San Antonio helps Katrina victims
San Antonio is doing its part to help people affected by Katrina. One local TV station has collected $300K in donations. This is a story from the local paper.
Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA090305.1A.kelly_arrivals.1d925a4e.html
2,500 Katrina evacuees journey to KellyUSA; many got out with nothing
Web Posted: 09/03/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Mary Moreno and Tracy Idell Hamilton
Express-News Staff Writers/mysa.com
Keith Johnson, a 28-year-old sheriff's deputy from New Orleans, lay in the grass and cried.
He'd just gotten off a plane from the beleaguered Big Easy after being trapped on a highway overpass for two days without food or water. Before that, he toiled with other deputies, rescuing people trapped all over the city.
The exhausted man tried to tell his story, but his words jumbled: "We walked from the overpass to the dome in 5 feet of water. Through oil and feces and filth."
Johnson hasn't seen his children in five days. He's pretty sure they're safe on one of the dozens of buses bringing Hurricane Katrina victims to KellyUSA, where Johnson and 2,500 others arrived Friday by bus, plane and car.
A total of 7,500 people are expected here by Sunday.
Those arriving are weary and grubby. Most have nothing except the clothes they're wearing.
The first nine buses pulled up about 9:30 a.m., surprising officials, who expected an airlift to bring the first batch. But Houston's Astrodome had reached capacity, and buses heading there were diverted to San Antonio.
As those buses sat in the KellyUSA parking lot, police, firefighters and military personnel hurriedly set up the last of more than 2,000 cots.
Officials say KellyUSA can hold about 5,000 people; the next wave will go to Freeman Coliseum, and officials began preparing the old Levi Strauss & Co. plant late Friday to also receive storm victims.
Shuttered businesses around the city also are being considered. Other cities across Texas are taking in evacuees, too.
Some people were sent here by officials in New Orleans.
Others, like Felicia Jones and 19 of her family members, came on their own. Jones left her New Orleans home early Saturday, before Katrina's arrival, and stayed with a relative. But the three-bedroom home was too small for everyone to stay there long.
So they went to KellyUSA, emotionally drained and unsure when — or even if — they would be able to return home.
"You try to stay strong," Jones said, "and hold yourself together."
A massive operation converted office space at KellyUSA into a dormitory and cafeteria.
As buses arrived, so did trucks carrying supplies donated by various companies: food from H.E. Butt Grocery Co., computers and phones from SBC Communications Inc., cell phones from Cingular Wireless.
Flatbed trucks brought portable bathrooms, and the Salvation Army will provide three meals a day.
"We're slammed," said Dr. Donald Gordon, medical director of the city's EMS system.
He was working at the shelter late Friday afternoon with teams from the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Metropolitan Health District, plus a handful of volunteer doctors and nurses.
Between 1,200 and 1,400 people had signed in by that time, 300 more had just arrived "and there are two more airplanes on the flight line," Gordon said. "This is just a huge operation."
Considering the numbers, he said, the medical operation was running as smoothly as could be expected. He said most people were in good shape. A few were sent to hospitals for dialysis.
San Antonio residents helped out, too. A man driving a packed SUV said his 11-year-old daughter wanted to donate everything she had; she kept only two outfits.
But Capt. Michael Morton of the Salvation Army begged people not to donate any more clothing. In the first four hours that the donations station at KellyUSA was open, a mountain of clothing and shoes was donated.
"This happens during every disaster," Morton said. "It's the first thing we say, every time. It's so generous, but we just don't need it."
San Antonio police and Bexar County sheriff's deputies searched people as they entered the shelter. A medical evaluation followed, and some were taken to hospitals.
Police Chief Albert Ortiz sent scores of officers to the shelter — "a lot more than we need."
"We're going to prepare for the worst, and hope for the best," Ortiz said.
That's all Eric Parker is doing.
"I stood in the water for four days," said Parker, a 45-year-old cement mason. "They couldn't rescue us where we were, so we had to walk to a school, water up to the chest. We had to leave some of the elderly people. We got a boat to come back for them."
Parker has nothing left; no material possessions except the clothes he has worn for days.
"All I've got is Proverbs 3:5-6," he said, smiling in spite of his plight.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding," he said. "In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight."
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mmoreno@express-news.net
Actions sure speak louder than words, huh?
