Taking comfort in community - When disaster strikes

What a week. Since our last conversation about the Republican convention, the news has basically been all bad. It was seven days of disaster; from man’s inhumanity to man in the form of terrorism, to catastrophic events like hurricanes, to accidental tragedies like train derailments, to economic calamities like widespread corporate greed.

The events of the week have conspired to make petty distinctions and divisions between people essentially meaningless and unite us all in misery. Out of all this sadness, however, I’ve been comforted by the fact that I live in Santa Monica, because I know in my heart that if disaster strikes here, I’ll be all right.

I don’t like talking about the events of Sept. 11, 2001 because most people don’t understand what happened that day. Most people still refer to the "attacks of 9/11" as though it was a military strike against the United States by another country. It wasn’t. It was 19 guys with plastic knives and a love of death who found a weakness in airport security, hijacked four airplanes, and crashed them.

People all over the world were saying "we’re all Americans" and people all over America were saying "we’re all New Yorkers." But the well-meaning people of France were no more American than the well-meaning people of Kansas were New Yorkers.

I, on the other hand, actually was a New Yorker at the time, living in a building near Downtown Brooklyn with a clear view of the towers from my roof. I can tell you that when the first plane hit, we thought it was an accident, but when the second plane hit, we thought it was Armageddon. And I don’t know if it was the fact that there was a sense of relief every time we got on and off the subway safely or the fact that the smell of smoke permeated lower Manhattan for a good six months, but in the aftermath of the horror of that day, New Yorkers were united by a sense of community that defiantly declared, "we are New York City and we will live on."

The same way disaster can focus peoples’ attention on our similarities more than our differences, it can also serve to make government more responsive to the needs of the governed. I considered the pathetically negligent response to Hurricane Katrina to be nothing less than a national embarrassment. In fact, I almost moved to Italy afterward because I didn’t want to live in a country whose government would let thousands of its own people drown in the streets of one of its major cities while millions more watched on television.

But the way the federal, state, and local government responded to Hurricanes
Gustav and Ike went a long way toward restoring my faith.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was way out in front of Gustav, showing that he seems to have learned some of the lessons taught (the hard way) by Katrina, and it seemed like the full spectrum of preparedness and response was utilized when it came to Ike.

The only thing that made me happier than seeing the federal, state, and local governments involved in a coordinated effort to help the people of Texas was the fact that my brother (not biological, but "friend" doesn’t do him justice) in Houston was safe and dry when it was all over.

But it was the train wreck in Chatsworth that brought everything back home for me. It reminded me that accidents do happen and can happen anywhere at any time, it made me think about earthquakes and the San Andreas Fault, and it really brought home the fact that the biggest, baddest, most destructive thing on the planet (the Pacific Ocean) is less than a half-mile from where I sleep every night.

It’s absolutely terrifying to think of what could happen if an underwater earthquake led to a tsunami like the one that hit southeast Asia in 2004.

But like I said, the bright spot in all the dark sadness of the past week is the fact that I live in Santa Monica. If disaster strikes here, we’re lucky enough to be blessed with the best health care professionals in fully-equipped state-of-the-art trauma centers, hospitals with hundreds and hundreds of beds, an amazing local Red Cross ready to provide "cot care" for hundreds more at dozens of school gyms and cafeterias, and incredible first responders on par with the NYPD’s "Rescue 1" unit. Not to mention our greatest asset — our people.

We know we’ve got something special here in this town and we know we all have to do whatever we can to keep it that way. I know that if disaster strikes here, we will care for each other because we are SaMo and SaMo is us.