By: Mary Lyon

Nothing has spoken as loudly, lately, as Hurricane Katrina. Any other “war mom” George W. Bush wanted to haul out into the spotlight to outshine Cindy Sheehan, and indeed, even Sheehan herself, have had to step back – as this “other woman” rampaged onto center stage and, as of this writing, is still dominating it, even as the waters recede.

As you watch the post-storm coverage, you cannot help but be struck by the devastation. Even the reporters, ordinarily so detached from what they’re covering, have had to trip over the lumps in their own throats as they describe what they’re seeing. You could hear CNN’s Jeanne Meserve in New Orleans, literally choking up on the phone to Aaron Brown as she detailed the suffering, the carnage, the loss of life and limb, the voices of stranded people, crying out in the dark for help, and unreachable by rescuers furtively trying to maneuver close enough in their boats. She was shaken to the core. You could see Gary Tuchman in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, abandoning his objectivity to comfort a survivor as she huddled in his arms, talking about the prayers she’d said while clinging to an oak tree as the storm surge rose menacingly around her. You could see an unnamed camera or audio guy abandoning his crew to race over to a sinking car, to try to rescue the driver before he sank to his death.

You’ll also hear them all talking about how it looks like a war zone. Well, that’s correct. It does. Bay St. Louis is completely cut off from the mainland – the bridge has been washed away. They are refugees, with no electricity, no cell connections, no water, no food, and for many, no homes. Entire neighborhoods have been swallowed whole by the rampaging seas churned up in the monster hurricane. Awful.

It’s like a war brought home. Up til now, what we do see in news coverage of the war in Iraq is just that – images on TV, or in news magazines or front page photos. Fleeting pictures of wreckage, carnage, devastation, desolated people, refugees with no electricity, no cell connections, no water, no food, and for many, no homes.

We are fortunate, here, that most of the messy stuff that makes up major combat operations (and make no mistake, they’re still underway, more than two years after Georgie-boy announced otherwise with such photo-op fanfare and flourish) are NOT here. The closest we’ve come, before this, were earlier severe storms afflicting the Gulf and Florida coasts, and of course, the nightmare of September 11th. But we, here in America, are too often really big on short-term memory. That was all then. This is now. But this, now, is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it’s still WAY too real.

Perhaps it could be humbly suggested that – while we’re offering thank-you prayers to our preferred Deity that, somehow, it wasn’t worse, we could add an additional prayer. For us here in this country, either directly or indirectly affected by Katrina, the experience actually allows us to walk in the other guy’s shoes for a few moments. The other guy – being any one of millions of Iraqi citizens who have to cope with this kind of peril and disability every day. For myself, safely distant from the horrors in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the only hardship I feel is in the occasional power brown-out or black-out in the searing heatwave crisping Southern California. Man – I need to count my blessings here! This is as bad as it gets for me at the moment.

I can remember when it was a little more difficult. Back in January, 1994, we had a horrific earthquake out here. Again, my immediate neighborhood was not badly affected, thank-you, God. But in communities just a few minutes down the main thoroughfares, there was utter wipe-out. Refugees with no electricity, no cell connections, no water, no food, and for many, no homes. Many were camped out in their cars on a parkway in the middle of a divided boulevard, because their apartment and condo buildings were in the process of being condemned. People all over Southern California were grateful to get out alive, with whatever they could carry, or worse, whatever they were wearing. Freeways, overpasses, and roadways galore were either broken and impassable, or cordoned off just to play it safe, so the whole city suffered some symptoms of disconnect. And even in non-impacted parts of town, the effect overtook everyone.

One of my most vivid memories stemmed from winding my way through a circuitous route to work at the Associated Press bureau downtown (I couldn’t use the Santa Monica Freeway route I usually took every morning – it was literally broken in half). Ordinarily, it’s dog-eat-dog on the road in the morning. We’re all overcrowded onto freeway AND surface-street gridlock. Too many cars and too many commuters for the infrastructure here. People are mad, rude, late, and willfully ignorant of whom they might just have cut off to get one car’s length ahead, or perhaps flipped off because they couldn’t. But not this day. The day after the earthquake, I sat in a line of traffic and watched incredulously at the behavior of the driver in front of me. His window was open. He wouldn’t go any farther from where he was. There was a freeway overpass just a few feet ahead, and he didn’t want to stop underneath it to wait for one of the rare working traffic lights to turn green, lest it be undermined by the earthquake and ready to give way. He honked at the guy in the car next to him. His hand waved – he was motioning to the other driver not to go any farther. Then he pointed up toward the overpass. The other guy caught on immediately, and put his car into reverse for a few feet, adding an appreciative thumb’s-up. Remarkable. Ordinarily, you’d NEVER see that here during the morning rush. Nobody would be thinking about saving the life of the guy in the next car over. Nobody would be that vigilant – actually to be thinking about somebody else beyond his own nose or steering wheel. This guy in the car ahead of me did. The earthquake had brought out a shared consideration, compassion, and community spirit. People all over the Southland realized we were all in this together, and for at least a few inspirational days after the quake, we were all suddenly a lot nicer to each other. Even on the road. Remarkable.

Of course, the effect of that soon wore off, and we were all reliably back at each other’s throats, scrambling to be first to the offramp, first through the green light, first to the good parking space. Screw you, other guy. Outta my way. I’m in a hurry. Cut you off – tough luck. I gotta be somewhere. Me-me-me. But for a precious few days, ours was the most courteous, considerate and selfless city in the country. The other guy in the next car over wasn’t just the guy who was about to cut you off or beat you to the offramp. He was someone about whose safety and security you actually gave a damn.

It’s a shame that we all can’t give a damn when times are good. It’s a shame that it takes a disaster to bring this home, and bring us together instead of setting us upon each other. It’s a shame that this is the kind of thing that makes us care and empathize, that brings it home, out of the comfort zone. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina is as close as many people in the Gulf states will ever come to understanding what it’s like to live in a truly devastated place – like, maybe, Iraq. Sadly, they now understand what “life” is like in the war zone (if you can call that “living”). And they shouldn’t have to hurt like that, and know those horrors, up close and personal. Neither should the Iraqis, who have yet to recover from Hurricane George.

Hopefully, it’ll make us all think. And take a little better care of one another, whether it’s here at home, or elsewhere. For starters…

http://www.redcross.org

http://www.noahswish.org

http://www.teamster.org/benefits/disasterrelief/disaste...

http://www.msana.com/msadisasterrelief.htm

http://www.la-spca.org/forms/donations.htm

http://www.hssm.org

More here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss

Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations KRTH-FM, KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, and RKO Radio Networks, plus KTLA-TV. She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in 1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print, for the Associated Press. She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at work on a new craft book for kids and friends. A lifelong Democrat who began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie, and Tom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary currently is a weekly columnist for www.democrats.us - from the Left.