Superheroes are always thought of as having flashy outfits, driving multi-million dollar speed machines and ending their day by entertaining the social elite in their mansions. They have always been looked to as protectors of the common man, willing to run into burning buildings or stop a roaring train to give someone a second chance on life.

After Hurricane Katrina, a new breed of superhero rose from the dark waters: the common man himself. These superheroes have no punch line, no logo and no expectation of immortal fame. Instead, they used powers in the form of shelter, supplies, money and even risking their own lives to save ordinary men and women with nothing left but hope.

Chi Chi Ibekwe, an ISU alumnus, lives in Baton Rouge, La., and despite being 80 miles away from New Orleans, he says he has seen the sad remnants of Katrina’s wake.

“We just couldn’t believe the magnitude of the situation. When the levees broke in New Orleans, it was almost like Sept. 11 happening all over again but it was in our backyard,” he says.

Almost immediately after the storm, Ibekwe says he began to see people coming through the city, “some with only the shirt on their back and there were others who only had time to minimally pack anything.”

“They estimate that Baton Rouge has doubled in size. We are a city of about half a million and now they say it’s about one million people because of the influx,” he says.

Even when the crisis among the poor, black population made headlines, Ibekwe’s experience paints a different picture. When he went to help out at his community church, which had been turned into a shelter for more than 800 evacuees, he saw both black and white faces. For him, Katrina was a massive natural disaster that “didn’t spare class.”

“The storm didn’t spare anyone – from the businessman to the doctors to the uneducated people. The saddest part was seeing all of these small children who didn’t know where their parents were,” Ibekwe says. “My heart went out to them. I put myself in their shoes, having to lose everything, losing their family members. It made me rethink my life and made me realize there is only two important things in this life: my relationship with God and my relationship with other people; everything else in this life could be gone in an instant.”

Douglas Yetman, executive director of the Lincoln Way chapter of the American Red Cross, has seen donations already far surpass any collected for Sept. 11 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia.

“[Donations] came from all segments of the community: from kids, from ISU students, elderly people, businesses – everybody,” Yetman says.

“In terms of people wanting to help, we’ve never seen this before, this amount of support from the community.”

In addition to the huge monetary donations, Yetman has also seen a large increase in the number of people willing to take time out of their lives to actually travel to New Orleans and assist the Red Cross and other organizations with citywide cleanups. Yetman says many people are reluctant to volunteer because of the magnitude of the situation.

“One of the things that has been a challenge is that the Red Cross is asking for three-week deployments and that’s a great deal of time for anybody to give up, especially a student or someone with a full-time job,” he says.

Despite this constraint, Yetman sees all types of people come in, interested in “deploying.”

“We had a training session Sept. 8, where we had 55 people show up to a class that would normally have about six or seven,” he says.

Summing up support so far, Yetman says donations and volunteering for Katrina has been twice the amount given to Sept. 11 support organizations and 10 times the amount toward the tsunami victims. Yetman believes the answer to the massive outpouring is a simple one – national pride. Across the country, people are taking weeks out of their lives to travel to New Orleans and help with the cleanup. Monetary donations aren’t lacking either – the Red Cross has already seen an unprecedented $1 billion in donations within weeks of the tragedy.

“These people are our countrymen and they really felt there was absolutely a need that no one in our country should be in this situation,” Yetman says. “If there was something they could do, then darn it, they were going to do it.”

Kim Smith, professor of journalism and mass communication at Iowa State, says the news media have been very effective in their coverage of volunteering and the rebuilding of New Orleans despite the large amount of destruction.

“The news media, in this instance, did exactly what their function is – tell the news. It’s only that a lot of this news was not good news,” Smith says. However, “they made a constructed effort to show the rebuilding of the entire Gulf Coast.”

As much as government officials have been in the media, so have celebrities, profiling their contributions to the disaster. An instance with Harry Connick Jr. was especially poignant as he carried an old man through waist-high waters to rescuers.

As more celebrities migrate south and more televised benefits are planned, Smith says accusations have been voiced about any alternative motives to the coverage.

Despite concerns that their involvement might be a publicity stunt, Smith says he believes that a disaster of this magnitude will naturally draw all of the attention that it has been given, even that conjured up by celebrities in the news.

“I think people pay attention to celebrities in this country and they have done a big service by raising awareness with their own,” Smith says. “You don’t need to sensationalize a Category 5 hurricane that destroyed something the size of Great Britain. How do you sensationalize something that sensational?”

Yetman says, however, a trend in the United States raises concerns that relief may not be sustainable through the end of the cleanup. Yetman says he has noticed drop-offs a few months after disasters, natural and otherwise, that can arguably be attributed to a national “burnout.”

“I think it’s twofold: Even with the most horrific tragedy, sometimes if you’re not directly affected by it, your interest or attention to it wanes. You have to get back to class, you have to get back to dealing with your own life,” he says. “Another part of it is that people have exhausted their resources. This is going to be head-and-shoulders above the expenses of any other national disaster in Red Cross history. We’re expected to require $2 billion just from Katrina alone.”