As Govenor "Goodhair" Perry
announced 12,000 more evacuees to be sheltered in San Antonio, an earlier report from the San Antonio Express-News says the Red Cross will be limiting media access to evacuees.
Story here.
(free subscription may be required; I use BugMeNot to get the stories)
From the second link I gave...
Talk of an additional shelter also comes as the American Red Cross announced new guidelines for the media reporting from the shelters in San Antonio.
Because some of the shelters' public information officials are being transferred to other parts of the state, shelter officials announced Thursday that journalists are prohibited from reporting at three of the four facilities, with only Building 1536 at KellyUSA open to reporters between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
The San Antonio Express-News is sending a letter to shelter officials that says the paper opposes the new rules and is hoping to open access for the residents and reporters.
Now, maybe it's because they don't want the evacuee stories to get out in the public. Southeast Texas evacuees are likely to be as poor as New Orleans evacuees. And maybe...just maybe, the sunshine and lollipops being tossed out in response to the Texas response to Hurricane Rita isn't quite as good as it's being played out in the media.
Being part of the media, I can give you my word that in my part of Texas, the pre-Rita preparations were good, but not great. The much-maligned Houston/Galveston evacuation was a middling success only because the path of the storm was away from the major access routes and highways north and west of Houston, and because the mandatory evacuees in the low-lying areas were joined in their evacuations by hundreds of thousands of people on high ground or otherwise 'safe' (north and west of the evac zones) and not in any evacuation zone as laid out by city planners in Houston.
However, after the storm, there's questionable tactics going on in the Texas cities hardest hit. In Beaumont and Port Arthur, people are living like cavemen. You know, we can't all just hop in our private jets and go to a 5 star hotel on command.
My point is...why is the Red Cross denying access to the victims who are still stranded hundreds of miles from home? I don't buy the "we don't have public information officials" excuse. Somebody's hiding something, and I think we deserve the chance to find out what, if anything, is being hidden. Is it because FEMA wants to hire contractors to run the shelters? Or is it just a matter of wanting all the bad news to go away quietly?
I'm open to suggestions.