My stepmom, Marilyn, sent me this article, today, about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Dallas, where they live, and downtown Dallas, where they own a hotel, the Quality Inn Market Center, and their efforts to help those in need...
My parents have been poverty activists for years...so their generosity never surprises me...but this level of generosity (see the end of the article on the Quality Inn efforts) is pretty amazing, I must say...
I gave $20 to the Red Cross when I went by the Community Mercantile, our local natural foods store, recently...
And I wish I could say I had the wherewithal to help in the way that my parents and the hotel staff did on this one...its pretty incredible, really:):)...
I have been terribly dissappointed to hear all of the pettiness and blame games and stupid bullshit come from people at all levels...
Including Hillary Clinton, who has done plenty of political grandstanding on this issue but has yet to do one thing that I've seen that constructively deals with this catastrophe...there's a reason why I have doubts about Hillary as President...and this is yet one more...a more important doubt -- the absence of constructive, responsible leadership in the midst of a crisis -- than I've had of Hillary up until now...
Michael Chertoff, on the other hand, the current Homeland Security chief, is doing a far better job of dealing with this crisis than any of his or Michael Brown's critics...most of whom seem to have little interest, at all, in helping people in need at the moment, which is still pretty serious for many people...and much interest in imposing impossible expectations on those who are taking responsibility for the situation...the convenient luxury of those who feel no sense of real responsibility for situations like this one...
Are Democrats forever doomed to be the party of entitlement?...rather than the party of generosity, responsibility, and enlightened self-interest that was the direction that Bill Clinton tried to lead the party in during his tenure?...
Why is it that lesser leaders think that recrimination and whining is some kind of substitute for doing something that helps someone?...especially when a crisis is on-going?...what total lapse in conscience in the face of a serious crisis does someone have to engage in to think that initiating a commission to figure out who to blame for this terrible tragedy is somehow equivalent to working responsibly to help those in need?...or to think that making the Federal Emergency Management Agency as cabinet-level office again will do a goddamned thing to help anyone in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and wherever else right now or even in the future?...
People who do this kind of thing need to learn to either do something that will help...or sit down and get out of peoples' way, for goodness sakes...
Thanks Mom and Dad for being so generous in your contribution to this terrible crisis...
Love,
Ben
Katrina's Aftermath: Texas Responds
Dallas, Texas
Evacuees turning to help beyond downtown Dallas centers
06:23 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
By ROBERT THARP / The Dallas Morning News
Thousands of unused cots were stacked high at Reunion Arena and the Dallas Convention Center on Monday as churches, suburban cities and individuals chipped in to defuse the crush of dispossessed.
Already, far more evacuees are living in an assortment of smaller shelters and hotels or doubled up with relatives than in the cavernous downtown Dallas relief centers.
Downtown volunteers served Sunday dinner to about 10,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but at bedtime at Reunion Arena and the Dallas Convention Center fewer than 1,800 of the approximately 8,200 prepared beds were occupied.
Reunion Arena remains the bureaucratic center for evacuees, perhaps skewing the prediction that Dallas would need to house more than 8,000 evacuees, said Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm. On Saturday, Mayor Laura Miller alerted federal emergency officials that the city could take no more.
"It's amazing to me that individuals have reached out and not waited for the bureaucracy," Ms. Suhm said. "What I'm worried about is help two to three weeks from now."
14,200 registered
Louisiana residents who escaped to Dallas before the storm are now coming to Reunion Arena to register and receive distinctive green or pink wristbands that identify them as evacuees. By Monday, the registration list had exceeded 14,200 names. Authorities do not have a system to track where evacuees are staying after they register.
The latest visitors to Dallas have scattered in many directions.
John Johnson, a 56-year-old New Orleans native, has been living with relatives in North Dallas for more than a week. Nine people are sharing a two-bedroom apartment. He did not register at Reunion Arena until seven days after he arrived.
"Myself, I'd stay," said the hotel worker who owns a home in uptown New Orleans. "But my wife, she wants to go back home."
Many are going from dense urban housing in New Orleans to North Texas suburbs. Thirty-six people traveling in three cars showed up at the First Baptist Church of Duncanville, quickly followed by a busload of 50 from the Superdome, said the Rev. Keith Brister.
Like shelters everywhere, the number is fluctuating as fragmented families reunite and others move into longer-term housing.
"They leave and come every hour," Mr. Brister said, noting that the church got a call at 2 a.m. asking if it had space for 100. "We're trying to assess who's here to stay and who's heading out."
Public housing efforts
Dallas Housing Authority officials said Monday that they had placed 1,000 people – about 300 families – in public housing.
Workers with the Interfaith Housing Coalition were rushing to prepare several Old East Dallas transitional housing units and had placed more than 25 families in homes since Sunday. The agency had more than 1,000 evacuees awaiting housing Monday afternoon.
"We definitely have more intake than we have property units available," said case manager David Estrada.
In Wylie, a city of 30,000 in Collin County, the city shelter was sleeping 88, and officials were struggling to reunite a 15-year-old boy disconnected from his parents.
The First Baptist Church in Keller in Tarrant County had 128 evacuees by midafternoon Sunday. A yellow sign hung on a door that read "Welcome to Keller." A makeshift clinic screened evacuees with conditions ranging from asthma to diabetes. One man was not aware that he had suffered a minor gunshot wound inside the Superdome.
"It's like a little city within a church," said Ed Nelson, the church's business administrator.
In McKinney, the city, businesses and volunteers combined to transform a former Wal-Mart from vacant space to a shelter, complete with showers, meals, first aid and bedding for 250, in less than 72 hours. The building had been scheduled to be demolished this month.
