Scenes From a Disaster Give Us a Reason to Help

A family of four, carrying everything they own in three bags and a shopping cart, leaves a shelter in favor of the streets because they don’t feel safe in the shelter.

Dozens of people camped out on a freeway overpass on I-10 because it was the highest point around. One woman, nine months pregnant, is feeling labor pains. Another woman points to a body on the highway below and explains that it was someone who jumped from the overpass because his despair was so overwhelming. A third shows us her mother, suffering from Alzheimers’, who has no idea what’s going on, or where she is.

Looters ransacking stores. They’re taking food, water, and juice. Inexplicably, they’re also taking televisions, electronics and guns -- and smiling for the cameras as they do it.

State and federal officials attempt to evacuate the Superdome, and they are greeted with gunfire.

Hundreds of adults (just like you and me) going into Day Three without having had access to a bathroom -- or any running water of any kind -- for over 72 hours.

Parents have to re-use disposable diapers for their babies because they have no clean ones to use.

People are advised that certain areas of the city aren’t safe because the city emptied its jails when the flood waters started to rise, so there’s no telling who you might run into, or what they might try to do.

A TV reporter is told by police not to open a bottle of water because he might attract the wrong kind of attention.

Dead bodies float by, in places that were once streets.

Officials speculate that there may still be a significant increase in the death toll, but they cannot yet tell because too many houses, apartments and buildings remain completely submerged. They worry publicly about what they may find in the attics of those buildings.

People are talking seriously about abandoning a city. Not some old silver-mining town in the plains of the southwest that dried up shortly after the silver ran out. No, this is a full-blown City in the United States of America that has simply ceased to be, and that some experts say may never be again.

The devastation is total. The misery is only just beginning. But I cannot believe that New Orleans will not be back, or that we -- as a country, and as a people -- will not overcome this disaster. Even now, people from all over the United States are mobilizing, ready to bring with them to the Crescent City food, drink, generators, supplies, and their skills in searching, rescuing, and rebuilding. Millions of dollars are pouring in to the Red Cross to aid the victims. Sites like Stormaid.com have been designed to funnel money directly to where it is needed most, so that those of us who are in a position to do so can help those of us who need it.

We are resilient in this country. We do not give up. We get up, we dust ourselves off, and we get going again. Let’s not forget that, after 9/11, they were predicting that it would take years to clear Ground Zero, and that life would not be the same for a long, long time. But hot-dog carts and street vendors plied their wares on the street within weeks of the disaster, the site of the World Trade Center was cleared in months, not years, and the entire area is now the subject of the usual squabbling amoung warring political factions, each with its own agenda, and none of which actually remember the feelings, or heed the wishes, of the families who lost so many that day.

Katrina will never be forgotten, and neither will the disaster area she left behind. But we, as a nation, will help our fellow citizens overcome the destruction she brought because that’s what we do. Houston has volunteered the Astrodome as a temporary home for the displaced thousands from New Orleans. Why? Because it’s what we do. Within a thirty minute span, people in the New York metropolitan area donated over three million dollars (that’s a rate of $100,000 a minute) to a local telethon that was raising money to aid the Red Cross in its rescue efforts. Why? Because it’s what we do.

It is so incredibly sad to see what folks are going through in New Orleans, in Biloxi, and all along the Gulf Coast. But the disaster is not a cue to throw up our hands and surrender to the fates. It just means that we, as a nation, have to roll up our collective sleeves and pitch in to help each other get through yet another one. It’s a big one, to be sure. But we can do it. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again because we take that word “United” pretty damn seriously.

I’m doing what I can to help. I hope you will too.

Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW, or www.redcross.org.

www.stormaid.com