I am floored by the stories of Katrina’s devastation. Tales of abandoned and drowned people and animals, of corpses in the streets and dying children, of animals drowned in their cages as veternarian offices flooded, of people still stuck in the rafters of their homes, now without food and water for days.
Please donate to the Red Cross. Donate to the Louisiana SPCA or to Noah’s Wish, an organization devoted to (as the name implies) rescuing animals in the wake of natural disasters.
This blog is a supporter of the TTLB ecosystem Hurricane Relief Weekend, and encourages visitors to give to Noah’s Wish. Even $5 can help. Funnel your Starbucks and “going out to dinner” money to people in Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama who would kill for a glass of water.
Growing up on the Gulf Coast, I always understood there was a possibility of a hurricane or a flood destroying my house. I lived near the water, on a bluff about 25 feet above sea level. It was one of the highest points in the county. These people were on the same sea, just a different coast. They’re my neighbors. Their houses could be my houses, their families my family, their dead my dead.
Even last fall when I worked hurricane relief on the east coast of Florida and saw the devastation of hundreds of buildings on the barrier island, the utter destruction of the orange groves and a way of life lost forever, I did not see anything approaching the level of the disaster in Louisiana. I would not have considered it possible in our country. These pictures remind me of the tsunami, of the destruction visited upon tiny fishing vilages in undeveloped countries. Not my own coast. Not my own nation.
My heart is broken. What else can I do?
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