Hi neighbors. Any joy we anticipated for the holiday has been overshadowed by the horrible conditions in the Gulf states and the complete devastation there.

Day by day I watch the news and worry about my personal friends I have in New Orleans. The Nevada Daily Mail's former editor, Angie Cutrer, was living near Biloxi, Miss.; and I have not heard from her, either.

As I watch homeless people begging for relief, for the simple necessities of food, water and medical supplies, I wonder how many people are deciding the term "Homeland Security" is a sad joke.

The first orders from the federal government, was to send military personnel in to stop looting. Looting? Why would that concern anyone when people's lives are in the balance? OK, there are banks and jewelry stores but most of the valuables are still safely inside vaults that no looters armed with car tools and pen knives will ever pry open.

Catching a petty thief is not a priority when people are dying! If people are breaking into flooded stores to scavenge food, bottled water, clothing, medicine, first aid supplies, baby food, diapers and other such things I say why not? Is stealing wrong? Yes. Survival is not.

Using time and man-power to chase people out of stores is not smart. These looters may be putting their lives in danger entering buildings that are no longer structurally safe, but they are not the only ones in danger and at least they are mobile.

Car-jacking, pulling people out of a moving car and taking it for yourself is wrong, folks. Putting others in danger to save yourself is never the right thing to do.

Siphoning gas out of cars that no longer work due to water damage to put into emergency vehicles or your own vehicle to get to safety, is not wrong in this situation.

The point is people have been left to fend for themselves.

Where is homeland security? Would it had been much different if a bomb had blasted open the levees? Homeland security implies security starting at home -- from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Military law being called about a concern over a few looters has nothing to do with the survival of 50,000 people.

People without food, water, or privacy and crowded into a large area with 20,000 other hungry, thirsty people will get rowdier with every day they have to tell their crying children there is no food.

People often shoot guns into the air to signal they are in need of rescue, not as an attack on helicopters bringing food and water.

Dead bodies bloat and start to rot in 90 degree heat within three days.

What would real homeland security mean? Here's my thoughts.

Government funding to build public shelters throughout every community, city and county where emergency supplies and first aid equipment could be kept.

Equip these shelters with radios or other reliable methods of communication with each other and the outside world.

Large cities would require many of these shelters. They would have to be spaced out enough that people could get to them quickly and everyone would know where they were.

They would have to be designed to be quickly and easily gotten in to and evacuated out of.

They would have to have enough cots and inflatable mattresses to maximize their use. They would need self-contained ventilation and electrical systems and plumbing facilities to accommodate the amount of people they are made for.

There would have to be enough police/security to protect the peaceful majority from criminals who also seek shelter during disasters.

Yes, bunkers. Just like the ones built for Congress. Would these cost a lot of money? Probably not much more than, say, a Superdome or Astrodome.

I don't have all the answers and probably lack insight into some larger picture that the government will undoubtedly explain to us later.

It just seems to me that when the first big test came around, Homeland Security seems more a failure without a plan than a fail-proof plan.

Until the next time remember, most pioneers had root cellars. The Native Americans had places like Haley's Bluff. Look around and tell me what we have? Where would you go if the New Madrid fault line suddenly tore itself to shreds? Don't know? Better start making some plans on how to save yourself and your loved ones.

Homeland Security might do a strip-search to keep you "safe" on an airplane, but if you ask them for a drink of water, you might get pretty thirsty waiting for them to pass the plastic cup.