N.O. evacuees back home
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NEW ORLEANS — Some 18,000 city-assisted residents evacuated before Hurricane Gustav, began trickling back into New Orleans on Friday morning, including several busloads that arrived ahead of a timeline set by Mayor Ray Nagin.
“We have 200 to 300 volunteers,” said former state Judge Calvin Johnson, director of the New Orleans Human Services District, a quasi-governmental agency that assists people with mental illness, substance abuse problems and developmental disabilities.
“But we had a bus at 1 a.m., at 2 a.m. and at 6 a.m. and we didn’t have anybody here for those buses.”
By noon, however, the Union Passenger Terminal was so thick with National Guard troops, New Orleans Police, mental health workers and city volunteers on hand to greet the returning evacuees — the repatriated residents themselves could be hard to find.
“We don’t need military here for crowd control,” said Johnson, recently retired as chief judge of New Orleans Criminal Court, and the father of mental health courts in Louisiana. “The New Orleans Police Department does crowd control better than anybody else in the country. The military can be patrolling in the neighborhoods.”
Outside the bus station, Police Chief Warren Riley said city planners were considering relocating the Guard troops. “The crowds (of returning evacuees) weren’t as heavy as expected.”
Like its suburban neighbors, Orleans continued to wait for the full restoration of power, post-Gustav. The Red Cross, FEMA, and Salvation Army set up sites for food, ice, water and those familiar blue tarps for damaged rooftops. Residents cleaned up from the storm. More and more businesses opened. Signal lights began working again. Gas station lines eased or disappeared altogether. Wall-to-wall news coverage by local television stations of the storm, finally gave way to daytime “soaps” and other regular programming.
Normalcy appeared in sight, as government operations and businesses not already opened promised to resume early next week.
Residents anxiously deliberated over whether they would evacuate again — or stay — while Hurricane Ike churned in the Atlantic.
Robert Teahen, a spokesman for the American Red Cross, said two giant mobile kitchens were setting up in Westwego to provide 16,000 hot meals daily to needy residents in the area via 20 emergency response vehicles. “Our primary focus is sheltering and feeding,” Teahen said.
Jefferson Parish continued to greet returning residents and businesses, challenged mainly by scattered power outages and a running battle to stand up its sewer facilities. Until then, residents have been asked to conserve water.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser continued to worry aloud this week over how to persuade residents to evacuate for the next hurricane. Among the most recalcitrant was an 83-year-old woman, who was evicted from a shelter as Gustav approached: “The shelter wouldn’t let her smoke,” Nungesser said. “She raised all kind of hell.”
Sheriff’s deputies did not want to take her to jail. And the parish president, candidly admitted that he could think of no options either.
“They brought her back to her house,” he said, where she presumably stayed for the storm.
The parish’s post-Gustav curfew was lifted Thursday and the parish reopened the same day. However, boil water advisory remained in effect Friday.
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