These are not my shoes

Well it looks like my days of volunteering at Reliant Park may have come to an end: Katrina Evacuees in Houston Shelters to be Transferred in Preparation for Hurricane Rita.

I tried to go up there yesterday to volunteer, but they weren't letting anyone into any of the parking areas, possibly because of the First Lady's visit. I also tried to get in touch with a couple of people who were supposedly coordinating rides for evacuees looking for housing, but so far no luck. I'm considering signing up with Neighbors2Neighbors, but I hear they've got a waiting list for volunteers so I don't know if anything will come of that either.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to spend this week making sure that we're prepared for the potential arrival of Hurricane Rita. Houston doesn't have the river/lake levee situation that New Orleans does so things aren't nearly as dire here, but everyone's pretty paranoid after Katrina. I expect a run on batteries and masking tape to start any second now.

We're on the west side of town, outside of the evacuation zones, and our house is pretty decently elevated from the street, so I'm not panicking. But a good heavy rain will flood all the streets in our neighborhood and with the potential for power outages and wind damage it's best to be prepared.

My dad decided he'd rather have me do his errands today, so I was able to volunteer yesterday for snowdrifted. It was tres dull, however, and I have little of interest to report. They had been planning to have all the evacuees out of the Reliant Park shelters by Friday or Saturday, so they started to close down and pack up some of their operations there. The shoppers handed out their last clothes around noon and we spent the day boxing up and labeling everything in the warehouse for transport to other shelters around town. Whew, talk about hot, sweaty, dusty work. And I didn't even get to see the wedding.

Now, however, it looks like they've extended their weekend closing goal, which I'm kind of relieved about. It's great that the city and state are working so hard to find housing for people (with little to no help from FEMA or the federal government, who are still farting around trying to figure out what to do, thankyouverymuch), but I know some people are still waiting for their housing assignments to come in and I didn't want to think the city was going to be pressuring them to leave the shelter before they've got an acceptable place to go.

Today the volunteers are supposed to be consolidating everyone in the Astrodome and Reliant Center into the Astro Arena, and I have to admit I'm kinda glad I'm not gonna be able to go in for that. My legs are still protesting from all the bending over yesterday.

One nice thing I've noticed is that the mood at the shelter has changed a lot since last week. It used to be that the PA system was a constant litany of the names of the missing, as people desperately searched the various shelters in hopes of finding their loved ones. Every once in a while, there would be a joyous reunion in front of the message center and everyone would stop and cheer.

Early this week, though, the announcements had changed to things like, "Anyone interested in relocating to Nashville come to the message center," or "A representative from X is here with information about available jobs."

Yesterday the PA messages were all stuff like, "John Smith, your family is here to take you home," or "Paul Washington, you have a call from your sister in Dallas." It was nice to hear announcements about people reuniting with their friends and family and moving out of the shelters. Between that and all the packing up, it's taken on sort of an end-of-the-school-year feel.

Ahhh, this is why they wouldn't let me into Reliant Park today. Those poor people. Hopefully they'll have some of this stuff better organized soon.

I know there are a lot of folks out there who don't have money to donate to relief efforts and live in areas that don't have any evacuees and wish there was something they could do to help. So I was thinking, I'm right here where there's plenty of need, so why don't I just do a volunteer shift in your place? This way, ya'll can feel like you're doing something because you're making sure that I keep going back to volunteer instead of wussing out and deciding that I'm too busy or too tired.

So here's what I'll do: for everyone who leaves a comment here expressing an interest, I'll do a four-hour volunteer shift in your place and I'll try to post at least a brief report about the work I did and the people I met during your shift.

This offer is open to anyone, not just the few folks on my flist, so feel free to let others who might be interested in taking me up on it know.

So, who wants me to go volunteer tomorrow?

P.S. For those living in the Houston area who are interested in helping out, the best site to get info on volunteering is http://www.volunteercenter.us/rsvp6.htm. It's updated several times daily with pertinent info and is a great resource, so please, if you know anyone in Houston, pass it on to them in case they'd like to get involved.

Communication about the relief efforts here in town is still confused. Conflicting reports come out of the various relief organizations: donations are needed; donations are overwhelming but volunteers are needed; all volunteer shifts have been filled and people are being sent home; come to Reliant Center to volunteer; don't come to Reliant to volunteer; donations are needed at the Astrodome; don't bring donations to the Astrodome. It's hard to know how best to help, and the last thing I want to do is contribute to a traffic jam in the area where they're trying to get evacuees into shelters.

Estimates are that Texas is currently hosting around a quarter of a million evacuees, and the governor is beginning to send them to other states:

Aid centers will be set up at airports in Houston and Dallas where incoming refugees can be given food, water and medical care before they are flown out. The governor's office said some of those flights could begin today...

Since Thursday, Perry's office has been in contact with several states, including Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, Iowa, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, about providing shelter for Louisiana evacuees. West Virginia is sending three C-130 planes to Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio to help move refugees.

