I for one have never been in favor of a national identity card, but in the wake of Hurricane Katrina my thoughts on the matter are changing. It is just unbelievable how many parents got separated from their children. A national identity card for children under 14 would certainly have enabled more parents and children to be reunited by now.

If you had a choice of going on a luxury Cruise ship with a private room or staying in the astrodome and having a huge pajama party with 15,000 perfect strangers where would you rather be. I'll take the pajama party. It defies logic I know. But there aren't enough takers for the cruise ships. It seems that everyone wants to stay in the astrodome and the main reason given is that parents don't want to leave the Astrodome because they are still separated from their children.

If children were required to wear an ID bracelet with a barcode or magmatic strip many more children would already be reunited with their parents. How hard would it be to scan the ID Bracelets and create a database of which shelter each child is at. This way a Mom in the Astrodome could just give her child's information to a computer operator who could then pull up the location of her child.

In Cases where the child has been scanned into the system the computer operator could take the parents information and when the child is scanned the computer would say Mom is in the Astrodome. This National ID Bracelet could be made voluntary for people over 14. The Same principals could be applied to help older folks who suffer from dementia be reunited with their loved ones as well.