recovery

I saw articles today concerning the Florida condo collapse with headlines like "Searchers recover personal possessions from rubble," and I was so glad to see that. People who fled the building with nothing, and couldn't return to their still-standing apartments because of the danger of further collapse, surely there ought to be some way to sort through the rubble after the remains were torn down, and get back at least some of their belongings? And it turns out there is.

This hasn't always been the case. Often times in the past, after disasters like earthquakes, still-standing but dangerously wobbly buildings have been knocked down and the rubble and everything in it has been hauled off to the dump without any consideration for the owners of the lost material. Sometimes they've had to go off to the dump and personally try to sort through it there.

Sure, it's easy to mock people. They're alive when others are dead, surely they should be grateful for that and not worry about measly material things. But if they're to carry on, the less they have to start over from scratch the better; and it's not up to the authorities to decide if the survivors' gratitude for being alive should require them to give up on everything else. It's over now: those who are dead are dead and those who survived are alive; the building is gone and no longer a danger. The survivors should have a right to recover what's recoverable, and I'm glad that in this case they were given that chance.