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ONE YEAR LATER: As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall approaches, somewhere between several hundred to a few thousand evacuees from Louisiana and Mississippi remain in Michigan. HELPING HAND: More than 1,000 Katrina evacuees were receiving state public assistance as of last month. Several charities, churches and other organizations also have helped the state's newcomers. OTHER LOCATIONS: Government records suggest those
fleeing the aftermath of Katrina have made their way to all 50 states.
Texas, Georgia and Alabama are among the states that received the most
evacuees. |
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Hurricane Katrina devastated the section of New Orleans where Tinisha Speed was living a year ago.
The city is rebuilding, and Speed is putting her life back together.
But she's doing it in a small East Lansing apartment more than 900 miles away from her former home.
The 26-year-old and her three children are among the several hundred to a few thousand hurricane evacuees officials estimate are living in Michigan. They're trying to find jobs, fitting into new neighborhoods and dealing with the Great Lake State's more dramatic seasonal changes.
“You're looking at people who have been taken out of everything they know, and they've got to start over,” Speed said.
Speed's mother, always close by in New Orleans, was uprooted by the storm and now lives in Texas. The father of Speed's two youngest children moved with her to the Lansing area but died after returning to Louisiana as last winter approached.
Speed is looking for a part-time job and slowly rebuilding a support network. She has received some help from a non-denominational church she is attending, a Catholic social services group and other agencies, and from a Lansing area family Speed credits with sticking by her “through everything.”
Speed's son Trayvon, 11, likes his new East Lansing school and recently took a field trip to nearby Michigan State University. Speed enjoys the deep greens of Michigan springs, the reds and oranges of autumn -- and even the snowy whites of winter.
“I feel blessed,” said Speed, whose other children are Anthony, 2, and Jakira, 1. “But I'm dealing with it. I'm still dealing with it.”
East Lansing resident Lori Ross began working with Speed as a mentor shortly after her arrival in Michigan last year and now considers her part of the family.
“She's a hard worker,” Ross said. “There are opportunities for her to build a better life for herself and her children here in Michigan.”
Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered the state's help to take in hurricane evacuees soon after the Aug. 29 storm passed. Hundreds left homeless by the storm arrived in early September on chartered jets at the Air National Guard base in Battle Creek. Hundreds more arrived on buses or in their own vehicles, fleeing overcrowded or makeshift shelters in the South.
Michigan's hurricane evacuee population appears to have peaked at roughly 6,000 in November, based on estimates from caseload numbers provided by the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Michigan schools took in more than 700 students from the storm-ravaged region.
More exact numbers of hurricane evacuees are difficult to pinpoint because some relocation cases could include several members of the same family. Others may have moved here on their own without government help.
FEMA recorded more than 3,800 assistance applicants with Michigan mailing addresses as of last month, but the true number of those still in the state is probably lower. People may have moved out of the state without updating their addresses with FEMA.
The state still had more than 1,000 people displaced by the hurricane in its public assistance programs as of last month, according to Granholm's office. Many evacuees also have been helped by private relief efforts and charities.
Some complain, however, that getting help from the federal government has been time consuming and difficult.
Linda Cottles, 56, has lived the past several months in an apartment in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. The lease is up at the end of September. She is seeking FEMA rental assistance for a different apartment in the Detroit area, but says the federal agency will help her only if she moves back to her old duplex in New Orleans.
“It's so stupid,” said Cottles, who recently spent hours on the phone trying to arrange a meeting with FEMA for herself and other Detroit-area evacuees. “I haven't even been back there to see if it's still standing.”
Cottles is trying to find a job, a challenging part of the transition for Katrina evacuees in Michigan. The state has had one of the nation's highest unemployment rates all year.
The jobless rate was 7 percent in July, compared to 4.8 percent for the nation. Michigan's jobless rate average for 2005 was 6.8 percent.
Officials with Michigan relief agencies say that some of the evacuees might have trouble finding employment anywhere because they don't have the education or skills needed to get good-paying jobs.
And some are still struggling to get over the shell shock of the hurricane and its aftermath.
“People needed time to heal themselves emotionally, and they also needed the tools to help themselves be successful here in Michigan,” said Wallace Wells, an employee with the Southfield Hotel and Convention Center and an organizer of volunteer efforts to aid evacuees.
The Southfield hotel took in more than 200 hurricane evacuees a few weeks after the storm. Two still live there, including 76-year-old John Kenner.
Kenner, a Korean War veteran, lived in Michigan previously and has grandchildren in the state. He had moved to New Orleans for a second time a few years ago, only to have the hurricane strike and force a return to the Detroit area.
