Life can go from normal to nightmare in a nanosecond.

Take hurricane Katrina. In two days there was no “normal” left for hundreds of thousands of Gulf coast residents. The well-housed went to homeless overnight, and people were left struggling just to find shelter, find food, and find clean water. The bare basics of life became the most all-important “finds.”

But not long after — once two days became a week — another need became pungently apparent. People needed clean clothes. Babies continued to trash their onesies, socks stank, T-shirts were as hard as T-bones.

It was in response to the Katrina catastrophe that Tide detergent first started a program called “Loads of Hope.” An eighteen-wheeler “semi” was out-fitted with thirty-two energy efficient washers and dryers. With its accompani…