The neighboring states and communities, especially Texas and Baton Rouge, are doing an amazing job of helping the folks who must leave to find a safe place to begin rebuilding their lives and cities. Please accept a huge round of applause and thanks for their immediate response. A special deep thanks to the relief workers, police, utility workers, firefighters, EMTs, National Guards, doctors, nurses, hospital workers, ministers, rabbis, priests and others who all who stayed in the impact zone for DAYS under the same horrible conditions to provide what help they could. Floods last a long, long time. Donations are so important and thanks to all of you who have sent them in. There's more, though, we can each do.

The Texas governor called for other states to help out and take some of the evacuees into their communities, too. One plane has already landed in Phoenix, AZ according to CNN. As great as the neighboring states are, we can all help by opening our communities. If we as a country can get hundreds of thousands, or even better millions, to each participate in the rebuilding and resettling efforts from this national disaster, it will be a story our grandchildren will love to hear. Our great-grandparents rebuilt Chicago from a devastating fire and our grandparents righted San Francisco (another national treasure). We can do it with a lot of hard work, compassion and some sacrifice.

Spread caring and hope .. it's a powerful antidote for those directly affected by huge losses to take those first steps towards recovery.

There are 1.4 million people in greater New Orleans from the 2000 census. The numbers are bigger when you include the Gulf Coast of Mississippi population. Conservatively, that means to me there are 500,000 OR MORE of our fellow Americans needing a home away from home for the foreseeable future. School starts this week for the children; memorial services need to be held to grieve those lost in the disaster; our relocated citizens need jobs to also participate in the recovery process; they need to cook their own kind of food and enjoy the ability to do their own shopping. The list goes on & on. Housing and services are needed for the thousands of workers directly rebuilding the impact zone and to run the refineries and ports.

Call your state governors and representatives Tuesday to find out what your states are doing to accept and welcome evacuees - or encourage them to get going! Those great volunteers, like Michele and Betty, will need others to relieve them in caring for our countrypeople in the next few weeks and months. Help will take many forms. It can be as close to home as looking after a neighbor’s home, garden or pets if they are among the second or third wave of relief workers. And we KNOW LCTers are fantastic with pets! :D

IMHO it's a more productive place for us to focus our energy right now. We certainly need to take time later to figure out how to improve our disaster services effort. Now is NOT the time to even create the appearance of placing blame. The Red Cross (disaster recovery specialists, along with the Salvation Army, who have the experience of planning and front-line deployment of most every disaster) has put out an emergency request to train and deploy 9,000 extra volunteers. That, more than anything, tells me this is a national disaster of unprecedented recent proportions. Thank you for listening and for taking part in a historic rebuilding and recovery effort.

Cheers, Anne