Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Justin Chapura/Tm GAMECOCK Friends embrace in the hurricane-damaged town of Biloxi, Miss., on Saturday. HATTIESBURG •COniinUEDFROfTl I realize she was like two blocks from the levee, so I said ‘I think I’m gonna leave,”’ Clark said. The desperate conditions she expected to leave behind in Louisiana seemed to follow her to Hattiesburg. Describing when she first arrived Sunday afternoon, she said, “People were fixing to go postal.” When Katrina hit southern Mississippi, approximately 850 refugees were huddled in the powerless shelter. “We had no lights for three or four days ... we were stuck, no water, no lights, nothing,” Clark said. Inside, the center doesn’t smell like people have been sleeping there for days. A pile of books is stacked in the entryway. Children ride tricycles along the floor in the spaces between cots. Men, women and children huddled around one of two televisions, groaning at footage of destroyed property nearby. Clark said she had not been able to contact her mother, her two children or her nephew, who live in Bay St. Louis. To pass the time, she calls her boyfriend in Michigan on her cell phone. Friends Gisele “Gigi” Brown and Janet Kaufman made the trek up from the outskirts of New Orleans. Kaufman’s husband stayed behind to care for their pets. When the women first arrived, the center did not have air-conditioning, and the food « Anthony Bess. “He’s my top priority,” she said. Judy Seals just arrived Saturday after an appeal went out on local television for local nurses to volunteer at the shelter. “We have a few psych patients here, and we’re probably going to see more of it. People are going to start coping with this, and it’s a lot tq deal with,” she said. Sheila Shay is a nurse from Jackson, Miss. She arrived Friday knowing she was needed more at Forrest County than the hospital she usually works at. “We need cots. We’re saving them now for the elderly, the pregnant, and those who can’t get around,” Shay said. Dr. Bill Gullung was straightforward in his assessment of the shelter. “We have plenty of food, the air conditioning is back on, and we have plenty of general medicine,” Gullung said. “But people’s own medications — specific medications — are starting to tun out. That’s going to be tough to replace.” “The Red Cross is trying to contact some pharmacists to try and get these prescriptions filled,” Shay said as she hurried back to her table. “But everybody’s been real nice today. It’s somewhat upbeat. “It’s gotten a community atmosphere now. Everyone’s trying to pull together.” Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknews@gwm.sc.edu ciimpus mo • conTinuco proid i Red Cross. “The law school has taken very good care of them and has arranged for tuition, has arranged for books and has found them places to live,” Gibson said. “They have done a very good job with that.” A monetary donation table will be set up by the American Red Cross on Greene Street on Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. They will also be taking donations of dry goods such as toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo and general toiletry items. Canned goods are also needed. “This will take place every Wednesday until the need is met, “ Williams said. University efforts to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina will not be limited to Red Cross donations, as several individual student organizations are attempting to raise money as well. Organizations like Carolina Productions have big plans. “All the other SEC schools have come together and raised large amounts of money already, or they have big plans on how to do it,” said Betsy Curry, president of Carolina Productions. “We want to do something bigger, but we want to do it as a university. What if we did a Rock for Relief concert?” The concert, which is still in its planning stages, would attempt to feature such famous South Carolina acts as Edwin McCain and Sister Hazel. The tentative date is Oct. 7. Carolina Productions is accepting student help and suggestions. To get involved, e mail concerts@gwm.sc.edu. The major need, Gibson said, is money and volunteers. With the large influx of refugees, Columbia and South Carolina will need many volunteers to ease the transition. “This is going to be astronomical,” Gibson said. “This is a horse of a whole different color than anybody has ever dealt with before. We’ve got a disaster area right here in South Carolina, except the disaster is coming to us.” “With 18,000 people coming into our community, this is going to be a situation we’ve never faced before. We’re going to need all the volunteers we can possibly get.” Williams is confident USC students can make a difference. “We as Gamecocks are caring about our brothers and sisters who have lost so much, and we are going to do what we can to come together to help these people who have been victimized by Katrina.” Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknews@gtvm.sc.edu Mue • conTinucD mom i LSU students updated through blogs. Ginger Gibson, a news staff writer, said it was difficult in the days after the storm to get in touch with fellow staff members because of damaged cell phone towers. Gibson said online content was put together the first few days based on who showed up in the newsroom. “We couldn’t call anybody,” she said. “Nobody’s phones worked. It was really ‘what’s going on, what can I do?”’ The only damage suffered to Gibson’s family’s home was a little water in the entryway. Scott Sternberg, editor-in chief of The Reveille, had an apartment in New Orleans where he stayed during a summer internship with the Times-Picayune, the city’s daily newspaper. Unaware of the extent of the damage, he went to New Orleans to see what • t t i • COUia dc baivagcu. The Reveille’s sports editor, Walter Gabriel, also had family in New Orleans. They were evacuated to Lafayette. Assistant news editor Jenn Mayeux’s family now lives in her apartment in Baton Rouge. Mayeux’s mother stopped in at the newsroom Sunday, talking to the other staff members and describing New Orleans as a “warzone.” Despite the turmoil the staff is facing, the logistics of producing a daily paper with a circulation of 14,000 still had to be dealt with. As managing editor Adam Causey put it, “we owe it as campus news to print and have info available”. “We were trying to get the basic information the student’s need,” Causey said. “Each time the university made an official announcement we updated our Web site.” Being able to print was a big issue in the first week after the catastrophe. The papers normal presses were located in Hattiesburg, Miss., one of the area’s hit hardest. Ironically, the paper began printing Tuesday out of Olive Branch, Miss., which is two hours away. The change forced the paper to move its deadline for sending pages from midnight to 7 p.m., meaning writers’ stories had to be in by 10 a.m. the morning before the paper hit stands. While students were out of class and the paper did not run, the staff continued to churn out stories, posting them on their Web site every day at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday marked the only time the site was not refreshed since the storm hit. Sunday afternoon, the newsroom was abuzz as writers and editors hurried to complete a special section on Katrina and campus relief efforts that was put out Tuesday. Every section, from news to sports, concentrated its efforts on Katrina. Stories were not hard to come by. As of mid afternoon Sunday, there were approximately 16 stories in the news budget. Chief news staff writer Jeff Jeffrey sat behind his computer and made call after call to gain information for his story on Louisiana officials reaction to emergency response. Among his sources were New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the Baton Rouge Police Department. Others were working to tell the story of the circus that once was LSU’s campus. Two pages ofTuesday’s special edition were devoted to a photo essay, compiled by photo editor Anson Trahan. Searching through his database of photos, Trahan pulled a shot of one of the first evacuees being brought off of a helicopter into Baton Rouge. Talking about the picture, which was optioned by the New York Times, Trahan couldn’t contain his excitement, “We really got the scoop, and it’s a great picture,” Trahan said. The Reveille got the edge over other news outlets around the* country with the shot because, while other media were kept away from the area, Trahan said he was overlooked because he’s “just student media.” Chris Perkins, a photographer on Trahan’s staff, shot the crowded Baton Rouge River Center that housed many of the city’s evacuees and that became the object of many rumors including riots and shootings. it was not violent wnen i went there,” Perkins said. “It was just a bunch of people who have lost everything.” For the most part The Reveille’s newsroom was a hub of mixed emotions as the staff worked to put together the assortment of stories for other students to read and view. While there was a serious demeanor in the way each member went about their work, an underlying layer of apprehension was detectable in their conversation. Worries about each other’s families and the gas shortage caused by the storm were frequently discussed. In maintaining an air of professionalism, the members of the student media outlet kept perspective of the tragedy Katrina had brought upon the Gulf Coast region. Many considered themselves lucky. “There’s so many people that aren’t going back (to New Orleans),” Gibson said. “They don’t have jobs anymore.” Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocknews@gwm.sc.edu ' ■ • • - ■ ■' : v } ' ' fl«HRH :'.»,v! ;• <■% lfra$£HR|' " iPMRL r; B m ' \. It's time to order your Cap, frown, and^m Announcements! I G-irad Fair jS^^glNoow - 6 p.m. «k^^Russell House was pre-packaged. As members of the Take Off Pounds club, they said they didn’t mind, but they couldn’t eat it. Saturday, they ate a beef casserole, corn, pineapple and bread. Though conditions have calmed, the women remember everyone acting in their own interest right after the storm, when people first learned they had nothing to go home to. “When you stress out, you see a. complete change in personality,” Brown said. The residents here need basic supplies — there were only 35 cots for the refugees on the first night — and- more organizations were arriving daily to provide some relief. Ronardo Smith from We'ssoe, Miss., usually works with children at a Boys & Girls Club gym. Since Tuesday, he’s been here providing food. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Smith said. . At both ends of the shelter’s entrance, tables are staffed with volunteers and packed with baby supplies and over-the-counter medicines. At the medicine table are dozens of volunteer nurses dealing with cuts, sprains and other minor injuries. Hazel Storie, a refugee from New Orleans, squabbled with her husband to take some diabetic supplies to another floor. She herself has the disease and said in the aftermath of Katrina the shelter asked diabetics to volunteer their glucometers for public use. Fighting tears, Storie said she had to find her grandson, Ethan