I apologize in advance to my readers who subscribed to this newsletter for cruise news and deals only-—you may wish to skip straight to the bottom. I want to begin today with what is happening here in Houston, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
It's 4:45 a.m. on Friday, September 2nd, and tension is rising at the Astrodome in Houston.
The governor of Texas and the mayor of Houston have opened the Astrodome to evacuees from Louisiana. The enormous ground level of the Astrodome has already filled to absolute capacity with thousands of small cots, and every one is taken. There are not enough to go around, and some hold mother and child or two children. Many others sleep on blankets in the hallways that ring every level of the dome, and hundreds more try to sleep in the hard wooden chairs meant to house sports fans for three hours at a time.
Against this surreal backdrop, a lonely figure trudges the uneven aisles holding a cardboard sign aloft with the names of loved ones who are missing.
Our small group of volunteers has just arrived to help serve breakfast in the Astrodome, but we quickly learn that the plan has changed. For the safety of the untold thousands already here, the fire marshal has closed the Astrodome to more refugees, but the evacuation is chaotic, and the buses just keep coming.
"All those buses still have people on them," someone with a walkie-talkie tells us, pointing to a line of darkened motor coaches stretching out of sight around the dome. "We're opening Reliant Arena (a separate building nearby), but the situation there is tense. We need you over there."
We load tables and supplies into two trucks and walk from the Astrodome to Reliant Arena, where we pass an impromptu medical "clinic" filled with sick and injured evacuees and bleary-eyed doctors, nurses, paramedics and police officers.
On the far side of the building, we arrive at a room where we will serve breakfast, and through a long wall of glass, we get our first glimpse of the new arrivals outside. Standing ten deep, in lines that run the length of our large room and stretch out of sight, these are the first who arrived after the Astrodome’s closing. Out there in the darkness, thousands more are still in their buses. No one on this side of the glass knows what they have already endured to get here. Many have spent the prior four days in the sweltering heat and stench of the Superdome, the closest thing to hell on earth.
Now they have heard that the Astrodome is full and do not know whether they will be allowed to stay or be bused to another city, or to another state. They are at their wits' end. Tempers have flared, emotions are high.
Within an hour we are ready to serve and the doors are opened. As evacuees enter the building, their identities are recorded, and they proceed immediately to our three serving lines for their first hot meal in days: two waffles, two sausage patties, one pat of butter, one serving of syrup, one box of juice and one big spoonful of grits.
During the next five hours the line moves continuously. Word filters in that Houston has opened its convention center to evacuees as well, and some of the volunteers leave our building and the Astrodome to help out downtown. Hundreds of other volunteers pour in to replace them, including at least 25 travel counselors and the top management from Vacations To Go.
I've never volunteered in such an enormous operation coming together on the fly, but I have only good things to say about the supervisor from food service company Aramark, and the people I could not see behind the scenes. We knew the folks on the other side of the glass were desperately hungry, and we worried among ourselves whether the food would last. None of us knew how much food there was, or how many waited outside, but we did know that no one had expected this huge new group for breakfast. We ran out of some things, for a while, but we never ran out of everything at the same time, and the food line never stopped.
By 11:15, every one of our neighbors from New Orleans had entered the facility and received a hot meal.
I will not soon forget the faces of the people as they came through the line. Many were dazed or grieving, and some still wore the clothes they had on when Katrina struck. Some wore bandages and struggled to hold their plates steady. Others tried to smile, and made a point of expressing their gratitude and shaking our hands in the midst of having lost everything.
The little old ladies, with their sugary Nawlins drawls of "Thank you, darlin'," were truly a sign of Amazing Grace.
But this was just the first meal of the day, in the first week of the first month that evacuees will need help. It’s a scenario that is playing out across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
The Deep South is in trouble, and the need is as wide and as deep as the Mississippi