Kenner says he would like to move out of the hotel but is having trouble getting the paperwork cleared with federal officials.
“They write me letters and ask the same questions over and over again,” Kenner said. “I plan to stay in Michigan. I don't want to live in New Orleans anymore because of the conditions. You know -- the weather.”
Aug 19 14:40
By MARY K. REINHART and LEIGH SHELLE ROBERTUS
East Valley Tribune
MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- Clifton Drummer has been up all night rummaging through the patio trash for usable items and packing the minivan.
He says he's surprised they're being evicted and wishes they'd had more notice. But no one arrives at 8 a.m. as promised, so he keeps working.
It's May and just hours away from being kicked out, Deborah Davis, 49, the mother of Clifton's five children, can't seem to keep her eyes open.
Clifton and Deborah's family are among the roughly 1.5 million people who have been scattered since their Gulf Coast homes were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina last August. Evacuees have been splintered and spread to virtually every corner of the country, Canada and Puerto Rico, including an estimated 2,800 in Arizona.
By now, all the boys want to return to New Orleans. The oldest son, Cardero, 18, is already living there. Corey, 15, is chosen because he's old enough to take care of Courtney, 3, on the trip and be of most help to his grandmother once he gets home.
Once she's fully awake, Deborah makes a stab at sweeping up the filthy house in preparation for moving out.
She barks orders while Courtney looks for food and the boys complain that her diaper stinks. Eleven-year-old Clinton finally changes her diaper.
Weary and cranky, Deborah suddenly puts a bright face on their situation.
“This was our first apartment in Phoenix and we enjoyed it,” she says sweetly. “But I'll be happy to move to another area. This area's not too good for kids. Everything happens for a reason, you know.”
Her mood darkens again after a mid-afternoon visit from McKemy Middle School Principal Ardie Sturdivant, who is accompanied by a special education teacher. They urge Deborah to meet with them to develop an education plan for Clinton, whose behavioral problems have qualified him as a special needs student.
Phoenix police then arrive in the evening and give them 10 minutes to leave.
A neighbor has offered to store some of their things. Deborah tells Chad and Clinton to stay with the neighbor, too, while the rest of the family drives off in the overloaded van, mattresses teetering on the top.
They unload at a studio apartment in west Phoenix. The place is being leased by another Katrina evacuee who has returned to New Orleans.
The boys staying with the neighbor eventually move into the new apartment with their family. But they all face certain eviction -- and homelessness -- because they aren't on the lease and there are too many people living in the small apartment.
Meanwhile, Vivian Teye tours her trash-strewn townhouse. It's been just a few days since the family finally moved out.
Her son, Victor, called police after a neighbor reported that someone from the family had broken in. Phoenix police arrive to question Victor and others in the area.
“It smells like hell! Look at the carpet! Lord have mercy!” Teye says, stepping carefully among cockroaches, empty food containers and soiled diapers.
By late June, Teye still isn't finding any restitution.
Gov. Janet Napolitano's office and Lutheran Social Ministry, charged with helping Katrina victims recover, have turned her down. She's facing bills upwards of $3,000 to clean and repair the townhouse, not to mention the free rent and furniture she gave the family.
At the same time, she's hoping someone else will reach out to Deborah and Clifton. Despite her anger and feelings of betrayal, she genuinely cares about the family.
“I was really angry. But at the same time, I calmed down and I said, 'These people need help.”'
Meanwhile, Clifton's family has survived the worst that Hurricane Katrina could dish out, but they can't survive the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Crammed into the now-squalid apartment, the family is living a hand-to-mouth existence a heartbeat away from homelessness.
St. Vincent de Paul finally comes up with a way to send two of the kids back to New Orleans when a staff member offers Deborah her frequent-flier tickets on Southwest Airlines. A volunteer at the shelter calls Deborah's mother, Jerrydean Davis, in New Orleans to make sure she's willing and able to take on two of her grandchildren.
By early August, no one has heard from Deborah or Clifton. They haven't called family in New Orleans to check on Courtney and Corey, and their cell phone number no longer works.
In mid-July, Jerrydean calls an East Valley Tribune reporter looking for help getting Corey's school records so she can enroll him in ninth grade. She says she had spoken briefly with Deborah in late June, but hasn't been able to contact her since.
There's no sign of the family or the green minivan at the Phoenix apartment, and none of the social service agencies they frequented have seen them since June.
Traci Gruenberger, director of operations for Lutheran Social Ministry, one of the agencies coordinating long-term relief and the main agency helping the family, won't talk about Deborah or Clifton. The family had caseworkers assigned to it from a variety of hurricane-relief and welfare organizations, but those people rarely, if ever, visited the home.
