Refugees Tax the Resources of a Neighboring Parish

When the last free sandwich was handed out late Wednesday afternoon, a ragged line of unwashed refugees waited empty-handed behind a metal gate at Alfred Bonnabel High School on the western edge of the New Orleans metropolitan area.

“That’s it -- all the food is gone,” a sheriff’s deputy told the disappointed throng.

At that moment, a pickup pulled up, loaded with tortillas, pork and cheese -- a last-minute donation from a local restaurant.

“You saved our butts,” the deputy told Christian Castro, a restaurant manager who said he emptied his establishment’s larder when he heard that 700 Hurricane Katrina refugees there were low on food. For the moment, dinner resumed.

The refugees -- their homes either underwater or so badly damaged that they are uninhabitable -- are surviving from meal to meal, never sure when the next supply of food will materialize. At Bonnabel and three other schools-turned-shelters in sprawling Jefferson Parish, local officials say, thousands of refugees depend on private donations for food, water and ice.

Parish Councilman Chris Roberts said he and other officials had been trying for days to get American Red Cross officials to provide emergency supplies to the refugees and to the parish’s two hospitals.

“We’re not getting anything -- food, water, gas, generators,” he said after a breakneck drive through felled trees, downed power lines and windblown debris in parish districts across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. “The coordination just hasn’t been there.”

Thousands of refugees have poured into the parish, Roberts said, overwhelming authorities and emergency officials. The parish, where about three-quarters of the 470,000 residents were evacuated before the hurricane struck, has suffered extensive water and wind damage. Thousands of homes have been abandoned, their roofs ripped open and their windows shattered. Looters have smashed into stores and helped themselves to food, electronic equipment and clothing.

But unlike Orleans Parish next door, Jefferson Parish is not underwater. There is no electricity or running water, but the relatively dry expanse of lowlands west and south of New Orleans has attracted people fleeing high water.

Roberts and other parish leaders spent the morning Wednesday pleading for help from Red Cross officials and the state’s elected leaders at an emergency management center in Baton Rouge, the capital, about 65 miles to the northwest. Parish Council Chairman Tom Capella had tears in his eyes as he beseeched an American Red Cross official, Victor Howell, for food and water for residents.

Howell assured Capella he was doing all he could. But, as he told reporters later, “we’re entering into sheltering [people] beyond anything we’ve experienced before.”

Capella left empty-handed and dejected. “They’re putting more and more people in our shelters, and we just can’t take care of them all.”

Parish officials have declared martial law, Roberts said, letting police appropriate food and water from stores. The businesses will be reimbursed, he said.

On the drive back from Baton Rouge, Roberts kept a .38-caliber automatic pistol at his side as he and his father, Mack, tried to make their way down water-logged streets to check on their homes. They had not been home since the hurricane hit Sunday.

Outside a Burlington Coat Factory outlet, they spotted several young men emerging with armloads of clothing. Councilman Roberts sounded a siren from his silver Lexus, which is supplied with emergency equipment, and shouted at the men through a loudspeaker: “Put the clothes down or go to prison!”

The men dropped the garments and moved on.

Moments later, the Robertses discovered that their homes were in reasonably good shape.

Councilman Roberts was surprised to find his possessions dry and intact. He checked the garage. “Hey, I still have a car,” he said.

The scene was worse at the two parish hospitals, the councilman said. Both were nearly out of stored drinking water, he said, and both needed fuel for their generators.

At Bonnabel High School, two sheriff’s deputies, three National Guardsmen and five civilian volunteers were trying to placate hungry refugees.

A deputy, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said he had been told that Red Cross shipments would arrive two days ago.

“We haven’t heard a thing from the Red Cross,” the deputy said. “We’re on our own down here.”

Many refugees are elderly or poor. With no running water available, their clothes are ragged and filthy. Many wore grimy orange Bonnabel High T-shirts taken from the school gym.

There was Rufus Berry, 79, slumped in a wheelchair, his prosthetic leg propped up on a metal walker. There was Lance Conner, 51, also in a wheelchair, his tiny dog Spanky in his lap and a paper bowl of Mexican rice by his side. Both said they were brought to the school by volunteers searching the parish for marooned residents.

As dusk fell, the last of the Mexican restaurant food was served at the school. Refugees pushed again against the metal gate.

As the deputy tried to console them, a white pickup pulled into the school parking lot. Inside was Duaine Duffy, a sweaty man in shorts and a T-shirt who hopped out to unveil a huge metal pot filled with steaming jambalaya.

Duffy said his family and neighbors in La Place, just west of New Orleans, had heard on the radio that the school was low on food.

“I guess you could say God sent us here,” he said.