From Kendra on the Ike Evacuation

I have been working at one of the area shelters during the Ike Hurricane. I got called up at 130 am Friday morning, told to report at 6 am at Crockett High School. I worked 12 hours on Friday and another 12 on Saturday. I just found out today that I am on the list to possibly go work at one of the consolidated shelters during this week, but have not heard further.
I just wanted to send this out to you all, to let you know what it was like at these shelters, and what my observations were during my experience.

I arrived early Friday morning to find 609 evacuees from the Galveston area hungry, tired, cold, and very upset. They arrived at this shelter at 2 am Friday. There were no cots, no blankets, no pillows, and no food or water. I quered the Red Cross staff that was there as to why nothing is here to take care of these people. My response was "we're only supposed to provide a roof over their heads". Which would have been ok, if they had told the folks that when they got on the busses. They were told, leave you stuff, just get on the bus, we'll stop and get supplies on the way. Once on the road, they weren't allowed to stop. So they arrived with nothing.Now mind you, the people that took these busses, were people who had no other means of evacuating. Many of them were elderly with special needs/medical conditions, many were mentally handicapped, and many were on federal assistance. These people mainly had nothing when they left, and still have nothing to this day.

Friday was hell. We had a two level building, with the cafeteria on the second floor, and many people unable to get to the cafeteria to get food. I made up plates for all the people unable to get their food, and was told by Red Cross that they didn't want people eating in the gym to keep bugs down. I'm sorry, PEOPLE NEED TO EAT! Most people hadn't eaten since noon the previous day. Everyone stayed on the floor or in chairs all night with no blankets and were freezing. There was one drinking fountain for everyone to drink out of, but oh by the way, it wasn't working. There was no bottled water provided. We continued to ask Red Cross, the Emergency Operations Center, and FEMA for water, blankets and beds, and kept being told, its on its way. It never showed up. Finally in the afternoon, a citizen brought enough water for all the evacuees and we passed it out, while Red Cross yelled at us that we couldn't accept this donation. More on the Red Cross later.

On my shift we served all three meals, which was bare minimum food, but was at least something. We had a battle with the asst. principal of the school as well. School was in session, but was getting out at 3 pm. He wanted us to LOCK in all the evacuees from 8 am to 3 pm. We told him no, we couldn't and wouldn't do that, and he flipped his lid. Luckily I had APD officers backing me up. He eventually just went away and we did our own thing.

Saturday I showed up and things were pretty much the same. We had asked repetedly for EMS to come evaulate people to move people with special needs and medical needs to the Convention Center which was set up for those folks. They never showed up Friday, and finally arrived Saturday, after we had already had 3 people run out of oxygen in their tanks, people go to the bathroom in their pants because we couldn't get them upstairs to the bathroom in time, a heart attack, pnemonia, and a grand maul seizure. Luckily for the seizure, Chief Acevedo (APD) was there talking to myself and an officer when the guy grabbed onto me and started seizing. He was able to see the type of people in our care and that this was not an appropriate place for them. When I left Saturday evening we had 480 evacuees (30 over capacity) and still had approx. 100 people that needed to have special care.

Problems with this evacuation:
City of Austin, Red Cross, and FEMA KNEW how many people would be evacuating into austin days before it happened. Supplies were not stockpiled at the shelters in advance and no help was sought for additional supplies they did not have.
Evacuees were LIED TO when evacuated, when told they would get supplies along the way.
Red Cross repeatedly refused donations at the sites, saying they couldn't accept donations, only money, which they didn't want at that time either. The Officers and myself and other city of Austin volunteers have to sneak donations in to people.
FEMA would not offer any assistance until AFTER the storm had passed. Not even to evacuees that were safe.
The Media was kicked off of shelter property in an effort to control the information that was being released, thus hindering donations further.
Evacuees were not property screened for medical/special needs conditions, parole status, or sex offender status.

I found out today that the Convention Center had beds for 1000 evacuees with special needs, and as of Saturday evening only 87 people were there.I will be continuing to help throughout the week. Many wonderful citizens have come forward to give donations. Many were turned away by the Red Cross, but we tried to take as many donations as possible.

You can decide for yourself, but I will NEVER volunteer with the Red Cross or donate money or items to them EVER AGAIN. If you pray, please pray for the people of Galveston and surrounding cities. If you don't, please spread the word. And please remember the only true way of helping people in this situation is by being there with them, because otherwise, the help will not get to them.

Thanks for listening to my rant! Kendra