Another major hurricane has slammed into the United States. The devastation has shut down cities and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Is there a spiritual lesson to learn from this tragedy?
by Darris McNeely
I can't get her face out of my mind. She was a five-day-old baby, dehydrated and fevered. When I first looked, I saw no movement and thought, "the poor child is dead." The mother was desperate and did not know if her baby was alive. But then I saw the infant turn her head and move an arm. She was alive; there was hope.
Her mother had just walked up out of the fetid waters covering downtown New Orleans. She sat holding the baby in a canvas folding chair, crying and looking for help. Fortunately a news crew flagged down a passing police car, and the child and her mother were taken to a safe refuge, hopefully a hospital where help could be administered.
A devastated region
This was one poignant scene out of many thousands to arise in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The storm cut a deadly path through the southern U.S. Gulf Coast last month. It is being called the largest natural disaster ever to strike the country. As we go to press, early estimates of the death toll run into the thousands, and the cost estimates are in the range of $100 billion. As the storm approached the coast, everyone knew it would be big, but no one foresaw it would be as devastating as it was.
In a reference to the Asian tsunami of December 2004, one official called it "our tsunami." In New Orleans, a city that sits below sea level and needs a series of levees (which were breached in three places by the storm surge) and pumps to keep water out, 80 to 90 percent of the city was flooded.
Famous tourist spots such as Bourbon Street are under several feet of water. More than 10,000 people took shelter in the Superdome and were later evacuated when the failure of all essential services turned the facility into a squalid relief center. It will take weeks to turn on the water and electricity and begin the long task of cleaning up one of America's major cities.
