Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort Up-date 9/6/05

Tuesday, September 6, 2005
by Peter Schweitzer
Photos by Lenore Norrgard

The Plenty bus left at midnight from The Farm community in Summertown, Tennessee with six volunteers, including a photo journalist/writer, and approximately $2500 worth of supplies. It arrived Tuesday morning in Covington, LA where supplies were unloaded at the Veterans for Peace/Camp Casey shelter. Supplies included more of everything, water, pampers, snack foods, gator aid, soap, bleach, insect repellent, toothbrushes, tooth paste, kotex pads, baby food, baby formula, and three quilts that More Than Warmth donated for Katrina survivors. After unloading, they headed back into New Orleans where a couple of our volunteers, who are from the area, knew of people wanting a ride out. We're continuing to assess the situation in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and we’re getting a lot of calls for help, mainly for food and water for shelters throughout the area. We've been getting strong support for the relief efforts from throughout our community and networks. One friend of Plenty works for Max Baucus, Senator from Montana who is on the Senate Finance Committee. Max asked his staff to fact-find from people on the ground about what's really going on and to get suggestions to help them formulate policy changes now to improve the government response. We’re advising FEMA to loosen up the restrictions they're putting on groups like Plenty, church groups, local fire departments and others who want to help, know how to help, are self-funded and ready to go. Don't send them home. If they're obviously legitimate and, say, show up with a school bus to take people to local relatives instead of flying out to some military base in Idaho, let that happen! Let the citizen relief efforts out of the box because this crisis too big for FEMA, The Red Cross and the National Guard. – More to come. Our bus meets the NYPD in the French Quarter Message from the bus crew: We arrived in Covington about 10 a.m. with no incident. People are very grateful for the supplies we brought. The three women I spoke with are African American, from an area of New Orleans that has been washed away, they have lost everything and are at the same time both extremely grateful for all aid, and in tremendous grief over losses: not only homes, but family members believed dead, family heirlooms and especially family photographs, "FEMA can never replace what was lost." They've been told bodies are being collected in what sounded like garbage containers, and will be identified by DNA. One woman said the military was flying overhead for three days after the storm before dropping water and food supplies to those stranded. We're about to take off, more later- Peace & gratitude, Lenore

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