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Local


50 YOUTH HEADED TO CHINA WERE STRANDED BY THE TECH OUTAGE. TACOMA CAME TO THE
RESCUE

By Alexis Krell and
Simone Carter
Updated July 23, 2024 3:55 PM

The University of Puget Sound took in a student travel group July 19, 2024 that
was stranded by the global tech outage. About 50 young people from across the
country were stranded in Seattle on their way to China. They stayed in dorms on
the Tacoma campus and explored the city for several days until they were able to
rebook flights. Courtesy of the University of Puget Sound

Adam McMurray has seen the “best of human nature” in Tacoma over the past few
days, he said.

The 18-year-old from Utah was one of about 50 youth from across the country
whose student travel group was stranded in Seattle on the way to China on
Friday.



Teachers and staff frantically communicated with parents and other camp
personnel and worked to find lodging. The University of Puget Sound and others
in Tacoma stepped up.

They put the students up in dorms on campus for several nights, and community
leaders arranged for the group to see Tacoma landmarks.

By the end of the weekend, Grit City had quite a few new fans.



“It was really a miracle to see just the kindness and the friendship from the
people of Tacoma,” McMurray said. “None of them knew us.”

McMurray, who plans to go to Brigham Young University this fall, flew into
Seattle on Thursday and planned to travel to China the next morning.

Then the global CrowdStrike technology outage hit, affecting airlines, medical
facilities and other businesses that use the cybersecurity firm’s software.



McMurray said some of the students were back on their way to Shanghai by Sunday
morning. He was part of a second group headed out Sunday night. The rest of the
students had tickets to fly out Monday morning.

When the students learned that the soonest they could leave for China was
Sunday, McMurray said it meant they were “losing three very precious days” of
their experience abroad.

The students, ages 12-18, were traveling with a nonprofit called the Helen
Foster Snow Foundation, which aims to build bridges between different cultures
across the world. The foundation hosts a summer camp in Wuxi, China, called Camp
Gung Ho, where American and Chinese students live and work together for two
weeks.


The University of Puget Sound took in a student travel group July 19, 2024 that
was stranded by the global tech outage. About 50 young people from across the
country were stranded in Seattle on their way to China. They stayed in dorms on
the Tacoma campus and explored the city for several days until they were able to
rebook flights. Courtesy of the University of Puget Sound


HOW DID THE STUDENTS END UP AT UPS?

As Adam Foster, head of the nonprofit, worked to find lodging for the stranded
students, he happened to be at a Sister Cities International Conference in
Tacoma on Friday. The timing was fortuitous.

He asked Clare Petrich, who chairs Tacoma’s Sister Cities Council, what to do.
They were struggling to find short-term rentals or hotel rooms.



“She said: ‘You know what? I know everybody in Tacoma, and we’re going to take
care of you guys,’” Foster said. “It was just amazing. I was just blown away.”

A representative from University of Puget Sound at the conference made a call,
and all of the sudden they had 50 rooms on campus. The group took a Sound
Transit route to the Tacoma Dome Station. Pierce Transit arranged a special bus
to get the students to UPS.

“They said: ‘We’ll take them. We’ll take all the kids,’” Foster said. “So we
didn’t have to break up the group or anything. We kept them together. We didn’t
have to sleep at the airport. You know, you can imagine these parents hearing
what’s going on, and they’re just so worried about everybody, but, my gosh, the
people of Tacoma just saved the day.”



Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards was at the conference, too. Foster let her know
how generous the city had been in finding housing last-minute. Then Woodards
asked what the students would be doing. He told her about the group, and she
offered them tickets to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. They also got
leftover sack lunches for the kids from the conference.

“It’s a miracle,” Foster said. “Honestly, it’s a miracle.”

The University of Puget Sound took in a student travel group July 19, 2024 that
was stranded by the global tech outage. About 50 young people from across the
country were stranded in Seattle on their way to China. They stayed in dorms on
the Tacoma campus and explored the city for several days until they were able to
rebook flights. Courtesy of the University of Puget Sound


‘THEY JUST WELCOMED US WITH OPEN ARMS.’



McMurray said the students had been worried about what they were going to do for
three days and where they would stay.

“I assumed it would just be a little delay,” McMurray said. “I did not imagine
this.”

All the students were really excited for camp, he said.



“We were really sad when we were delayed by several days,” he said.

McMurray said UPS personnel seemed to sense that the students were disappointed
in how things worked out and helped make the most of their visit when they got
to campus Friday.

“They just had all this fun stuff for us right when we arrived,” he said.



The school had cool sunglasses and snacks waiting, he said, which were a hit
with the hungry, stressed students.

“It was just really cool to see the campus,” he said. “It’s just so beautiful up
here.”

They had fun playing Frisbee in a field on campus.



McMurray’s mom lived in Tacoma at one point, he said, and he had fun sending her
photos from his time here.

Sunday morning, former Tacoma mayor and historian Bill Baarsma met them at the
Chinese Reconciliation Park to talk about the impacts of the 1882 Chinese
Exclusion Act in the Pacific Northwest.

The park “is a critical component of the community-led reconciliation process
intended to commemorate the 1885 expulsion of Tacoma’s Chinese citizens,” part
of the city’s website says.



The park is meant “to express Tacoma’s commitment to end racism and hatred, and
to promote a peaceful, multicultural community,” the website says.

The students also spent their days in Tacoma bonding with one another.

While talking to a News Tribune reporter, McMurray handed the phone to one of
his fellow travelers and new friend, Elias Lundquist, an 18-year-old from
Massachusetts.



Lundquist said he likes history and particularly liked their visit to the park.

“That was really interesting to learn the history of how that park came to be
and the history of Chinese and American relations in Tacoma, and how the city is
working to rebuild and make up for past mistakes,” he said.

It fit well with the purpose of their trip: building bridges.



He said the campers will be working with their Chinese peers to do some sort of
project with the U.S. Consulate, which they’ll present to government and
business leaders at the end.

Lundquist, who plans to go to the University of Massachusetts this fall, said he
considered applying to UPS last year. He enjoyed spending a few days on the
campus.

“They just welcomed us with open arms and were really excited to host us,” he
said.



The city came together to make their unexpected stay meaningful.

He wanted to emphasize: “how special that feels for a group of 50 kids who were
really worried at first that this trip might not happen at all.”

He’s leaving, he said, with “nothing but good things to say about Tacoma and all
the people here.”



This story was originally published July 23, 2024, 5:30 AM.




ALEXIS KRELL

THE NEWS TRIBUNE

twitter email phone 253-597-8268
Alexis Krell is the editor of The Puyallup Herald and The Peninsula Gateway. She
also reports about court cases that affect Pierce County. She started working at
The News Tribune in 2012, writing about crime and breaking news as the night
reporter. She started covering courts in 2016 and began editing in 2021.



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