Posted: Jan 15, 2007  12:35

This text is from a county emergency manager in the Western part of North Dakota after the recent snow storms.

Up here in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from an Historic Event, may I even say a “Weather Event” of “Biblical Proportions.” With a historic blizzard of up to 44 inches of snow and winds to 90 mph that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to tens of thousands.

FYI: George Bush did not come. FEMA did nothing. No one howled for the government. No one blamed the government. No one even uttered an expletive on TV.
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit. Our mayors did not blame Bush or anyone else. Our governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either. CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC did not visit -- or report on this category five snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards. No one asked for a FEMA trailer house.
No one looted.

Nobody, I mean nobody, demanded the government do something. Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King. No Katie Couric. No Oprah. No Chris Matthews and No Geraldo Rivera. No Sean Penn, no Barbara Streisand, no Hollywood types to be found.
And...we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUVs to pluck people out of snow-engulfed cars. The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny. Local restaurants made food and police and fire departments delivered it to snowbound families.

Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal and oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns. We put on an extra layer of clothes because up here it’s “work or die.” We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for “sitting at home” checks.
Even though a category five blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

“In my travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90 percent of the world’s social problems evaporate.” It does seem that way. At least to me.

I hope this gets passed on.

Maybe some people will get the message: The world does not owe you a living.