Lamma Island, Hong Kong (CNN) -- When my neighbor Jane Wilbor got on a Lamma ferry Tuesday, she did something she'd never done before with her three young children: She put on life preservers. "I wanted to show them how to get one out and put one on," said Wilbor, whose three children -- Louie, 10, James, 9, and 7-year-old Eddie -- are playmates with my son 4-year-old son, Jonah, in Pak Kok, a small village of a few dozen families on Lamma Island, one of hundreds of islands that make up Hong Kong. Our village was awoken by the sound of helicopters Monday night, as searchlights trained on the sea until the sunlight broke the next morning on a capsized boat just a few hundred meters offshore.
@highlight
The tragic boat collision that killed 38 people has rocked the island community of Lamma
@highlight
The island is home to about 5,000 people a half hour ferry ride from Hong Kong Island
@highlight
The waters around Hong Kong have some of the busiest boat traffic in the world
@highlight
Ferries carry 135,600 people each day around Hong Kong's major islands
The ferry collision that left at least 38 dead -- including five children --is not an abstraction for those who live on Lamma, but a tragedy that puts the spotlight on an elemental part of our lives and the economic livelihood of @placeholder: The busy waterways and the boats that connect the city.