Responding to tragedy.

• Author: Bookman, Alan B.
• Position: Legal aid for disaster victims - President's Page

For this October President's Page I had planned to write on what some of the rank and file of our profession think about The Florida Bar. I wanted to (and still do) dispel myths about the Bar, the Board of Governors, sections, and committees. I gathered my thoughts and started writing this page. As I sat down to write, the Weather Channel was on, which drew away my attention. That was Sunday afternoon, August 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. It has taken a week to get my attention back to this column.

For a while Katrina looked like it was headed straight for the western Panhandle of Florida; in other words, where I live. Pensacola in the last year has been ravaged by two major storms and brushed by two others. I thought, Here we go again. In my heart, I was hoping and praying Katrina would go somewhere else.

Well, Katrina did go somewhere else, hitting with tremendous impact the area in which I grew up: New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Now, whenever we watch television, listen to the radio, or read a newspaper or magazine, we see the unbelievable carnage left by Hurricane Katrina. Our thoughts drift back to names like Andrew, Erin, Opal, Georges, Charlie, Francis, Ivan, and Dennis. We remember how our own lives, our families, our homes, and businesses were affected by Mother Nature's wrath. We remember how aid flowed into our areas. We now want to respond in kind.

What never ceases to amaze me is the size of the collective heart of lawyers. As early as Monday afternoon, the legal profession was considering what could be done to assist. Calls were made to the Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi bars to inquire, first of all, on the safety and well-being of our colleagues and secondly on what we could do to help.

While it is unfortunate that our Young Lawyers Division has become proficient in disaster relief legal matters, their expertise will be a blessing to our brothers and sisters in our neighboring state bars. Their Disaster Relief Handbook has been forwarded to other states' young lawyers divisions, and as I write this column, that handbook is being modified to comport with appropriate law. Texas and Arkansas, which have accepted thousands of evacuees, have...