I started tearing up in the car today, listening to the news on Hurricane Katrina. This young woman was looking for her parents and her brother. The last she had heard from them, the mom and the brother had been rescued from their home's roof by a helicopter and were in a small shelter somewhere. There were too many people in the helicopter for it to take her father; the last she heard her dad was on the roof waiting for the next helicopter to come. Her mom's cell was out of power and she had nowhere to plug it in. That was the last the woman heard from her family; it's been two days.
I'm sure there are stories like that everywhere. This is just one person who happened to run into an NPR reporter, and now I'm crying and praying for her halfway across the world. I'm not glued to the news, because of my Katrina. "Bear in the Big Blue House" is on now. So what I do hear is on the radio, in the car or the kitchen. Jon is getting info and pictures at work on the Air Force bases in the affected areas. The one in the Biloxi area is pretty much destroyed.
Donations are reportedly pouring in to disaster response charities. Along with the unbelievable destruction and suffering comes amazing generosity. Or maybe not so amazing. Praying and sending money are probably the only ways those of us removed from the disaster can help...the only ways to say "I'm sorry this happened to you"... the only ways to stop feeling helpless in the face of suffering.
Lutheran Disaster Response
Salvation Army
Red Cross
Yeah, I still feel helpless, too.
1 comment:
Yeah, for some reason, this is impacting me much more than I would expect it to; afterall, I deal with trauma daily. What did it for me, was a news report last night that (somewhat nonchalently) mentioned a 10 year-old boy who's immediate family has all died, and he managed to find his way to a shelter, and is just there, hoping to find someone he knows. I seriously wanted to go find him and bring him back to live with us.
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