The couple don't want to talk about what's gone wrong in Phoenix either. They are unwilling or unable to acknowledge their betrayal of Teye and other benefactors. Asked to explain how the townhouse got trashed, Deborah gets mad and walks away. It will be several more days before she agrees to meet again with an East Valley Tribune reporter and photographer.
If they can make their way back to New Orleans, a court date awaits Clifton. If they've blended into the Phoenix metropolitan area's homeless population, something much worse awaits Chad and Clinton.
Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina hit and the New Orleans levee system collapsed, killing more than 1,500 people and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage, the storm continues to claim more lives.
“Usually the hurricane knocks on our door and that's it,” Deborah once said. “We waited too late. And the water got too high.”
Aug 21 09:06
By ED WHITE
Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A simple wood craft hangs near the kitchen in Bessie Collins' three-bedroom suburban apartment, a gift to mark her latest birthday.
“Bloom where God plants you,” it reads.
“A most wonderful gift. ... It means to survive where I am,” Collins, 72, said. “I sure found that out.”
She and 14 family members, including 11 grandchildren, believed they were going to San Antonio when they boarded a plane less than a week after Hurricane Katrina.
Instead, the destination was announced as Salt Lake City: cold winters, mountains instead of the Mississippi River, few blacks like the Collinses.
A year after Katrina, most family members are living in two apartments. The kids are in schools that offer more choices than schools in New Orleans. Money is tight, but Collins believes Utah is a good place for now.
“In New Orleans you heard gunshots. Here you hear birds singing,” said Robert Collins, 17, a senior at West Jordan High School.
At Katrina's anniversary, perhaps 200 of the 700 to 800 people who landed in Utah still are in the state, most in the Salt Lake City area, social-service advocates estimate.
Some, like the Collins family, have no immediate plan to return to New Orleans. Others, however, see Utah as an extended pit stop on the way to getting a fresh start on the Gulf Coast.
“A lot of people at this point are doing really well,” said Robyn Lipkowitz of the Utah Food Bank, who helps evacuees obtain federal aid. “They've secured jobs, they have housing and are trying to make the best of their new life.”
Indeed, Utah's economy is robust. The unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in June, while the national rate was 4.6 percent.
“The job market is a lot better here,” said Ernest Timmons, 57, a social worker who arrived with 37 cents in his pocket.
He quickly found work as a crisis counselor at Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City. Utah, a conservative state heavily influenced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a long way from the French Quarter.
“It was a culture shock,” said Timmons, who is single. “In New Orleans, I could eat 24 hours a day. I could buy liquor. I could dance. A man on a graveyard shift could do anything. Here, you come off a graveyard shift, you go to bed.
“But you find a niche over time,” he said. “I've learned to play golf. I'm in a wonderful church. I'm going back to school again to get a license to work with people who abuse alcohol and drugs. I never want to go back to New Orleans.
“The hurricane,” Timmons said, “gave me a free ride.”
In West Jordan, a Salt Lake City suburb, seven Collins kids -- siblings or cousins -- are starting another year in the Jordan School District.
When they arrived in 2005, they repeatedly were hit with questions from other students: How did you escape the hurricane? Did you sleep on the roof? Why do you talk so fast?
“We had never seen people ride skateboards. What's he doing -- he's jumping in the air!” Johnny Collins, 14, said. “I'd never seen people with Mohawks, either.”
Johnny, a good student in New Orleans, has blossomed in Utah. He played point guard on his junior high basketball team and was chosen for the National Junior Honor Society.
“We have many choices here, like cooking class, drama class,” Johnny said. “The only extra class we had in New Orleans was gym.”
His sister, Kristie, 16, made an instructional video about urban dance that turned heads at school.
“I didn't know all those parts could wiggle,” joked Susan Chilton, a family friend and the district's intervention-services director.
Bessie Collins, the grandmother and family matriarch, relies on a fixed income. A daughter works at an area nursing home. The government helps pay rent on the two apartments, but the aid, of course, is not permanent.
“I face each day as it comes,” Bessie Collins replied when asked what's ahead. “My plans are to stay here because it's better for the children, school-wise. The environment is better. You have to be strong in New Orleans because of crime and drugs.”
Another transplant, Robert Ladmirault, 70, describes Utah as beautiful and its people friendly and generous.
“But Utah isn't home,” he said. “I need to go back.”
At Camp Williams, the National Guard base that temporarily housed evacuees, Ladmirault stumbled and broke his left ankle.
