EVACUEES STORM SE ARKANSAS

By Wes Clement/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

Hurricane Gustav evacuees ate a typical Labor Day lunch of hot dogs Monday at the Pine Bluff Convention Center as the storm began to pass over their Louisiana homes.

“Sunday afternoon we opened the shelter at one o’clock and shortly after, they started arriving,” Bettye Johnson, Southeast Arkansas Red Cross Chapter public affairs officer said. “At this point it is a very smooth operation and we are ready to meet the needs of as many evacuees as we need to.”

About 50 evacuees slept at the shelter Sunday night and more began arriving Monday at about 10 a.m., she said. More 200 people were registered at the shelter by late Monday afternoon, most from the New Orleans area.

“If everything is destroyed, my wife has already decided she won’t be going back to go through this again. I, on the other hand, think we should go back anyway,” James Trudeau said as he and his family stood in line Monday for lunch.

Trudeau also found shelter at the convention center during Hurricane Katrina and said he and his family chose to return to Pine Bluff because they were pleased with how well they were treated at the shelter three years ago.

The Red Cross shelter has provided cots and blankets to the evacuees and is serving three meals per day. Several showers have been set up and Red Cross volunteers have set apart an area for crated animals.

In addition to 20 certified volunteers working at the shelter, Red Cross nurses and Pine Bluff police officers are on hand to assist, Johnson said.

“It wasn’t great to have to leave, but considering the alternative it was good to have somewhere to go. I just hope it doesn’t wipe us out,” Shawn Matherne, a Houma, La., resident said after watching a radar image of the storm move over his hometown.

Matherne said some of his neighbors did not evacuate because they thought Houma would not be hit hard by the hurricane.

Bilingual evacuee Maribell Rabell aided Red Cross volunteers in creating instructional signs in Spanish.

State Department of Human Services county administrator Lee Turner surveyed the needs of the evacuees at the shelter and determined he would set up an information and referral booth there Tuesday.

“We’re mostly here to assure them that we are here for them if they need us,” Turner said.

The flow of traffic from Louisiana had slowed significantly by noon Monday and officials expected those evacuees who began the journey late would arrive at shelters by Monday evening, said Wally Hunt, Jefferson County coordinator for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.

Many counties in Southeast Arkansas including Jefferson, he said, have declared a state of emergency, allowing them to be eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursement of shelter expenses.

Some evacuees were in need of only one night of shelter before moving on to available hotels or to stay with relatives and others who had exhausted their resources were in need of more assistance, Hunt said.

Employees of Holiday Inn Express at The Pines mall and Royal Arkansas Hotel and Suites adjacent to the convention center reported Monday being booked up until mid-week.

La Quinta Inn located on Market Street had been booked until Sunday, but Monday had six percent of its rooms available.

Local Red Cross volunteers Smitty Dedman and Joyce Nichols drove an emergency response vehicle to Louisiana Friday and have been waiting on standby to assist those in need, said Johnson.

More than 2,300 evacuees were housed at Fort Chaffee near Fort Smith and state officials said they were prepared to handle up to 4,000.

An estimated 75,000 evacuees found shelter and aid in Arkansas in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The state worked with churches around the state to find emergency shelter for the victims of the storm.

“I don’t know how long we’ll have to stay up here,” a tired Harvey Trahan of Houma, La., said in a telephone interview from a shelter in Lake Village.

“We have a corner. We’ve got cots. They’ve got us well taken care of. They furnished us with blankets, towels, everything.”

Trahan, 58, traveled in a group of 12 family members, including four children, Trahan’s sister, and his older brother.

“He’s 73. He just got out of the hospital so we didn’t want to leave him behind,” Trahan said. “So we loaded him up in the car, too.”

Hospitals at Little Rock and Sherwood admitted more than a dozen patients moved from hospitals on the Gulf Coast.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.