Since the Loyola website is currently down, I figured I'd give a recap for anyone wondering how things went down for college students in New Orleans. As of the time of this posting, everybody from Loyola University is safe and sound, and it looks like the University made it through mostly intact. As far as I know, all the kids from Tulane and probably UNO made it out as well, but the rumor is a bunch of people were marooned at Xavier University.
Obviously, with the scope of this disaster, it's looking like the fall semester may be done for. Many of us have turned our inconvenience into an opportunity to try and alleviate the suffering of those facing real tragedy.
Here's the story below the break:
Loyola freshmen had about two or three days of calm and fun in the fall orientation before the rest of us started filtering in. This year looked to be getting ooff to a great start for college students overall. Classes were set to begin on Monday, and though many knew of Katrina, the general attitude was one of simple caution.
I arrived on Friday the 26th after a 28 hour bus ride across Texas from New Mexico (my own personal purgatory.) We had about one day of normal moving-in before they decided on Saturday to close the school for Monday and Tuesday so people could skip out of town to be safe. All the various extracurricular activities were cancelled. Since not everyone had moved in yet, most people there simply turned around and left with their parents. Tulane fully shut down their dorms and ordered everyone out. Loyola took a more "wait and see" approach, keeping the dorms open but encoraging people to implement their evacuation plans. A miscommunication between myself and my girlfriend cost me my only ride out of town, so I decided to stick it out as with Ivan last year. (Which had been a "near miss" on New Orleans.)
As the news reports began to come in that Katrina was not changing course and was amping up on power, a lot of people were scared. In my critical opinion, the bus stations and train stations had closed way too early, back on Saturday, leaving those without a car nowhere to go. That night they told us to gather our things in case we had to leave.
Sunday morning everyone filtered down into the quads after the final decision was made. If the hurricane had been weaker, they probably would have let us stay, but the likelihood of being left in a compromising situation was too high. A lot of the Tulane kids had evacuated to Jackson, Missisippi, while Loyola kids had gone to Baton Rouge. We loaded up into every single van the school had and a good amount of cars, tied yellow caution tape to the antennae so we could keep track of each other, and convoyed out in a massive line that must have been about 39 different vehicles. The journey pretty much took up all of Sunday. Even with both sides of the causeway open, there simply aren't enough ways out of New Orleans to make evacuation efficient by any means.
This is important for those criticising many who stayed. Other than the poor and sick, there were those who didn't realize the severity of the situation until the mandatory evacuation call, and by then you were risking getting caught between New Orleans and Baton Rouge in a hurricane, jammed in traffic.
Beyond that, though, New Orleans is a very, very poor city in areas. Despite the fact that everyone KNEW there was a population of about 100,000 folks with no way out and nowhere to go, it did not occur to anyone in government to help these people. It's come up in every discussion of a hurricane in New Orleans that I've ever seen, yet there was not a real attempt made to remedy that.
Istrouma Baptist Church in Baton Rouge was our Red Cross shelter. We all holed up there, still expecting hurricane force winds to reach as far as Baton Rouge. Luckily, the storm shifted east, so all we had was a windy/stormy day. The power did go out Monday morning, which made the place miserable, but we were all happy to be safe. Some kids from UNO also made it to the same shelter.
Of course, at this time, most of our families had no idea because cell service was on the blink. The network was so busy it took forever to get out. It's the same sort of thing that happened on 9/11. Nobody could contact anybody because everybody was trying to call each other, and it just about brought the system down. I think we need some sort of infrastructure overhaul to help reinforce the system when a disaster hit. Beyond just letting people call families, emergency services, information centers, and volunteer groups also use those same cell networks, and it can cause chaos being out of touch. It is a dangerous situation that needs remedy immediately.
As soon as the storm had passed, the Red Cross came by looking for volunteers. Loyola is a Jesuit run college with an emphasis on social justice and service, so they wound up immediately with easily three times the volunteers they were prepared for. They gave us a crash course in Damage Assessment, and others some training for Shelter management, and off we went.
I worked damage assessment in Ascension Parish, where the effects were pretty light. Some poor guy lost the roof to his mobile home, and the power situation is ridiculously out of hand, with down trees pulling whole rows of poles down. It seems that people were lucky, though. In the town of Gonzales, despite heavy tree growth all over and whole 40 foot trees being uprooted or snapped, only a handful of houses were hit, and most were just clipped on the corners. The Baton Rouge area was lucky, but down south is pretty bad. Obviously, New Orleans is so bad they won't even let us nearby to assess.
The unspoken story seems to be the rural coast. There are a lot of desperately poor people who have medical needs, lack power, and are short on food. I'm afraid their plight may be overshadowed by the focus on New Orleans. More than just a city was lost -- a whole region has been ravaged.
Baton Rouge itself is crowded with refugees. The traffic is bad, and already people are talking about a tremendous upshoot in crime -- purse snatching, car stealing, burglaries. Most police are tied up at the shelters, working relief, or juggling mass traffic in a city where most of the stoplights still don't work. There needs to be a much larger government presence here and everywhere, and it needs to be in place quick, otherwise things are going to go from bad to worse in a heartbeat. As people are rescued from New Orleans, they're putting a huge strain on Baton Rouge. The shelter we were staying at is now full of people. (Most have gone home, others have gone to help.)
The charity situation is this: From dealing with the Red Cross I can say they certainly have enough volunteers today -- in fact that's why I'm typing this and not out working. I was released for today because they simply have more volunteers than vehicles to move them. Supplies also seem to be good for the Red Cross itself, but the shelterees need everything from toothpaste to wheelchairs. What the Red Cross needs is money, and lots of it. What I heard is they're spending $200,000 a day keeping operations in order here, and that's bound to run out quick. I don't speak for them, of course, but I think money marked specifically to help with Katrina would be more useful than loading up in a van and coming down or sending specific supplies.
The local church community has been awesome towards Loyola students. A family here from the St. Andrews Methodist church has taken me in for two days and are even giving me a ride out of town. Other families house other students who are now just trying to get out of the way and not be a burden. I'm certainly thankful that there are people who care enough to help out anyone in times of need. I just hope everyone's first priority will be to sort this mess out.