actually are a Tibetan Buddhist, please don't read this.

Don't get me wrong, he looks adorable and he says cool things that look great on posters.  Celebrities really like him, and we trust their judgment in all things - vaccinations, for example.  Plus, he's working to get those damn Chinese out of Tibet and return the legitimate government, and that's a really good cause, right? I really don't know. You probably don't know either.  Maybe even Bono doesn't know, in which case we're basically rudderless.

First of all, let's be honest about exactly what the Dalai Lama is: for all intents and purposes, he's deposed royalty, pure and simple. The world is full of deposed royalty. We don't normally celebrate them - except for the royalty we deposed ourselves (locally anyway) a couple of centuries ago, but that's a subject for another rant.

I have no idea what the term "legitimate government" means for a place that's never had anything even remotely resembling democracy.  Historically it means "the guys with the best army", so that would be the Chinese.  In some cases however, it means "Guys your government hates a bit less less than the other guys", which favors the Dalai Lama - or at least it did for awhile.  But what's best for the Tibetan people?

Whether Tibet is better or worse under Chinese rule is a matter of intense debate, even among scholars who actually know something about it.  For everyone else, it's a war of propaganda.  Chinese propaganda says that they "liberated" the country from a tyrannical system, and the Tibetans are better off now. What we have to realize is that what groups like "Free Tibet" say is also just propaganda with with a somewhat different agenda.  The Tibetan government-in-exile is the former elite ruling class, so of course they don't like the new bosses.  They've been very good about getting their version of propaganda out at least partially because they had a lot of help from the American CIA in doing so. Haven't you ever wondered why people seem to care so much more about Tibet than other troubled places on Earth?  That's not an accident. It goes without saying that the CIA never gave half a shit about the Tibetan people, but supporting the Dalai Lama pissed off Chairman Mao and that was enough for them.

What is indisputable is that the popular image of pre-1951 Tibet as some sort of peaceful Shangri-La is simply horse shit.  It was a primitive theocratic feudal system ruled by a monk class with the Dalai Lama (or his regent) at the top as the absolute ruler.  Most people were "serfs", who had no education, healthcare, electricity, or any human rights to speak of. There is endless debate about whether "serf" meant "slave" or just "someone too poor to do anything else", but that seems like kind of an academic distinction to me. The average life expectancy was 35 years and the infant mortality rate was a whopping 43%!  As for religion, it was their way or the highway - um, did I mention there were no highways? In any event, the notion that this is a society we should in any way revere or (God forbid!) emulate is just plain ludicrous.

Of course, the Dalai Lama has promised things would be very different if he returned to Tibet. He'd have democracy, freedom of religion, human rights, rainbows and ponies for everyone, but he can promise anything he wants because it's never going to happen.  I'd do a really kick-ass job of ruling Tibet, too, if they just gave me a chance.  The fact is, we have absolutely no idea how he would have ruled if he had remained in in charge.  He'd spent his whole life being told he was effectively a deity incarnate, and such people have rarely shown a pattern of empathy.

So how did little Lhamo Dondrub rise to be Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and the subject of this rant, anyway? He was selected at the age of two, a few years after the 13th Dalai Lama had died (he is a reincarnation, after all).  Of course, at two, he wasn't elected or chosen based on qualifications or achievements.  He was picked using what can only be called "superstitious mumbo-jumbo".  That's the "legitimate government" people want to restore.  Say what  you want about the Pope, but at least he had to pay his dues and work his way up the corporate ladder.

While he was growing up, he chilled in relative luxury while Tibet was ruled by a regent (actually two regents who fought bitterly over the position).   He formally became the Dalai Lama at the age of 15 - just in time to hand Tibet over the Chinese.  For about nine years, he worked "with" the Chinese.  To what extent he was a willing collaborator is debated, but he certainly didn't actively oppose them.  He was also looking for a way out for himself.  When he visited India in 1956, he asked if he could, you know maybe not return to his beloved country, but Nehru said it was a bad idea.  In 1959, there was an uprising in Tibet, and the Dalai Lama, fearing for his safety, fled - with some help from the CIA, who supported him until 1972, when Nixon thought it might cause problems for his efforts in China. He's been dining with royalty and rock stars ever since.

So really, his big achievement was to leave his country when things got rough.  He's been campaigning for Tibet and supporting guerrilla actions against the Chinese since then, but this has accomplished precisely dick.

Look, I'm sure he's a very nice guy, and in his place I'm pretty sure that in his place I would have done my best to save my own ass, too.  He was, after all, just a kid at the time.  On the other hand, what's the reason to celebrate this?  What would we think of Gandhi if instead of risking his life to stand up to the British, he traveled the globe telling everyone what assholes they were?  What about Martin Luther King?  He could have had a pretty good life safely giving lectures about the South at liberal universities in the North, but he didn't choose to do that.

So that's about it.  Flame on if you will.

Impossible Movie Cliché Rant

It would be impossible to catalog all of the physically and logically absurd things that occur in movies and on television.  On the other hand, there are some things which have become more or less standard plot devices over the years in spite of being totally ludicrous, and this post is my attempt to collect them into a list. It will be augmented as new entries are suggested.  In no particular order...

• You don't need to "keep someone on the line" to trace where the call is coming from.  You can find that information well after the fact.  Just look at your phone bill.  If you've lost your phone bill, just ask the NSA. And don't talk about *67. Yes, that blocks an ordinary person from seeing the number, but it doesn't block the police from getting the information.
• If you cut the brake lines on a car, the brakes will stop working immediately, not after you "run out of brake fluid".  You will notice this backing out of the driveway, well before that really steep and dangerous hill everyone seems to have on the way to work.
• You can't cut a circular hole in glass with a glass cutter and a suction cup.  In fact, it's damn near impossible to cut a circular hole in glass with any tool.  Even with specialized power tools, you'll almost certainly just shatter the glass.
• Virtually no buildings have air ducts big enough to crawl through.  In the unlikely event you find one that does, grills are always screwed on from the outside. Those handy "EZ popout grills" only exist in movies.  
• The design flaw that once allowed door latches to be opened with credit cards was fixed many decades ago. 
• There's a limit to the resolution of any photograph.  Saying "zoom and enhance" doesn't change this.
• No alarm system on Earth is based on criss-crossing laser beams. 
• It's actually very difficult to knock someone out by hitting them on the head, and if you do, there's a good chance you'll cause permanent brain damage - or kill them outright.
• The shock wave from an explosion travels at the speed of sound.  You can't outrun it with a car, motorcycle, or on foot.
• If a large group of well trained professionals are all firing fully automatic weapons at a single man crossing an open space armed with a single pistol, that man will die - period.
• A lit cigarette won't ignite gasoline (strange, but true).  
• There is no rule that you have to wait 24 hours to file a missing person report.  You can file a report immediately if you have reasonable cause for concern.   
• Next time you're approaching your car, try to imagine how someone could hide in the back seat without being seen.  
• Cars catching fire or exploding when they're in accidents is rare enough that we're still talking about Ford Pintos 40 years later.  Mythbusters basically had to fill a car with gasoline and set it off themselves to make it look like the movies. 
• Neither computer programmers nor computer hackers use virtual reality to do their jobs.
• The first person to invent a time machine wins.  Movie (and franchise) over.
• No space suit, diving suit, hazmat suit, etc has a light on the inside illuminating the wearer's face, because all that person would see would be their own reflection.  
  

(to be continued...)