Katrina evacuees find rest, hope at Waxahachie church / Good News Magazine

Mary Gibson was a homemaker in New Orleans when the city flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As the waters rose, she climbed out of a second story window at her apartment building.
"We were rescued by canoe-they were Good Samaritans, just somebody trying to be helpful, a man and his wife. I'd never seen them before in my life. They said they had come to get us out, that they didn't want us to remain. Our steps had floated away from the house, so we had to be lifted out," she said.

The kind canoeists took the home's occupants, one at a time, to higher ground, Gibson said. From there, they went to the New Orleans Convention Center. She shook her lowered head as the memories came back.

"It was overcrowded-we were in the dark, for the most part. We went to the front of the convention center, and we thought we would go inside, but it had a stench like dead people," she said, recalling images of unspeakable horror. "For three days, we had to inhale that, and we had to scavenge and hunt for food wherever. Between the heat and the hunger, really frail, frail people just didn't make it..There was a body that just sat there for three days-and we were told it had already been sitting there for three days when we got there."

Evacuee Carolyn Robinson had high praise for the volunteers at First United Methodist Church in Waxahachie. "They took us in when nobody else would. They hustled up some beds and some food, and they took us in," she said.

For the whole story, see Good News Magazine: http://www.goodnewsmag.org/magazine/NovemberDecember/nd05hurricane.htm

Read my Entrepreneur Magazine story about one businesswoman's struggle after Katrina swamped her home and clinic:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2006/march/83612.html

Read my Entrepreneur.com piece about SBDC efforts to help displaced businesses after Hurricane Katrina:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/entrepreneurextra/features/article80076.html


Read my Entrepreneur article on the hurricane-ravaged business outlook six months post-Katrina on Investors Hub:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=10111999

-- J. Louise Larson http://jlouiselarson.blogspot.com/