Relief efforts update

[Lucy]

Just heard the new young pastor of Houston's First Baptist Church say that they've been feeding a hot meal to 200 each night since the storm at the church. He was leading his church members to participate in the huge feeds soon to start down at Brown Convention Center which will go on for months, probably, and will include shifts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so they need trained people to pass out the food to thousands. He said that this was no time for weekends at the lake. This is going to cost 100's of thousands of dollars, but the church is committing to it. They are going to bus their members from the church parking lot for their own safety for each of the three shifts.

The guy also said that they have racketball courts full of food, and the gym is open for all the evacuated kids to have a safe place to play.

Another big organization, Texas Baptist Men, will do the cooking of all these meals. Baptist Men's organizations are the ones I saw in the Red Cross course I took with the huge trailer kitchen things they take all over wherever there is a major disaster.

HFBC alone trained something like 2000 volunteers this past weekend which I would estimate is most of their over 18 yr old able bodied regulars. Requirement of Red Cross is that these volunteers be over 18.

Have any of you taken any of the Red Cross Diaster Courses? There are a number of them, depending upon how far you want to go. Seems as though the initial ones were more of an overview as I remember. If you are up to it, that might be something that many of you might like to participate in.

By the way, I talked to my cousin who's evacuated from N.O. today. He said that he and his wife made it back to their Jefferson Parrish apt last Wed. and that they'd taken on about a foot of water inside of their apartment. On Wed. when they arrived, the apt. management was already ripping out carpet, and I suppose doing everything they could to get the place livable again and prevent major mold damage. He said the adjuster had set up a date to come to their place as they did have apt. insurance. Also, his is a two story townhouse type apt., so lots of things would've been upstairs, I'm pretty sure. They'll no doubt have to replace first floor furniture.

The water they took in was from flooding, not from the breach, but from the flooding from all the rain that came with the storm.

By the way, Katrina remained at category I wind velocity all the way to approximately between Laurel, MS. and I-20. To give you some idea how far inland that is, I-20 is the interstate that runs west all the way through Dallas/Ft. Worth which is about 250 miles north of Houston. It was a strong, big storm, so the rest of MS that wasn't in it's path was still dealing with trophical force winds knocking down trees, etc.

I'd like to know what happened north and east of MS in the path of this storm. Does anyone have any information on states like Tenn., etc.

Listening to channel 6 station of New Orleans, I heard an interview of the Sherriff of Jefferson Parrish, Harry Lee. He was talking about how he had to get permission from FEMA to open up a Walmart there as his officers needed supplies and there would be the most variety in this type of store. Anyway, he went through Gov. Blanco, and she wasn't getting him the needed permission, so he signed the order to commandier the Walmart and a Sams store, I think, himself. Said the President had told him he'd back him up. Said they could put him in Alcatraz (sp), he didn't care. Other things too -- he was funny.

Problem as I see it is that people who've lived on the Gulf all their lives need to be in charge of things, and just plug the other entities, state, and federal under there command in the initial stages. By the way, I have personal experience with the local VA's poor handling of Hurricane Alicia which came through during minimal staffing on the night shift. No one in charge made any provisions for anyone to come in prior to landfall, and left the hospital with this skeleton crew for 24 hrs or more as many couldn't get in following the storm. I had personally taken provisions in to sustain me in the evening prior to the hit, but no one in charge had made any arrangements to set up a large sleep room, so that the night shift could be relieved the next morning. I think that this was directly related to the fact that those in charge had been moved here from areas of the country where there are no hurricanes. I should think that a good manager would've consulted with some of the locals, but knowing these people, I really wasn't surprized. They even expected people to drive in during the eye of the storm if you can believe that, while all the other officials on the radio were telling everyone to not get out due to the danger of flying debre, power lines down, etc. I've always maintained that it would be best to scrap all government agencies at the end of ten yrs, and start over from the ground up. After a while, there are sooo many regs to deal with that you can't get anything done -- miles and miles of red tape to wade through.

Barbara, remind me some time to tell you about what a lady told me who'd worked in a large state psych facility in NYC. What happened was that a patient had intentionally broken some pool cues. She went through all the details of the hoops she had to go through to replace those pool cues. Long story short, it ended up taking a year to replace them, and on the first day they were taken to where the patients could use them, another patient had snapped them in two again. Welp, looks as though I've told the whole story so now you don't have to ask.

Locals have been stockpiling rations in their houses prior to hurricanes and even hurricane season all their lives in these areas, so I'm not surprized that most have survived in their houses even to the present time as rescues are still going on. We just know how to survive, and for a long time afterward. To us, things have gone amazingly well following Katrina as compared to other large storms of the past.

That being said, it's far from a pleasant experience!

Yours, Luce