c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is senior vice president of World Relief and the mother of two children.)

(UNDATED) My teenager wanted a gas mask for Valentine’s Day.

He was joking _ sort of.

Like the rest of the family, he’s torn between taking the warnings about bioterrorism seriously and staying in denial.

I ask my husband if he wants me to stop at the hardware store for some extra duct tape to help make the house airtight and he explains the facts. Our 60-year-old house leaks in so many places we’d have to wrap the entire outside in tape and plastic. And even then it wouldn’t filter out micro-organisms or radiation.

A three-day supply of water and food? What good would that do? Am I supposed to stock up on camping food or should we just assume we could live on the Pop Tarts stacked up in our pantry for three days if necessary?

I feel frustrated by the uncertainty and my self-imposed passivity until I think of disaster situations I have known. Bosnia. Mozambique. Congo. People in each of these places were warned to prepare for war, flooding and a volcano. But how do you prepare without stopping life altogether?

Disasters rarely go as predicted and preparations often seem futile in retrospect. Visiting Sarajevo at different times during the war showed me that people simply kept adapting to the new realities. First they cut down trees for firewood. By the next visit they were stoking fires with precious books and furniture. Months later they had started pulling off flooring and doors.

The people in Mozambique who had picked out trees to climb to escape rising water probably hadn’t counted on snakes climbing along with them. And who in Congo could have realized that the flow of volcanic rock would wipe out hundreds of houses and split to move around one house, leaving it untouched in a simmering lava field?

In fact, had we been prepared for disaster in September 2001, could any of us foreseen that still unbelievable impact of airplane and skyscraper? Would we have been stockpiling food and seeking airtight spaces while a jetliner hurled toward the World Trade Center?

I work for an organization that deals with the aftermath of disasters, natural and man-made. Last year we dealt with the effects of lava, storms, fire and war. While the events themselves were very different, the people’s responses were surprisingly similar.

People often become very generous in times of adversity. They share meager resources with others even if they have less for their own family. Dealing with disaster reduces people to very basic instincts. Once they have assured survival, they try to make things as normal as possible for their children.

And as soon as the dust has cleared, people try to return to what they knew. Even people I have met in refugee camps who have not seen their homeland for years continue to hold on to the memory of home.

How will we deal with disaster? If it comes, I hope we will handle it half as well as so many people I have seen around the world. I pray it will bring out the best in us, not the worst.

I run through a mental checklist of my block and think of those most vulnerable: the newborn baby across the street, the elderly woman who lives alone, the woman who has suffered a stroke. What could we do to help these families in case of disaster?

The thought comforts me as I begin to think of calling each one just to stay in touch. And then it occurs to me that perhaps that’s how we should all be spending our time, reaching out to each other instead of barricading ourselves into our houses.

I’m not sure there is anything we can really do to prepare for disaster. But I do know that reaching out to those who are even more vulnerable might be the best way to live, disaster or not.

DEA END BOURKE