Editor’s Note: A Silver Lining?

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the tsunami of December 2004, Katrina, Rita, the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan/India. What can we make of all these man-made and natural catastrophes? They are bigger than insurance; they are bigger than the governments whose responsibility it is to provide rescue and recovery from destruction; they are bigger than all of us. And it takes all of us, globally, to help those directly affected by these terrible events to rebuild their lives and their communities.

Were the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in September 2001 the result of our country’s policies in the Middle East? Are we the embodiment of “Satan,” as some who seek to destroy us claim, or can that term be applied to them?

Four massive hurricanes struck Florida last year. This season brought Hurricane Katrina, which killed over a thousand people in Louisiana and Mississippi, wiped out whole communities and nearly took the historic city of New Orleans off the map. Then came Rita, adding insult to injury, blasting Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas with flooding and high winds that left thousands homeless and destroyed acres of forests, croplands and wetlands. Following Rita, Hurricane Stan, barely a blip on the radar screen in the U.S., brought more death and destruction to Central America, causing mudslides that turned entire villages into mass graveyards.

Are the numerous and powerful hurricanes of late the result of global warming, as some suggest? Do they stem from the warming/cooling trends in the world’s oceans that recur in decades-long cycles? Or, as others imply, are they the embodiment of God’s wrath, sent to wipe out the sinners and the godless?

The recent earthquake in Pakistan is estimated to have killed over 35,000 people and injured nearly 50,000 more. The tsunami that struck Indonesia in December 2004 killed more than 200,000 people. Both of these disasters were the result of the natural shifting of the earth’s crust. Still, how do societies and the people who make up those societies, recover from that kind of destruction?

I certainly have no answers to these questions beyond something lame like: The best we can do is the best we can do. Close to home, while the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Katrina has been widely criticized in the media, the citizens of the U.S. and of countries outside our borders stepped up to help those in need with a generosity of spirit and resources that is a true cause for rejoicing.

So it seems that while insurance and government do have roles to play in helping societies recover from unexpected but real disasters, the kindness of and assistance from those who were strangers but are now friends may be the most lasting and influential silver lining to come out of the clouds of despair, whatever their cause.