Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

^ HURRICANE KATRINA AFTERMATH „ Katie Kirkland I UW GAMBCOGK Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, thousands have taken up living in shelters like this one in Baton Rouge. Many left their homes with little more than the clothes they were wearing, only to discover tedium and uncertainty waiting for them. Evacuees flock to capital city When Katrina struck, more than 5,000people moved to a convention center near the Mississippi River (Dichael LaForgia EDITOR - BATON ROUGE, LA. — On the seventh day, they rested. They had poured into this city filthy, tired and despairing, pushed from their homes by waters that rose like a judgment, some said. On this sweltering Sunday afternoon outside the Baton Rouge River Center, they move about aimlessly. Some are just returning from mass at St. Joseph’s Cathedral on nearby North Street. Others squat in the shade, chain-smoking as they mop their brows and swap stories in low voices. The laughter of children floats over from across the street, where a group is sledding down a grassy hill on scraps of cardboard. In the six days since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, thousands of evacuees came here to make camp in churches or the big convention center by the Mississippi River, where 311 and Papa Roach were scheduled to play today. Neon green or red bracelets identify them as registered residents of the River Center shelter. New arrivals hug the Baton Rouge police officers they meet at the doors. Inside, the lobby teems with Red Cross volunteers, reporters, doctors and outreach workers. Giggling children chase one another through the crowds, their pockets jingling with loose change. A steady beeping of metal detectors underlies the commotion as more and more people stream in. The lobby’s colorful, patterned carpet has grown smeared and scuffed with traffic. “Today is Sept. 4,” says a big hand written sign on the wall, for those who have lost track by the time they arrive. The mezzanine above the lobby is crammed with narrow cots and cluttered with aisles of cardboard boxes, plastic milk crates, coolers, brooms, stacks of Styrofoam cups, baby strollers. Near a cordoned corner of the lobby, Tyrone Warren and his wife, Charlotte January, stand gazing out a window, two of the more than 5,000 people who filled the River Center on Sunday. -Like many of the evacuees, Tyrone, 36, and Charlotte, 41, have lived just outside New Orleans all their lives. They couldn’t evacuate before the storm, they say, because Charlotte’s Katie Kirkland/Til E GAMECOCK Children play in the shade outside of the Baton Rouge River Center. battered Toyota Camry couldn’t make it more than a few miles. They and about 16 frienqs and family members fled their hdme in the West Bank neighborhood of Marrero the day after Katrina struck, piling food and bundles of clothing into a neighbor’s Chevrolet Suburban and making their way north up Interstate 90. At the River Center they found a sliver of sleeping space on the crowded floor, where tensions often run high. Somebody stole their cell phone on the first day, Tyrone says, leaving them with no way of communicating with the world outside of Baton Rouge. Now they spend their days walking along the levee or gazing at the Argosy Casino on the Mississippi River, longing for home. Theirs was the party house, Charlotte recalls with a smile. On Aug. 27 — two days before the Category 4 monster wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast — they celebrated Charlottes 41st birthday with a grand luau. She wore a pretty floral print skirt, and they drank Hennessy and rum punch and ate chicken wings and shrimp fried rice. She had so much fun she didn’t even care when she broke her toenail dancing, she recalls. “Right before the storm, we were enjoying ourselves,” Tyrone says. While the house wasn’t significantly damaged, floodwaters lapped at their doorstep and portions RIUCR CCnTCR • n USC ALUMNA FINDS REFUGE WITH SISTERS Times-Picayune employee calls on Delta Zeta sorority in time of need Jess Dauis , STAFF WRITER For one USC alumni forced to evacuate her home in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina, finding a home in Baton Rouge was as easy as sending an e-mail to her sisters. Deanna McLendon, a 30-year-old Carolina alum who graduated in December 1997, moved into the Delta Zeta house at LSU for five days while she looked for another place to stay. A Delta Zeta sister at USC, McLendon