Katrina, Mother Nature, life, death

I'm sitting here ready to go take the deposition of the owner of a billboard company, in a lawsuit arising from our fair city's code enforcement program, but I am distracted by what we have seen from Katrina's trail of damage and tears. My heart is not in this deposition, but there's a job to do and I'll do it.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature has delivered a sucker punch to the belly of the South, blowing down billboards along with buildings and bridges, making hundreds of square miles totally unlivable. The devastation on human lives has not be counted nor will it ever be fully accounted for. Parts of New Orleans may become an uninhabited wasteland after the flooded homes are bulldozed.

I thought what Hurricane Andrew did to Homestead, Florida, was the worst a hurricane could do, and certainly never wanted to see another one like it. In terms of magnitude and effects on human lives, Katrina sets a new low. Recovery will take years, and for too many people, recovery will be an impossible dream.

You can contribute to the recovery efforts. We are going to contribute to the United Methodist Church's recovery operation. They were helpful in Florida last year and will be there again, to the best of their resources, for the victims of Katrina.