To restore anyone's faith in humanity

A family stops by a food tent set up by volunteers including Katie Taylor, left, for residents of the Harvest area.

Disasters bring out the best in us.
Alabamians' overwhelming response to the terrible tornadoes that left historic, almost inconceivable death tolls and devastation across the state Wednesday will restore anyone's faith in humanity. Just look at Friday's special section in The News. It is filled with acts of kindness, large and small.
-- A Facebook page set up in the hope of reconnecting owners to their mementos swept away in the tornadoes and deposited dozens of miles away.
-- Another Facebook page, Toomer's for Tuscaloosa, set up by an Auburn fan to offer information on where people in the Auburn/Opelika area can give donations and supplies to help those affected in Tuscaloosa, one of the hardest-hit areas and home to arch rival the University of Alabama. Other Auburn groups also are making efforts to help.
-- A church and a mobile restaurant serving food from a gas station in Pratt City. A sorority making sandwiches while the Salvation Army and the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama hand out snacks and bottled water.
-- All sorts of events, nonprofit groups and businesses, including The News, doing everything from coordinating donations, volunteers and cleanup to distributing food, clothing and toiletries, as well as meeting other, immediate needs, from feeding tornado victims to providing them temporary shelter.
-- Regions Bank donating $1 million for tornado relief efforts around the Southeast. (Friday also brought word BBVA Compass' foundation donated $500,000 to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund; Energen Corp. gave $250,000 to the Red Cross; and the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, on behalf of Advance Alabama Publications, which includes The Birmingham News, announced it is donating $1 million to the Red Cross. Also, Protective announced it is giving $250,000 to be divided between the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and local clean-up and aid efforts involving Protective employees.)
Then, there are the official responses, which we often tend to take for granted:
-- The National Weather Service meteorologists, who warned days in advance of the dangerous conditions ripe for supercell storms that spawn deadly tornadoes, and issued detailed warnings. (They and TV weather people with their wall-to-wall coverage no doubt saved many, many lives.)
-- The first responders on so many horrific scenes -- police, fire, the National Guard and others -- who dig through rubble for survivors and victims, clear debris, direct traffic, provide security and more.
-- Utilities working literally around the clock to restore power, water and phone service or to stop gas leaks.
-- Hospitals swarmed beyond capacity treating the critically wounded and those with cuts and scrapes.
-- Morgues, also inundated, handling the storm dead on top of normal caseloads.
-- The state Senate rushing to approve a bill to let school systems make up days lost because of tornado damage and other reasons by extending school days instead of scheduling make-up days.
-- Local, state and federal emergency management agencies, along with elected officials at every level, doing what they can to coordinate and speed responses and make government work as well as it can.
-- And in one of the most encouraging acts of government, spared city after city pitching in to help tornado-ravaged areas. Trussville donating manpower and morgue trucks to Tuscaloosa and Cooper Green Mercy Hospital, a mobile kitchen to west Birmingham and fire protection to the North Smithfield Community. Springville and Irondale sending workers and equipment to help clear trees in Moody. Mountain Brook firefighters and police working in Pleasant Grove. And on and on.
We know, in compiling these examples, we have left many out. For that, we apologize in advance. There are so many who have mobilized to ease the pain, to provide aid and comfort, to help piece back together shattered lives and communities.
They -- we -- do this with no thought of the things we let divide us daily. Politics. Religion. Race. Class. Geography. City boundaries. Even college football.
Abraham Lincoln, on the eve of our country's ultimate divider, the Civil War, said in his first inaugural address: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
In the tornadoes' aftermath, the better angels of our nature in Alabama are alive and well and working overtime. Would that it be that way every day.