Louisiana Family Okay

My family members in Louisiana are all well and survived the hurricane. Most of my relatives live in the northern part of the state and really was not in harms way. Earlier I told you that I was in Louisiana in August.

That trip put me in New Orleans the week before the hurricane hit. It is hard to imagine all that has happened in just two short weeks. But it did. I look at some of the places on television that I had just seen or had been and they weren’t there anymore. I have relatives and college friends living in New Orleans. I didn’t see any of my dad’s relatives while I there. And there are a lot of them; uncles, aunts, and cousins. I don’t know how they are doing. I assume they are okay because we haven’t gotten any phone calls, but then the phones weren’t working. None of the bulletin boards I have visited over the internet have any of their names posted as missing.

My college classmates living in New Orleans lost everything they had. And we are talking everything; houses and property. One of my sister’s friends and her husband decided not to rebuild in New Orleans but to relocate back to our home town of Tallulah.

The Tallulah Community Center is used as a shelter when people are evacuated from the southern cities. They live at the center until the danger is over. They sleep on cots in the gym and cooked meals are brought in to them daily.

My people living in Northeast Louisiana are more affected by crowdedness created by relocations. It has put a real strain on services like gasoline, grocery stores, clothing stores and automobiles. They are dealing with as best they can with the faith that all will be well in the end. Baton Rouge was the hardest hit by relocation efforts. All of the city’s school buses were used to move people from the Super Dome and all of the schools were closed. Baton Rouge is really, really crowded. Barb has a brother living in Baton Rouge. He and his family did not evacuate.

Here is an excerpt written by Jennifer Moses of the Washington Post that describes the situation in Baton Rouge:
“Unlike New Orleans, which may never recover, Baton Rouge, on the western edge of the storm, was largely spared and may even profit, at least in the short term. With a near doubling in population since last week -- making Baton Rouge Louisiana's most populous city -- housing prices are rising, and you can't get a rental, let alone a hotel room. In neighborhoods like mine, the lights (and, more important, the air conditioning) are going back on, and life has more or less resumed its everyday pace. There are the usual "yard men" cleaning up and mowing, young women jogging and people walking their dogs. Less apparent to the naked eye are the heroics: the folks down the street who have taken in some friends of friends; the secretary who is accommodating a family of out-of-town volunteer doctors; the retired nurse who is pulling back-to-back shifts in the maternity section of the nearest shelter. In fact, if you stay in the white sections of the city, all you'll really notice, in terms of Katrina, are the many downed tree branches and the buzz of chainsaws. You won't see a heavy police presence; you won't see teams of people from the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and you sure as hell won't see the Louisiana National Guard.
The problem is, you won't see these teams in the crisis centers either, or at least not in sufficient numbers. Baton Rouge, a city of some 350,000, is now accommodating another 350,000 or so, mainly in arenas that have been converted into shelters. Louisiana State University's field house is now the site of ungodly suffering, a modern Bosch's hell, and more refugees are pouring in by the hour. Next to it, Pete Maravich Assembly Center, where on ordinary weekends the LSU Tigers reign triumphant, is the center of triage units: screaming babies, women giving birth, old people having heart attacks, dialysis, and desperation. Beyond the crisis centers, refugees huddle in gas stations, parking lots and any place with shade.”

I have a sister living in Houston but haven’t talked to her about how her city is doing. My guess is that her already crowed city is even more crowded and taxed for services.

“Love ya!”
Later