A Familiar Complaint

"No one has come to help us. Yesterday, we
buried 20 people in the village, including my
five-year-old daughter. We don't know how
many more people are lying under the debris."

The speaker is Farid Khan, a farmer in Jabla, India, quoted in an AP story titled India Quake Survivors Complain of Slow Aid.

You would be a hard person not to feel compassion for Khan and tens of thousands like him throughout India and Pakistan, just as you would be a hard person not to feel compassion for those who complained about the slow movement of aid in the days immediately after Katrina.

The global lesson is simple: In the days after a disaster, you'll probably be on your own. I write this as I continue to put off putting together a set of disaster preparedness boxes -- a big one for the house and a small one for each of the family cars. If I procrastinate too long (and that could be just until tomorrow; who knows?), I'll have only myself to blame.