Marking Yourself Safe when You Weren’t in Any Danger

Ah.. Florence. It’s been a rough week for many people in North and South Carolina.

I myself am located in Charlotte, and while we definitely felt the affects of the Hurricane, it was nothing compared to the devastation that hit those located to our East. In Charlotte, we had some trees down, we had many without power, and we had some flooding, but where I live, we mostly just had rain. Lots of rain, and puddles of water, and occasional gusts of wind. The worst that I saw in my neighborhood was some larger tree branches in yards, and one house that had their gutter blown down.

Of course, my back yard got turned into a minor lake, but frankly, that happens whenever we get a decent rain. So, while the weather reports continued to talk about the catastrophic effects of Florence- and I know too many people felt the full force of those effects- on Meredith Avenue, things were mostly calm. I’d had stronger thunderstorms roll through.

And then Facebook asked me a question. It asked if I was safe?

I’ve seen many posts on Facebook of people laughing at this question. Not trying to diminish the menace of Florence, but people- like me- who hadn’t really had a whole lot happen in their neck of the woods. Like me, they got a lot of rain, a little breeze, and that was it. So why should they mark themselves safe when- to them- they were never in any danger?

And I get it; I hesitated marking myself safe during the storm until yesterday, when it had mostly passed us by. At first, I didn’t see the importance of it. Not until I got a second notification from Facebook: a family member wanted to know if I was safe.

That’s when it hit me: whether I’m in any real danger or just getting rained on, telling Facebook that I’m safe isn’t for myself, it’s for my family, my friends. Granted, some of the ones here in Charlotte probably rolled their eyes when they saw so many of us mark themselves safe, but for those outside of the impacted area, that notification was something else.

Think of it this way: my mom lives in Virginia. Currently they are getting the aftermath of Florence- more rain, rain, rain- but for days all she saw on the news were headlines like “This is a powerful storm that can kill” or “1.5 Million Evacuated as North Carolina Prepares for Hurricane…” or “Hurricane Florence is no Hugo. It looks worse.” and worst, from her own local newspaper, “4 dead as Hurricane…