As the wind started to whip around our Long Island home, my husband Michael and I fell into our typical roles when it comes to threat anticipation: I believed that the sky was falling while Michael believed that nothing serious was going to happen.

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The mishap was reminiscent of the August 2007 collapse of an I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured another 145 when it buckled and fell into the Mississippi River during rush-hour.

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Possibly the most extraordinary situation I experienced and -- we were totally unprepared for it -- came when the captain of the yacht I was working on fell sick and went into a coma.

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