Two families sit in shelters. One has been driven from their home by a flood. Assistance pours in from around the country: money, clothing, food, and toys, donated by ordinary folks around the nation who imagine what it would be like to lose all they own. Weeks later, when the flood waters recede, the family returns to find their furniture, precious family photos and heirlooms, the food in the freezer, sports equipment, appliances damaged and destroyed. Faced with the massive task of cleaning up and restoring order, the family turns to their fellow citizens for help, and through our government, we offer them a place to stay, and funds to help with the repair their home and return their lives to normal.

Another family has fled their home, too, but for a different reason. A mother and her children sit in a shelter for victims of domestic violence. They too have lost everything they own — not just their home and possessions. In leaving their abusive father and husband, they have lost their family and community. These flood waters will not recede. This family will receive counseling and a few weeks in the shelter. But even while they are there, trying to sort out what has happened to them, the mother must look for a place to stay and get a job or apply for welfare.

Faced with this dismal future, too often, women return to the site of the disaster, sometimes resuming life with their abuser, but other times just to retrieve a few possessions, family heirlooms or the children’s clothes and toys, to make the new life a little easier. This, as we know from the crime reports, is a risky move. This return trip is often the time that someone dies.

Now if this women were they victim of a fire or flood, civic authorities would not let her return until it was safe, and the shelter and support would be there until there was a safe place for her to go. But the victim of domestic violence gets no such support. Sure the counselors will tell her that it is dangerous, but she is used to living with danger — she’s married to it. What she is not used to is living in one room with her children, explaining to them why they can’t play with their own toys, sleep in their own beds, and have their friends over. She is not used to turning her life over to caseworkers and deadlines. She is not used to being questioned by people who do not know her, arguing with police officers and judges who question why she needs a protection from abuse order. Despite the hard and dedicated work of the shelter staff, all of whom strive to create a home-like atmosphere, this is institutional living.

For the woman who has lost her home, her possessions, her community, her way of life, domestic violence is a disaster.

It’s a national disaster, too. Statistics from the National Crime Victimization Survey shows that intimate partners commit an over 600,000 rapes, robberies, or assaults annually. Each year, two thousand women are murdered by intimate partners. The Commonwealth Fund found that in 1992, 7% of all women who were living as part of a couple were physically abused and 37% were verbally or emotionally abused. In a survey by the National Safe Workplace Institute, 94% of corporate security directors rank domestic violence as a high security problem at their companies. Surely this matches the damage wrought by floods, fires, tornadoes and heat waves. Our response to the victims of domestic violence should be a disaster-level response.

Instead of relying on the welfare system to help victims of domestic violence, society should consider giving the job to the Federal Emergency Management Agency — or a like agency created just for this dilemma.

Society should treat domestic violence victims with the same respect and compassion given to families who have lost their homes to floods and fires, and make them whole. Just as we prevent the owners of unsafe, flood-damaged structures from returning to retrieve their belongings, we must prevent the victim of abuse from returning to her home if the abuser is still there or able to get to her. One way to prevent that dangerous return trip is to provide disaster assistance, including grants and loans for decent housing and a decent life-style. This may be more expensive than overcrowded shelters and a welfare-check pittance, but if it prevents the murder of a woman who has returned to an abusive home to get her clothes or her kids’ things, it is not too much to pay.