Disaster Relief: It All Cycles Back

        When disaster strikes, family comes first. We think of our family and our community, our life and how it will be effected. A little self-centered? So what would we do if disaster hit someone else? Treat them as our own? I would hope so.
         The tornado that hit Oklahoma left practically nothing; it destroyed 13,000 homes and being more than a mile wide "it pummeled everything in its path for 17 miles, with winds traveling at 200 miles per hour." After hearing numerous stories from a mother being killed from protecting her child to a school teacher grabbing a mattress to protect her students, the emotions still remain high with 24 reported killed and 353 reported injured.
        Monday's tornado was a level five, the worst on a scale from zero to five. Lying in "Tornado Alley", Oklahoma is known for being a center of dusty winds, but storms to this extent are rare.

       And until Monday, America was enjoying an unusually quiet tornado season. 
       Between January 1st and April 27th it had just seen 228, compared with an 
       average of 537.

       The 'little' number of 228 still sounds large to me! That is why I love living in Chicago! One could call it a happy medium of weather to some extent ie we may have extreme hots and colds, but we don't have natural disasters.
        Discussion of the cost of the damage from the tornado is now on the frontline, estimated to be between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. After Obama signed a disaster declaration Monday night, federal funds were "available to stricken homeowners and businesses." This is where it got a little rocky with Oklahoma politicians. Both senators and the majority of its state representatives "opposed the bill that provided federal aid to victims of Sandy, a hurricane that devastated New York and New Jersey last year." Junior senator of Oklahoma, Tom Cobrun, also disagreed with a 2011 bill to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster-relief fund. Yet, "the day after the twister struck his home state he promised Oklahomans that 'any and all available aid will be delivered without delay.'" SO should he have considered what could happen to his home state if disaster struck before he voted on the prior bills? A little hypocritical, eh? We may be always thinking about ourselves and the people that surround us, but when it comes down to the end, it is important to also think about our 'neighbors' hundreds, thousands, and millions miles away. At some point, it may cycle right back to us!