by Adam Miller, posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 (16 years ago)
SHREVEPORT, La. (BP)--The families arrived with three days of clothes and little else. In the car seats you see what is valuable to them: a painting of a dog, a hand-stitched doll. Quite a few spent most of their money on evacuating and many come from the same parishes ripped up by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.
But instead of grief and anger, there's frustration and some healthy doses of gratitude as Hurricane Gustav evacuees fill places such as the Shreveport Fairgrounds -- a campus utilized by the American Red Cross and now, at dinnertime, filled with restless families carrying Styrofoam containers of red beans and sausage, corn and fruit.
"I'm just so grateful," New Orleans resident Longelle Pierre said, eating a meal prepared 10 miles away at Willowpoint Baptist Church by a Tennessee Baptist disaster relief feeding unit from Shiloh Baptist Association. Her 8-year-old daughter held up a black-haired doll named Rosie. "We've had food here. Our pets have been cared for. We feel safe," Pierre added.
Though separated from their homes by hundreds of miles, the key point is that most evacuees have homes to return to. Read More
