SharonA, I don't think you fully understand the situation.

While the tsunami death toll and devastation was certainly far greater than Katrina's, "tsunami" is the only word we have to describe a hundred-mile wide wall of water 25 feet high that inundates an entire city, perhaps for months, and floods out a million people. If a large (not giant) earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico had sent a tsunami to the coast, the results would have been similar.

As for the people who stayed behind, many have no vehicles and nowhere to go. Others are hospital and emergency workers who had to stay. Many were too sick to leave. Others believed God would protect them. Others just don't believe anything "politicians" say.

Many of those who did escape are now homeless, jobless, moneyless.

Be humbled by the fact that it could just as easily been you, or any of us, caught in this catastrophe.

I made as big a donation as I can afford to the American Red Cross, and I urge all Mudcatters to do the same.