235,000 housed in shelters, as plans are made for longer-term housing
By Charlene Porter, Washington File Staff Writer
Washington - Hurricane Katrina flattened homes and flooded property across more than 230,000 square kilometers now declared to be federal disaster areas. The storm has also left hundreds of thousands of people seeking shelter.
The three states which took the brunt force of the August 29 hurricane -- Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama - have a combined population of almost 12 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Between 800,000 and 900,000 live in those coastal and inland areas where the storm took the greatest toll, but their evacuations and their plight have affected others throughout the region and beyond.
"What we are dealing with here is an evacuation effort on a scale never seen before," said Texas Governor Rick Petty, who has welcomed thousands of displaced Louisianans to his adjacent state. "It is an immense challenge and will continue to be so for a number of months."
FINDING SHELTER
An estimated 100,000 people are filling hotels and motels in Texas, and unknown numbers are staying with friends and relatives. The city of Houston is also home to the Astrodome, the behemoth sports stadium that is now temporary shelter for some 20,000 evacuees from the New Orleans Superdome.
Designated as a shelter of last resort for New Orleans residents who did not or could not heed an evacuation order before the storm, the Superdome sports arena was the scene of great desperation after Katrina. The building was damaged and leaking after the hurricane, and inadequately supplied for the crowds that flocked there awaiting rescue from their flooded city.
Houston's Astrodome became probably the best-known shelter in the nation when exhausted evacuees from New Orleans began arriving in Houston, but now there are 750 temporary shelters in 17 states across the United States housing more than 235,000, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reports that a variety of facilities in a wide range of locations are being brought to the task. State parks, military bases and even cruise ships are on the list of options for shelters.
FEMA also includes the generosity of friends and relatives in opening their homes as one of the options that will help solve the housing crisis for Katrina evacuees.
Authorities have no way to keep track of the numbers of people who have solved their own shelter problems -- staying in hotels, with relatives or in other rental housing. The figures seem to indicate that families and friends are playing a vital role in helping the displaced. New Orleans is a city of 460,000, almost twice the number housed in shelters, and most of the people have left the graceful city on the Mississippi River, heeding the warnings about dangerous health conditions spread by polluted waters in flooded streets.
OTHER ASSISTANCE
Government agencies are bending standard procedures to help people, recognizing that they may not have escaped with proper identification, that their addresses are temporary and that their needs are great. FEMA has accelerated an assistance program that provides $2,000 per household for expenses such as food, clothing, housing and transportation. The agency will also provide the benefit on bank debit cards for people who have no access to their own bank accounts.
FEMA Director Michael D. Brown said September 3 that his agency is prepared to "move heaven and earth to rescue, feed, shelter and restore life and health to the people currently suffering."
Shelter in sports stadiums or church basements is only a temporary situation for people whose homes have been completely destroyed. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies are beginning to look for apartments and homes in an 800-square-kilometer area surrounding the stricken region to provide replacement homes.
Katrina took people's homes and also their jobs, and the Department of Labor is working on that problem. The Department of Labor has approved almost $200 million in grants to the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas to create temporary jobs for dislocated workers. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said her agency also will streamline bureaucratic procedure in order to ensure that eligible evacuees receive unemployment benefits.
Katrina roared ashore just as most public schools across the United States were reopening. Communities that have accepted shelters and evacuees are trying to get children back to the comforting routine of schoolwork, and so have waived many of the standard enrollment requirements, recognizing that families did not flee a hurricane with school and medical records in hand.
The movement of people away from Katrina-stricken areas is the greatest displacement of people in the United States since the Civil War in the 1860s, and its duration and consequences remain unknown. Rebuilding could take years in badly damaged neighborhoods, and, given the risks of future storms and flooding, might never occur in some places.
As her citizens try to patch together lives in the wake of great loss, Louisiana's Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco wants to make sure they get back home.
"Our citizens, our most valuable asset, have been forced to take shelter across the country, but Louisiana will not fully recover until those displaced by this storm can rejoin their communities," she wrote in a letter to President Bush seeking his cooperation in a plan to rebuild the state.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)