On Friday I went to Target and bought a shopping cart full of supplies--boxes of single-serving snack foods, juice, bottled water, diapers, baby wipes, and tampons--which I dropped off at an area food pantry. Then Saturday I went back to Target and did the same, this time concentrating on clothing--underwear, t-shirts, socks, flip flops, pillows, more diapers and tampons--and dropped them off at a collection point for the Star of Hope Mission.

I found a notice today on what seems to be one of the few web sites for the relief effort that's actually updated with any regularity, saying that volunteers with wireless laptops are needed at Reliant Center to help locate missing people. So Mr. Sus and I have arranged to leave the munchkin with my dad tomorrow and will be heading downtown with our laptops in the hopes being of some assistance.

In the midst of all the horror stories about New Orleans, here is a lovely requiem for this great city, focusing on its glorious culinary heritage:

The first great meal of my life unspooled in sharp relief, under the high faded ceilings of Antoine's in the French Quarter...

ETA: Anne Rice in the NYT -- "Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?" (I'm not a fan of her in general, but she is eloquent in her love of her hometown.)

Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses

(CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow pace of federal and state relief efforts in an expletive-laced interview with local radio station WWL-AM

Read the transcript here.

The City of Houston is facing a refugee crisis of immense proportions, and efforts here seem only marginally more organized than in Lousiana.

Fire marshals can't seem to decide how many refugees the Astrodome can safely accept. Obviously they want to offer shelter to as many people as they can, but the reality is that overcrowding the stadium will result in conditions hardly better than those they left behind in the Superdome. They've begun housing people in the nearby Reliant Arena and I predict they'll soon be sending them to the Convention Center and then begin busing to Dallas and San Antonio. The Astroarena has been turned into a giant medical facility and is already completely overwhelmed. Relief efforts seem barely able to deal with the immediate crisis of getting people food and water.

The munchkin's school has been collecting clothing, towels, blankets and toys, but now can't figure out where to take them. Many charitable organizations around town are no longer accepting clothes, because the logistics of sorting, transporting and distributing them are too much to take on right now, and they're trying to concentrate on getting people food, water and personal hygiene products.

One of the teachers said a friend had gone to the Astrodome yesterday to volunteer, but the police sent her away because there had been muggings in the parking lot. The neighborhood around the Astrodome isn't particularly safe under the best of circumstances, and the influx of thousands of desperate, angry people forced to wait in long lines to be given shelter, medical attention or just a bottle of water is a riot waiting to happen. Meanwhile, the director of the local Red Cross chapter was on the radio today directing volunteers to come to the Astrodome, apparently unaware that the police were sending them away.

A woman who works for the local YMCA said that Y's all over town are overflowing with refugees, and YMCA employees are each sheltering 10-20 people in their homes. They're desperate for food, water, and new underwear. The food banks are also desperate, and have gone from asking for cash donations to begging people to bring in all the food and water they can. One fire station in Katy has 30 refugees sleeping on the floor.

The school secretary found out that a woman with five children under the age of eight is staying at the La Quinta nearby and is organizing a fund-raiser in her neighborhood to help pay her hotel bill. One mother reported that the Shrine of the Black Madonna (a Pan-African Orthodox Christian cultural center) is swamped with refugees and desperate for donations, and others told of a similar situations at St. John Vianney, the Chinese Community Center and the Jewish Federation. I can only imagine that churches and shelters all over town are facing the exact same crisis.

Everyone wants to help, but right now relief efforts are still disorganized and communication is poor. It's incredibly difficult to match up goods with the people who so desperately need them on a scale this large. And local shelters are so swamped that it's nearly impossible to get through to anyone on the phone to find out what help they need.

And the Houston SPCA is trying to take in the pets of refugees, because they cannot take them into the shelters with them:

Due to the hit from Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast region, the Louisiana SPCA moved all animals out of their shelter to the Houston SPCA. We are now accepting animals from those who are staying in Houston Area Shelters. For those needing shelter for their pets, please call our hotline at 713-802-0555.

Monetary donations are needed to help us care for the over 260 extra animals in our shelter and to help us help the Louisiana SPCA respond to the needs of the animals still in the area.

And then, of course, there are the asshats who will raise their ugly racist heads, concerned only with their own welfare, complaining that Houston's humanitarian efforts will interfere with their own comfortable lifestyles.

Unfortunately, their concerns are not completely invalid. People cannot be expected to live under these conditions for weeks or even months. How can Houston, a city with its own not-insignificant poverty problem, possibly absorb thousands of destitute and homeless families? And what happens a few months from now, when the media coverage has dwindled and the Red Cross has packed up, yet people still have no homes to go back to and no means to care for themselves?

ETA: Racism in reporting on events in New Orleans. Apparently blacks "loot" food from grocery stores, while whites "find" it.

ETA2: Looks like I was right--"Mayor opens Reliant Center, George R. Brown to evacuees."