After surgery and six weeks of recovery, he got a night job sorting mail for the U.S. Postal Service, his employer for 48 years in New Orleans. Ladmirault works 50 hours a week and earns approximately $48,000 a year.
“I've saved $21,000, and I need $55,000 more,” he said. “The job is tedious, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.”
Ladmirault works the phone in his off-hours trying to find an electrician to wire his house in New Orleans.
“It's just a bare house with studs,” Ladmirault explained. “I lived there 30 years, seven months and 24 days. Flood insurance? The agent said, 'Don't worry about it. You're on high ground.' He was correct -- for 30 years.”
His wife, Lula, 69, loves to cook -- “recipes coming out of her ears” -- but he doesn't have hobbies.
“I'm a stranger here. I have no idea where anything is,” Ladmirault said. “My life is go to work, come home, stick around on Saturday and Sunday, and go back to work on Monday.
“Every now and then I get a panic attack. It only lasts a few seconds,” he said. “As long as I can work, I have a hope of getting back.”
Aug 20 12:03
By ERIN GARTNER
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Waldeen Mitchell keeps a scrapbook in her office that she thumbs through when a rare unoccupied minute allows her to reflect on the chaotic journey that tore her from her beloved New Orleans.
The book could be a reminder of loss. Her mold-covered house, the destroyed European clocks collected during her military service, the series of strokes her elderly mother has suffered in the year since Hurricane Katrina changed their lives.
But for Mitchell, a former Marine with an unwavering trust in her divine path, the photographs illustrate a time of healing, growth and education.
“I can tell you 100 bad things that came out of Katrina, but I can probably tell you 102 good things that came out of it,” said Mitchell, who now lives in Raleigh and works for the Capital Area Workforce Board helping fellow hurricane evacuees find work and rebuild their lives in North Carolina.
“Everybody deals with stress differently. The more I help people, the more I grow. It's healing for me,” she said. “You may have to take the fork in the road, it may be more difficult, but you can get back on track. One step at a time.”
Mitchell and her college-bound son are among hundreds of families that have stayed in North Carolina since fleeing the strong Category 3 storm that battered the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines last August.
Thousands sought shelter in North Carolina: More than 5,000 applications from evacuated individuals, couples and families listed a North Carolina address when asking for hurricane-related assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Renee Hoffman, spokeswoman for the state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety.
The state didn't track how many evacuees came through and it is unclear how many have stayed, though public safety officials guess hundreds remain scattered throughout the state.
About 200 families are still living in and around Raleigh, Wake County community health director Gibbie Harris said.
“Those are folks that, at some point over the last year, have needed our help,” Harris said, guessing that other families live in the area but haven't requested assistance. “We had a lot of folks that came and stayed.”
In Charlotte, which along with Raleigh took in the bulk of the state's hurricane evacuees, the Red Cross helped about 1,400 displaced families and received about 200,000 hurricane-related calls in the weeks after the storm, Red Cross spokeswoman Elaine Spallone said.
The organization hasn't kept up with whether evacuees have stayed in the area, Spallone said.
Statewide, public schools took in about 1,300 evacuated students and about 900 are expected to return in the fall, said Paul LeSieur, director of school business services at the state Department of Public Instruction.
Among them is 9-year-old Taylor Strain, whose parents have settled in Raleigh. Their new house has large paintings of New Orleans on the walls and a few salvaged photographs decorating the fireplace mantle.
“We had to find something that reminded us of home,” Dawn Strain said, looking at the paintings hanging in her living room.
The family left New Orleans just hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005, taking only enough clothing for three days.
Nine months later, mother and daughter visited the gutted house for the first time when they returned to New Orleans. Taylor reunited with her best friend who had evacuated to Austin, Texas, and Dawn Strain retrieved a stack of water-damaged photographs from her wedding day.
“It stunk down there, like a Dumpster and fish,” Taylor said, crunching her nose as she opened a photo album from the trip.
“The door was open and it had writing on the house. My grandpa said it meant that the house was checked and there was no one dead inside,” she said, ignoring her rambunctious and talkative 4-year-old brother, Byron Jr., as he darted around a new red couch in the living room.
Most everything in the house is new: the couches, pillows, kitchen table, curtains, television. Water and wind destroyed all they had in New Orleans, Dawn Strain said.
When Mitchell returned to her home months after the storm, she found mold so thick on the walls “you could scoop up a mold snow cone,” she said. The refrigerator had floated into the second floor, and the new french doors on her den were shattered.
Yet both women said they don't think much about the material possessions lost to Katrina. Their families are safe, their friends are healthy and their faith is strong.
