The messages take the same perspective: When floodwaters drowned downtown Cedar Rapids, people got to work filling sandbags and helping one another. When the residents of New Orleans were drowned in the floodwaters unleashed by Katrina and a failing levee, all they did was to go on television and bash President Bush.

          We can all admire the spirit of the people of Cedar Rapids, just as we admire the spirit of residents in Jefferson, Fort Atkinson, Pardeeville and the other Wisconsin communities that faced flooding earlier this month. They worked hard. They faced catastrophe with aplomb. They helped one another. They are good people.

          But to compare their plight with that faced by the residents of New Orleans in 2005 is bizarre and does a disservice both to the people of New Orleans and to the residents of those communities closer to home.

          The floodwaters of New Orleans covered 80 percent of one of America's major cities. More than 1 million area residents left for higher ground before the hurricane struck. Those who remained tended to be poor, elderly and confused.

          In Cedar Rapids, the flood may have ruined 4,000 homes and the floods caused more than 20,000 residents to evacuate the area. That's about equal to the number of New Orleans residents who fled to the sports dome, only to find themselves trapped in a concrete island, surrounded by flood waters and lacking food and sanitation. Not only was New Orleans flooded, but most of southern Louisiana was under water, as was a good part of nearby Mississippi. It was a huge catastrophe.

          I could go on, but you get the picture. The magnitudes of the disasters in New Orleans and in Cedar Rapids were in no way equivalent. To equate them is to minimize the trauma of the hurricane.

          There is one other difference, too. By every account I've read, the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Wisconsin and in Iowa has been superb. In New Orleans, we may recall, FEMA did a "heck of a job." This time, our local residents are asking for government assistance and, unlike their neighbors in New Orleans, they are getting it promptly.

          In the end, our best bet is to stop trying to feel superior to those who suffered in Louisiana and, instead, be respectful for what our neighbors in Wisconsin and Iowa are going through and the grace with which they are doing so. There's enough grief to go around. We don't need to find artificial ways of feeling superior to others who have suffered.