Friday, September 02, 2005

Tears for Katrina

As I passed a coworker of mine in the hall - a tough, hard-bitten woman I've never known to waver before - she turned to me, and I thought at first she was smiling, but realized she was struggling not to cry. Her voice was breaking as she told me, "I just heard something I don't think I can stand. At one of the hospitals in New Orleans, the doctors don't have any food, so they're giving each other IVs to stay alive. The doctors!"

The tragedy of Katrina just goes on and on. I read that babies are being airlifted without their parents to hospitals in other states. Imagine the fear of not knowing where your child is being taken or how to find her again. How will all those shattered families ever reunite? And another article today said that many people getting on buses to be evacuated out of the Superdome had pets with them, but weren't allowed to take them. When a police officer took a dog away from one little boy, the boy "cried until he vomited. The policeman told a reporter he didn't know what would happen to the dog." The immensity of the larger tragedy doesn't diminish the misery of the little ones.

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