In the future, before anyone in our community snidely and negatively generalizes about the commitment to service among our local government and nonprofit/social-sector employees, please pause and remember these days.
Government and bureaucracy are not always perfect, and in that way they reflect humanity well. Recent and prolonged tragic events have given us all a rare glimpse inside the substantial disaster preparation and response systems that most people never see.
Those systems have been built and comprise people who care, people who will be there for us in every way they can when we need them most: the firefighter, law enforcement, the search-and-rescue volunteer, the caseworker, the public health providers, the Spanish and American Sign Language interpreters, the animal services employee, the shelter worker, the public information officer, the Emergency Operations Center staff, the logistics coordinators, the National Guard members, the mappers, the planners, and the weather forecasters. I could go on and on and on.