How it all began

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1223097623224550.xml&coll=1

Volunteers key to successful evacuation
by Robert X. Fogarty, Guest Columnist, The Times-Picayune
October 04, 2008

It seems a long time ago now, July 9, when volunteers portrayed homeless men, elderly women and mothers with children during a dry run of the city’s assisted evacuation plan. Afterward, everyone involved not-so-quietly hoped we’d never have to do it for real.

But when Mayor Ray Nagin called for assisted evacuation buses to roll Aug. 30 at 8 a.m., I nervously called the non-profits and New Orleanians who had agreed to volunteer should the plan be activated, hoping they’d come through.

The next morning and over the next 35 hours, more than 300 people — individual citizens, non-profit organizations, city and state employees as well as young AmeriCorps members who moved to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — helped evacuate approximately 18,000 New Orleanians in the first no-kidding rendition of the plan.
The evacuees were among New Orleans’ most vulnerable citizens.

A homeless man with one shoe. A mother with five kids under 8. An 80-year-old married couple.

Family after family arrived at the Union Passenger Terminal. And off they went. Almost 800 Latinos with few English skills arrived, and bilingual volunteers assured them they wouldn’t be hassled about their residency status. The spectrum of evacuees was large.

Many evacuees were run-of-the-mill New Orleanians, who, for some reason or another, have not adopted the American “I need a car” mindset. My favorite group was the 20 international young people who work on temporary visas as servers and busboys, linen changers and line cooks in French Quarter restaurants and hotels. They arrived with huge traveling backpacks and “What did we get ourselves into?” looks on their faces.

As each bus approached the terminal from the 17 pick-up points, volunteers distributed water or grabbed wheelchairs when special needs residents unloaded.

We waved to several people I’d known pre-evacuation and wished them well, including a clerk at the Walgreens near my apartment and a retired bookkeeper who volunteers at City Hall.

The local city-bus operators shuffled thousands from the different neighborhood pickup points to the Union Passenger Terminal. Special needs citizens were given door-to-door service. The planes, trains and buses took evacuees to cities and towns in northern Louisiana like Shreveport as well as shelters and Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.
Once the terminal shut its doors about 12 hours before Gustav made landfall, it looked perfectly ready to resume Amtrak and Greyhound service. A city employee who worked the Superdome during Katrina said one of the assisted evacuation plan’s litmus tests was the appearance of the Union Passenger Terminal after the last train headed to Memphis.

When we left, I told him I’d be happy to eat a bag lunch on the floor.

And just as they departed, they soon returned. Larman Sparkman’s left foot hit New Orleans soil Thursday, Sept. 4, making him the first returned resident in the city’s historic and unprecedented assisted evacuation.
There wasn’t a welcoming committee waiting for Sparkman and the people he’d spent the past week with, just a few people who happened to be on site at Union Passenger Terminal planning for the first of the evacuee arrivals to begin the following day

Sparkman and 26 returned others became the impromptu trail-blazers of an elaborate plan that, by and large, was a success. The evacuation would have saved many lives if Hurricane Gustav had actually carried the bite forecasters feared.

There are two camps with observations about the treatment of city-assisted evacuees at shelters.
Some evacuees said they were treated miserably in northern Louisiana. Social activists are protesting allegedly inhumane shelters. But some activists also told me during the evacuation how well they thought the plan was working.
Shelter-condition protesters came to City Hall recently. As residents of Galveston and other Texas communities dealt with Hurricane Ike devastation and several southern Louisiana parishes were still in states of emergency, the timing seemed off. However, there is no doubt that a time and place are needed for those conversations.

The other camp included evacuees who said they were treated well and would use the assisted evacuation program again. Discussions will continue to occur in preparation for the next hurricane. The biggest fear for us all, however, is that many evacuees who returned weary, beleaguered and bleary-eyed from Gustav will choose to stay for the next storm.

There is work to do.

Sparkman said he’d do it again. Beverly Mitchell, the volunteer at City Hall, said the same.

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped make the Hurricane Gustav assisted evacuation program a success.
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Robert X. Fogarty is Mayor Ray Nagin’s volunteer coordinator. He can be reached at rxfogarty@cityofno.com.