has been involved with the LSU chapter since she moved to Louisiana in July 1999, so she saw many familiar races at me sorority nouse. She was overwhelmed by their willingness to open up their home to her. “It was wonderful. I don’t think I can ever repay them for that,” McLendon said. She lived in a dorm room with a roommate, and ate meals and used the community bathroom just like the rest of the sisters, while during the day she worked with the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, who established temporary headquarters in Baton Rouge. “They offered me everything: water, shampoos, towels, just everything — even small things like nail polish. All those little things that mean a lot in a situation when you have nothing,”' McLendon said. McLendon is a copy editor tor the Times-Picayune, and evacuated New Orleans with the newspaper Tuesday morning. She had been staying at the newspaper building since Sunday night, working to publish the newspaper, and when the hurricane hit, everything seemed to be OK. She and about 200 other people, some of them Times-Picayune employees, some of them family members, were sleeping in the office building Monday night after the hurricane hit when a photographer woke everyone up, screaming, “We are evacuating now. Grab bare necessities and let’s go,” McLendon said. Water had begun to flood the city after the levees broke, so the families and staffers boarded 11 delivery trucks, sitting on newspaper bales as they drove away from the city. In McLendon’s truck, they left the back door halfway open so they could see what was going on in New Orleans. “Seeing all the water around the Superdome, fires in the distance that you didn’t know where they were coming from, here were people RLumnn • n Baptist church provides shelter for 150 Mississippi faithful In poor Biloxi neighborhood, congregation sings hymns while storm rages outside Rllyson Bird FOR THE GAMECOCK BILOXI, MISS. — They sang “Lord, Have Mercy” over and over after scrambling to get the sick and elderly upstairs when the storm rushed inside, swirling through the entryway, the pastor’s study and the sanctuary. They watched from the second floor window as it washed over a car, then covered the house next door. They kept singing “Lord, Have Mercy,” as it climbed up the stairs behind them, leaving an 18-foot watermark, and then stopped. Of the 150 people who rode out Hurricane Katrina at Main Street Missionary Baptist Church in East Biloxi, about 40 still remained Saturday with nowhere to go. Some of the parishioners came with little to begin with. The church is part of one of the city’s poorest wards. “If their houses aren’t demolished, they’re filled with mud,” said Rev. Kenneth Haynes, the church pastor. Haynes — wearing a 10 Commandments T-shirt, glasses and a ball cap Saturday - had made arrangements to go to Hattiesburg, Ala., but he and his wife decided to stay with their congregation, some of whom call them Daddy and Mama. They watched a neighbor ride his refrigerator out of his flooded house, and met another who stayed in his attic during the storm and said only his head remained above the water by the end. Peggie Graves, who convinced her husband to stay in the church and not go farther inland, is convinced God was angry at her city. “He pounded Biloxi for a good, solid 12 hours,” Graves said. “The bay water met the beach water.” The people at Main Street Baptist have been relying on donations from the National Baptist Convention, Councilman Bill Stallworth and members of the community. Rev. Kenneth Davis of Tabernacle Church in D’Iberville, Miss., said a representative from Federal Relief Management Agency showed up and asked for a list of names. “I don’t want to create false hope, but we’ve got 1,000 names, and she hasn’t come back,” Davis said. He said his own sanctuary was destroyed. “The ceiling is gone, and the rafters are leaning,” he said. “You can tell which way the wind blew.” But Saturday, with everyone alive and provided for at Main Street Baptist, the community behaved as if it were in a block party and not a disaster zone. Plywood signs leaning against a pickup truck advertised food, as cheerful men cooked broiled catfish in true Mississippi form. Children ran around, while parents sat in lawn chairs alongside muddy homes. They straightened piles of clothing CHURCH • n JasiaEpm/my.iiMUXWM. The Rev. Kenneth Haynes, pastor of Main Street Baptist Church in Biloxi, surveys the storm damage on Saturday afternoon.