“God gives you no more than what you can handle,” Mitchell said. “We lost stuff, and we can replace stuff. We have our family.”
She said her work -- helping others who experienced the same losses -- has helped reaffirm her priorities.
“When Katrina came through, she did not distinguish between a million dollars and a nickel. It didn't matter if you were black or white, rich or poor, fat or skinny, pretty or ugly. We were all in the boat together,” Mitchell said.
“Some people have said that 'Katrina' means 'to cleanse,”' she said, pausing to reflect. “Who knows.”
------
On the Net:
The American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/
Aug 19 20:23
By MIKE McFEELY
The Forum
FARGO, N.D. (AP) -- Thomas Campbell and his mother prayed for a scholarship. But what college coach would offer one to a defensive tackle who hadn't played football since 2003?
Turns out Craig Bohl at North Dakota State would. And it turns out Campbell had good reason for sitting out two years after redshirting one year at Auburn and playing just one season at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
“This was not a case of a kid losing focus or anything like that,” Bohl said. “He had family obligations to take care of and he did that. I admire him for it.”
Campbell had to put football aside to help care for his mother and grandmother.
“I don't know what I would have done without him,” said Diane Campbell, Thomas' mother. “He is a real caring individual and very dedicated. I've always taught him that if you're in, you're in and if you're out, you're out. He's always been all in.
“It was the same with this situation. I needed him, and he was there.”
The Campbells hail from Starkville, Miss., where Diane Campbell is a single parent and a middle school teacher. In late summer of 2004, she ruptured two disks in her back, which required emergency surgery. The recovery would include two months of being bed-ridden, followed by more months of being extremely careful.
Thomas Campbell was enrolled for his second year at Mississippi Gulf Coast, about four hours away from home in Gulfport. His mother had this request: I need you.
“Life doesn't stop. Life goes on whether you're recovering from back surgery or not. The mail keeps coming, the yard needs work, the house needs to be cleaned, somebody needs to cook,” Diane Campbell said. “There wasn't anybody else. I needed him to help me.”
So his second year at Mississippi Gulf Coast was washed away. His first year at the junior college had gone well. He earned second-team all-conference honors with 45 tackles and four sacks, but missing a year meant any realistic chance he had to earn a scholarship to one of Mississippi's NCAA Division I schools was probably gone.
Regrets? There were none.
“There was no decision. I didn't think anything about it. It was something I had to do,” Thomas Campbell said after an NDSU practice this week. “Family is so important. It was a blessing to spend time with her.”
Diane Campbell recovered well enough to return to work after a couple of months and the Campbells' life was returning to normal. Thomas Campbell planned to enroll at a college and play football in the fall. Until, that is, the news came in July 2005 that his grandmother was diagnosed with periodontal cancer, the cancer of the stomach lining. Mildred Kahler had surgery and chemotherapy treatments in Hattiesburg.
Again, football came in second place. Again, Diane Campbell needed her son.
“I needed him to take care of everything at home. Between work and driving back and forth to Hattiesburg (three hours one way) three or four times a week to take care of my mother and be with her in the hospital, I just couldn't do everything,” Diane said. “And I needed him to remind me to take care of myself. I wasn't sleeping much. I sat up with my mother. Again, I don't know what I would have done without him.”
During his many visits to Hattiesburg and Jackson (where his grandmother was moved during Hurricane Katrina), Campbell's grandma urged him to go to school and play football that fall. But he couldn't find a place to play close to home. So he declined, wanting to focus on helping his mother and doing what he could for his grandmother.
When she died in October, it was time to look for a school. And, almost as important, a football team.
There weren't many options. Schools shied away because Campbell missed two seasons.
NDSU, short on the defensive line and in need of players who could contribute right away, was interested. The Bison became aware of Campbell through contacts of assistant coaches Casey Bradley and Todd Wash. But even the Bison didn't move fast. They didn't make an offer until the weekend prior to signing day, when Campbell made his campus visit.
“We prayed a lot. I said, 'Thomas, it's going to happen.' But I also said that we've got to have a scholarship or maybe it's time to move on and forget about football,” Diane Campbell said. “When coach Bohl made the scholarship offer, it was a blessing. Our prayer came true.”
Campbell will be a backup and has just one year of eligibility remaining because his five-year NCAA clock started ticking when he walked on at Auburn in 2002. That matters not. He is happy to be in Fargo, happy to be playing football, happy he was able to help his family during a time of need.
“The situation I went through was a maturing process. You have to put your faith in God. You build faith and pretty much turn things over to him,” Thomas Campbell said. “It is truly a blessing to be on a team like this.”
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