Words Fail Me

I haven't been posting as much as I ought to on Katrina, in large part because the utter devastation is hard for me to comprehend.

I was living in Florida during Hurricane Opal. The small town I was living with was all but destroyed by the hurricane. I remember returning to my house a few days after it struck, and wandering about a town where it seemed that every building within a 1/2-mile of the ocean had been destroyed. That I could process.

But a great city, utterly destroyed?

That I'm struggling with.

I cannot imagine the hell on Earth that this storm has wrought, and I'm afraid that the suffering has not peaked for our brothers and sisters of the ruined city. Americans will do everything possible to help save lives---we invariably do.

Yet we also overestimate our abilities to ameliorate suffering and prevent death, as the Monday morning quarterbacks nattering away already are surely doing.

The President, the Governor of Louisiana, the various and sundry political officials responsible for civil government in the devastated areas are simply not responsible for this suffering. They are doing all that can be done to alleviate it, and the strain is clearly showing. To blame them for not making this enormous tragedy simply go away is utterly infantile.

The people of New Orleans were not stupid, nor heedless. There is nowhere in this country, or any country, where one is immune to risk. The Gulf Coast is susceptible to hurricanes and floods, but what of California, which will likely one day suffer a catastrophic earthquake which may well throw any number of cities into the sea? What of the heartland, so exposed to powerful tornadoes? What of the mountains and the northern parts of our country, where severe blizzards occur from time to time? Or of the West and Southwest, where deadly wildfires and droughts often strike?

There is no safe place in all the world. That is not some politician's fault, nor some homeowner's fault, nor God's fault. That is simply the way of the world.

Discovering this is always jarring. As the hurricane aftermath unfolds along the Gulf Coast, I fear more reminders are coming as to just how thin the veneer of civilization is, and just how noble some men are in the face of this terrible knowledge.