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Sticks and Stones
Err Travel · August 29, 2000

Much of the e-mail I've receive from Err Travel readers in the past year has been… well, not particularly flattering. I have been called misguided, astonishingly stupid and an idiot.

Most of the vitriol has been in response to my opinions about air travel. I've already given readers opportunities to express their full- and half-baked ideas on this topic and won't be revisiting it any time soon.

Other caviling has been in reaction to destination warnings. I will give these complaints an airing next week. In the meantime, I'll share with you some e-mail I've received from more appreciative readers who, over the past months, have added their own advice to mine.

Most suggestions came from readers of the four-part series on hotel fire safety that appeared this past summer.

The most personal note was sent to me by Marilyn Hansen, who, along with her husband, survived the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas twenty years ago. "No alarm or warning was given," she wrote. "We found out that the building was on fire by the sound of the fire engines. When we looked out the window, we saw flames shooting out of the hotel entrance below. We don't want to do that ever again! I would add one thing [to your advice]: a travel smoke alarm with a fresh battery."

This came in from M. Buck, who has also been in a building fire. "One thing I do when I travel is place a flashlight on my nightstand, have a pair of jeans on the foot of the bed, and shoes right under my feet when I sit up on the edge of the bed. My glasses are right beside the flashlight, and my goal is to be up and moving within 45 seconds."

Jeff Landreth, who advises travelers for Glaxo Wellcome, added this. "Take the room key if an alarm sounds. The number of people found outside their rooms dead from smoke inhalation is large. They left for a stairwell, found it blocked and then could not get back into their rooms because they either did not block their doors or forgot their keys.

Jeff also suggests to "travel with a small roll of duct tape. It can be used to seal cracks around doors, to tape wet towels over air vents and to spell HELP by taping the word on a window or sliding glass door. And pack a smoke detector. I have found on a couple of occasions detectors in hotel rooms that were not wired to central monitoring and contained no battery for local annunciation. They were fake!"

Barry Mounce, the Public Information Officer for the Baton Rouge Fire Department summed up the fire victim's mentality with this. "People always tell me they never thought it would happen to them. My answer is simply: 'Every day we respond to things that never happen.'"

Most recently came this note from Ken Barth regarding the protection of your home while you're on vacation. Ken wrote, "Mail and newspapers [should be] held. They should be picked up by a relative or trusted friend or neighbor. I've heard of too many stories where crooked postal or newspaper workers pass on this type of information (for a fee, of course) to burglars who are only too happy to take advantage of the certainty that no one will be at home."

Finally, I received this contributive e-mail from some nimrod by the name of D. Voeth. "You might look up 'nimrod.' It does not mean what you think. It is an accomplished person in fieldcraft. Not an idiot."

Oh.

Dr. Terry Riley is a psychologist and travel security authority. His column appears on Wednesdays. He is author of the popular book Travel Can Be Murder. Visit his site at http://www.appliedpsychology.com or e-mail him at terry@ticked.com.