email katrina

Hey 13D,

I’ve been thinking about you guys (and all those poor people in New
Orleans) w/Houston in the news now. What’s it like there now? Is your
city going nuts? Are they able to help out all the refugees? Is it
total chaos? Are the refugees behaving themselves? Just wondering how
it’s all going.

Friend

Friend, (also sent cc to my other major buddies….)

No one will know the final outcomes of all of these stories for months. So many people of all economic classes are swearing that they will never return to New Orleans. The people from there are emotionally traumatized and it is just too soon for everyone to make what will likely be painful decisions. Everyone here knows someone who has family or friends who have lost everything. Everyone is feeling torn and moved to try to help, even to the point of wanting to take strangers into our homes, but also afraid of the possible long term commitment and/or risks that might involve. The Red Cross and United Way are not recommending this, but there is an organized service through a church in Houston that is matching families who want to open their home with families that need a place to go. The situation with the poor black people from the Superdome and the Convention center is just horrible. These people didn’t have much to begin with — that is why they could not afford to evacuate in the first place when the whole city was told to leave. They have no support system (friends or family living outside of New Orleans). Texas is bringing in an entire small-city-sized community of the poorest and least educated of our country. Hubby ruefully joked that the literacy of Louisiana has just gone way way up. Everyone agrees that we had to bring them here because we had to get them out of there, but there is absolutely no way that our cities can easily absorb this many people who lived so close to the poverty level even before they and everyone they knew lost absolutely everything. Hubby is at the Astrodome/Reliant Center this afternoon volunteering a shift as a medical doctor, as they are trying to screen everyone newly arrived from New Orleans to decide where to shelter them: holding areas or hospitals. Food and personal item donations are piling up high everywhere: some drives have had to ask people to stop bringing anything other than monetary donations, because there is no where left to store the donations. There is no overall organized plan for housing these poor folks or for distributing the donated items. Many many churches and businesses have just taken responsibility for certain numbers of people and are feeding, clothing, and sheltering them. All of our schools, both public and private, are already being jammed with displaced children who can’t afford to wait this year out without school. The EARLIEST estimates from New Orleans of conditions becoming stable enough for any residents to return are 3-4 MONTHS. No one is talking about how adding so many people of this economic level to our culture will change us forever, especially as so many of them will have no reason to return to Louisiana even after the city is re-opened. No one has mentioned how this will affect our very large community of illegal Hispanics who live and work in our cities. No one is talking about the long-term effect this will have on our already overburdened system of health care for the indigent. There are many long term big city problems around the corner for all of us. Yet, what choice do we have? These are our neighbors and they are PEOPLE. How could we watch them all dying in the squalor where they were abandoned by the federal government and do nothing? It will be interesting to see where all this takes us, because as I said before, we don’t know now what will happen, and how many ways our world will be changed forever.

Thanks for asking,
13D

Friend et al,

13D wanted me to add a line since I was down at the Reliant Center today. I was only in the medical area. I wasn’t triaging the new arrivals, I was seeing kids who are sick or who their parents wanted to have checked. I was very impressed with the organization of the medical area. The people that I encountered were very nice and very grateful that we were there. There are so many doctors going to the area that I only saw about 7 or 8 patients in 4 hours. The people that I talked to were complimentary of the way things were being run here in Houston. They were very disappointed with the treatment that they received in New Orleans and the delay in all forms of help from the local, state, and federal government. Remember, I only saw a few people, and I heard more than once how their family was together in New Orleans but got split up on the evacuation. One woman just heard yesterday from her mother and almost 4 year old daughter who are now in Atlanta. Mom won’t be with her 4 year old on her birthday next week.

They are turning away volunteers because so many people have come out to help. It makes you proud of the way Houston has come together to help our neighbors. The evacuees and all of us have come to the sad realization that this is for the long haul. They are still cheerful but they also understand that their life will never be the same.

I’ll see you in November(Friend),
Hubby