By Labor Day, most shelters were still juggling a deluge of volunteers and donations, while enrolling students in area schools and trying to assist evacuees as they start to focus on the future.
At Mr. Brister's church, doctors from Charlton Methodist Hospital were planning to visit the gymnasium so evacuees would not have to come to emergency rooms.
Medical problems there included a spider bite, dehydration and ringworm. A pregnant woman was taken for prenatal care, and another woman who had fainted while waiting to be rescued at the Superdome was still complaining of a headache.
Praise for churches
In an address Monday, President Bush visited a Baton Rouge, La., church and noted the help provided by churches, synagogues and mosques. He singled out T.D. Jakes for the relief work of his Dallas church, The Potter's House, which has a predominantly black congregation.
The Rev. Tyrone Gordon of St. Luke Community United Methodist Church said African-American congregations feel a bond with the mostly black evacuees. Cars were parked bumper to bumper Monday afternoon, and volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder to organize the constant flow of supplies and services. Every day, more than 100 evacuees have stopped by the church's community center on East Grand Avenue for food, clothing, toiletries and housing assistance.
"Just being African-American, there are cultural ties," Mr. Gordon said. "Most that were affected were African-Americans. Many others had the means to get their needs met."
Starting to look ahead
No matter where they're staying, evacuees are starting to shift gears as they accept the reality that they will not be going home soon. Walter Brooks, a 50-year-old cook at New Orleans' famous Antoine's restaurant, contemplated a new life in Dallas and started looking for more permanent housing.
Mr. Brooks spent two days inside the Superdome and 16 hours outside the stadium waiting on a bus that dropped him off in Dallas on Saturday night. He registered at the convention center but came straight to the Quality Inn on Market Center Boulevard, where the hotel's owners have turned over almost the entire 265-unit hotel to evacuees.
The hotel lobby has become an impromptu clearinghouse of aid services. Evacuees can use a bank of computers to register with FEMA. Ballrooms are full of donated clothes, food and supplies. Another area of the lobby is devoted to finding permanent housing and jobs. In another room, stylists have given more than 200 haircuts.
Help for 800
Hotel director Dave Peterson estimates he's helped more than 800 people since evacuees started showing up more than a week ago. He stopped charging those unable to pay. By Monday afternoon, the hotel had helped find permanent jobs for more than 50 people and long-term housing for 27 families.
So far, the effort has been pulled off without help from local or federal authorities, Mr. Peterson said.
"This is all private," he said. "There's nothing here that wasn't brought to us by an individual."
Staff writers Jim Getz, Emily Ramshaw, Ernesto Londoño, Marissa Alanis and Holly Yan contributed to this report.
AID FROM ACROSS TEXAS
Texas is delivering social services to Hurricane Katrina evacuees as 240,000 people start to rebuild their lives in the Lone Star State. The state has provided school enrollment for 6,100 evacuee children and food stamp assistance for more than 26,000 families.
On Monday, Mike Leavitt, health and human services secretary, declared a public health emergency in Texas, saying it would speed federal assistance for the state.
"It will allow us to move the red tape and any roadblock out of the way in order to serve people," Mr. Leavitt said after he, Gov. Rick Perry and local leaders toured San Antonio's emergency shelters on the former Kelly Air Force Base.
A list of several Texas cities that have mobilized to serve thousands of evacuees:
AUSTIN: Donations rolling in
Residents filled three donation sites with clothing, diapers, toiletries and bottled water.
About 4,000 evacuees are at the Austin Convention Center.
Volunteers at an apartment complex in Williamson County prepared 47 rooms with donated goods for evacuees. "They have nothing, so they're going to need toiletries, dishes, food, clothes, dish soap," said Jackie Good, a volunteer from Austin. "The first weekend, everyone jumps out to help. In three or four weeks, I hope people will still keep coming out to help."
BEAUMONT: Country singers perform concert
Country singers Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd performed a free concert Sunday to benefit relief efforts.
About 1,450 evacuees were housed at Ford Park Red Cross shelter.
BRYAN: Corps of Cadets volunteers for 200
Members of Texas A&M University's Corps of Cadets volunteered to help about 200 evacuees at Reed Arena, many of whom wore maroon and white T-shirts donated by the A&M athletic department.
The Bryan-College Station Eagle reported that $58,000 in cash and gift cards had been collected, not including $21,000 raised in one hour last week by the Rotary Club.
CORPUS CHRISTI: Vaccinations for evacuees
As of Sunday, the city had taken in 1,268 evacuees.
About 1,000 evacuees were given vaccinations Sunday at Memorial Coliseum.
Bishop Edmond Carmody has asked residents to house victims who might arrive in the Coastal Bend area.
EL PASO: Festival goers pitch in
About 435 evacuees arrived at the Judson F. Williams Convention Center on Sunday night.
A Fiesta de Las Flores spokesman said festival attendees filled two vans with toiletries, clothes and food.
GALVESTON: Ships to house 5,000
Two Carnival cruise ships will be docked at the Port of Galveston and house about 5,000 evacuees.
HUNTSVILLE: 275 housed by church
About 275 evacuees were housed at First Baptist Church.
Sam Houston State University established a hurricane relief fund.
LUBBOCK: Hanging out
About 400 evacuees arrived Sunday in Lubbock. They will be housed in a hangar at Reese Technology Center and Lubbock Municipal Coliseum.
Breedlove Dehydration Plant is preparing 1 million servings of food to deliver to a warehouse in Magnolia, Ark., 20 miles north of Louisiana. Breedlove also is preparing food shipments to warehouses in Dallas and Houston.
Compiled from wire and Internet reports
