Texas Struggling to Meet Challenge of Evacuees

As busloads of exhausted evacuees continued to roll into a new processing center Saturday, Texas increasingly became the focal point of relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“Texas likes big challenges,” said Leroy Evans, one of the volunteers distributing food and water to evacuees. “Well, we got one now.”

Although Houston shelters are full, Gov. Rick Perry declared that Houston would be the official intake center for evacuees who would then be sent to shelters in Dallas, San Antonio and smaller cities stretching to El Paso.

While not backtracking on his pledge to help evacuees, Perry on Saturday night asked federal authorities to divert some evacuees to other states until Texas had its relief program in place.

Perry said that Texas qualified as a disaster area because of the influx of Katrina evacuees. The Texas relief effort, he said, “will require all available resources of both the federal and state governments.”

Perry has pledged to open 48 shelters and to have state employees help expedite claims for food stamps and Medicaid benefits.

Pharmacies will fill out-of-state prescriptions, foster homes will be found for orphans, and state prosecutors will watch for price gouging, the governor said.

“I think we all understand it’s by the grace of God that this terrible tragedy didn’t come ashore a few hundred miles west [in Texas],” Perry said in announcing the moves.

With most evacuees staying with friends or relatives or in hotels, the number of evacuees statewide is expected to exceed 200,000. Houston officials have been told to expect 10,000 new arrivals at the processing site for the next several days.

On Saturday, doctors and nurses at the Astrodome complex boarded buses to give cursory health exams to evacuees.

If any family member needed immediate medical attention, the entire family was allowed to stay in Houston. Otherwise, bus riders were given water and food and sent to other cities, sometimes over their protests.

“Texas can do this, but only if everybody helps out and remains tolerant,” said the Rev. Richard Petranek, an Episcopal priest working as a crisis counselor at the shelter at Reliant Arena, adjacent to the Astrodome -- the biggest of four civic shelters, with 15,000 evacuees.

“Everybody is all excited now, but let’s see in three weeks or a month when these people still need a lot of help.”

Harris County Assessor Paul Bettencourt said Houston’s relief effort was helped by the disaster management plan developed by various levels of government after tropical storm Allison in 2001 did $5 billion in damage and left 55,000 homes flooded in Houston.

“What we never anticipated was being the focal point of a four-state disaster area,” Bettencourt said. “Allison came in phases of flooding, but this was all at once.”

Texas state troopers boarded each bus that crossed the state line to give instructions to drivers and count passengers.

Long convoys of military trucks drove south on Highway 45 from Houston to Dallas. Freeway signs advised: “Exit here for free disaster relief supplies.”

Dallas has two official evacuation centers: Reunion Arena, which held 1,000 evacuees, and the Dallas Convention Center, which was nearing its capacity of 10,000.

“We’ve had thousands of people driving up here from Houston looking for relatives,” said Red Cross spokesman Robert Hinkle.

At the cavernous convention center, evacuees rested on green cots and blow-up mattresses, and ate hot dogs from long rows of tables. Yellow police tape marked sections for “single women only” and children to play.

“They don’t have showers,” said Dianne Morris, 55, who had just arrived from New Orleans. “We can’t even find a cot to sleep in.... Still, it’s better than the Superdome.”

Like Houston, relief efforts in Dallas have a surplus of volunteers. Evacuees were directed to a covered parking lot where shoes and clothing were spread out on the concrete.

“This is everything to make me comfortable,” said Neil Lockette, 48, from New Orleans, who carried several plastic bags of clothes. “We could be here for two months.”

At San Antonio’s shuttered Kelly Air Force Base, a convoy of city buses ferried evacuees from the airstrip to the three massive warehouses that had been converted into shelters for as many as 12,000 people.

Each bus wore a slogan in electric letters: “Howdy!” Volunteer nurse Irene Warfield, clad in a black Stetson hat and a blouse patterned after the Lone Star flag, spent the day taking blood pressures and administering medications.

“I just tell them, you can get through this,” she said. “They need to know that they can handle it.”

In the 24 hours since the airlift from New Orleans started, 68 planes with more than 8,000 passengers had touched down, according to Linda Frost, a spokesperson for adjacent Lackland Air Force Base, which remains open.

“This is great,” said Ron Humbles, 51, who marveled that volunteers could get the medication he takes for arthritis in his knees.

Unloading $600 worth of toys and food from his van, San Antonio resident Chris Von Fahnestock said he wished he could donate more.

“It just breaks my heart that I can’t,” he said.

Tim McGeary, 51, a Federal Emergency Management Agency volunteer from Naples, Fla., said he had been stunned by the kindness of Texans.

“I’ve seen such beauty here,” he said.

Times staff writer Perry reported from Houston, Jarvie from Dallas and Chawkins from San Antonio.