Jackson Free Press

Visit the Jackson Free Press' KatrinaBlog here.

Alvin Thibodeaux, a 12-year-old Red Cross volunteer from Harvey, La., greeted people at the door of the Mississippi Coliseum on Tuesday night, the day after Hurricane Katrina hit his hometown. One of his main duties, among so much work to be done, was to keep kids from running around the complex. Thibodeaux's family arrived in Jackson on Saturday, avoiding the wrath of Katrina. After the Central Mississippi Red Cross assisted, he decided it was time to give something back.

"They help people out," he said. "I wanted to do that, too."

While many residents of Jackson pick up debris and haul off trees, contract for home repairs and fret over heat without air conditioning, people crowded into the coliseum on High Street are struggling with the harsh truth that they have probably lost everything.

Mostly residents of southern Louisiana, the hundreds of refugees being helped by the Central Mississippi Red Cross are gathered in the center of the coliseum together, making do with little, hoping for the best, fearing for the worst. They don't know when they will go home, or if they ever will again.

On Tuesday night, many older people, some of whom are very sick, sat reading books or watching the crowd from their wheelchairs. Others slept on mats or cots, trying to catch just a little bit of rest amidst the chaos of losing everything.

In the main foyer, mothers packed in together, trying to secure diapers for the babies. A group of people—a diverse crowd ranging from a young black girl to an elderly Asian man—crowded in front of the non-cable television, searching the static-ridden news report for signs of their homes.

Fish and French Fries

Thibodeaux's new volunteer job adds a sense of adulthood to him, but he's in a hard spot. In between policing certain areas, ensuring that kids don't get behind the bleachers, Thibodeux is just a kid himself. On Tuesday night, he organized games of Monopoly with his new friends.

Unsure of the exact rules of the game, he turned to me and asked, "Hey, Miss, do you know how much money each person gets in Monopoly?" His friends sat in front of him, waiting for their share of the board game. One of these friends, Jarrin Bartley, an 11-year-old from Lutcher, La., says the shelter's "not so bad."

"There's good food here. They gave us fish and French fries," he said.

Bartley traveled six hours with his parents, two brothers and a 1-year-old nephew on Monday. But what about school? With classes closed throughout Louisiana, Bartley may be making up work during Christmas vacation.

"Well, I'll just have to go," he said. For now, he's glad to be out of school, making new friends, but he's worried about his aunt, who stayed behind in Lutcher.

Though the younger evacuees played together and mostly seemed unconcerned, many of their parents paced around the coliseum, worrying about their homes, families and jobs.

Around 5 p.m. on Tuesday night, Facility Manager John Champs gave a press conference of sorts. He stood on a stage at the front of coliseum, and, without a microphone, tried to answer questions from the huge crowd of people before him.

"When will I know about my auntie?" one teenage girl shouted out. "Can we get jobs in Jackson tomorrow?" a man asked. Other questions centered around the fates of various cities and the possibilities of return. Champs, cupping his ear to hear the hundreds of voices below, tried to answer many of the questions, but often just admitted he didn't know. One thing he does know, he said—even if he doesn't know how—is that the Red Cross will continue to support people.

"We're not going to send you out into the cold, or the warm," he said with a laugh. "We will take care of you for as long as it takes."

Diapers and a Spare Tire

It's people like Champs who cause Bandaka Soule, a 30-year-old mother from New Orleans, to say she is "blessed." Soule has no complaints about her situation, no anger or sadness over what she has lost: She is simply blessed, she said.

Holding her 15-month-old son Elijah—who is so pretty he "looks just like a little girl"—Soule recounted her story. She was on her way to Monroe, La., with her two sons, her husband and her mother-in-law, when God told her to stop in Jackson.

"I really am filled with the Holy Spirit," she told me, recounting the many ways in which God has spoken to her in the last week.

Soule worked two jobs in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit on Sunday. Her husband, Lyle, who was a guard for the New Orleans Museum of Art, was also training to be a truck driver. Still, between the two of them, she could not afford school uniforms for her 6-year-old son Lyle Jr.

"I had this money order that I had been carrying around for two weeks, and I kept asking God why I never had time to get to the post office to cash it. I was working, and I still couldn't afford to buy him those uniforms."

On Friday night, she says God told her to cash the money order and buy a case of diapers, a spare tire and a full tank of gas.

"We didn't even know about the hurricane then, but that's what God told me to do, so I did it. I didn't know why, but the Bible says adjust your walk by faith and not by sight, so that's what I did. "

She had the car packed and ready to go when her husband arrived home from work at midnight Friday. By that time, the news had urged residents to flee to shelters in Monroe. She's not sure why God asked her to stop in Jackson, but she's waiting to see what will happen next.

She has no plans of going back to New Orleans: "That city is just like Sodom and Gomorrah, and God has led me for two weeks to get out of there.

Though Soule says she believes God is smiting the city for all of its sin, her husband continues to look home, where he left a job and his mother's dog.

"He's worried about what we left behind, but I told him, 'Don't look back. There's nothing to go back to,'" she said. "He cussed me out, but I hit him. He knows I'm a prophetess."

Soule continues to live moment to moment, praying and giving thanks for their good fortune.

'No Plans, No Place to Go'

Conditions aren't perfect, but the shelter does provide several key services, including laundry and pet care.

"This was the only place that would let me bring my pets," 56-year-old Sarah Corwin explained. Corwin drove her four animals and sick mother from Slidell to Jackson on Sunday after the Saint Tammany parish president left phone messages for Slidell residents, calling for a mandatory evacuation. Corwin says she knew to evacuate, but had no idea where to go. After driving north for hours, asking people at gas stations for advice, she finally wound up at the Coliseum.

At the press conference, she pressed Champs for news of Slidell. "I know it's flooded, but that's all I know," she said afterward.

Corwin was visibly frustrated—she and her mother had just bought a mobile home last month, and she's worried that it's gone. In their new home, they left behind a cherished Elvis collection, her mother's oxygen machine and a power wheelchair.

"We have no plans, no place to go," she said. "The media isn't saying anything about Slidell. They talk about New Orleans and Mississippi. Well, we live right in between them. That hurricane couldn't have hit both places so badly and not hurt us. They don't want to report on Slidell because it's some little old town nobody cares about, but we have a right to know."

Corwin's son and daughter live in Mandeville, an hour outside New Orleans, but she has no way to contact them. At the shelter on Tuesday night, though, she was most worried about what life would be like come Sept. 3, when her 74-year-old ailing mother runs out of several medications, including a much-needed heart medication.

"If she doesn't have it, she has to be put on oxygen, and we left the tank at home," she said, shaking her head. "It wouldn't fit in my car."

Corwin's mother's medication is usually covered by Louisiana's Medicaid, but she isn't sure how they'll get covered now that they're stranded in Jackson. After buying bedding and dog food, the two women only have $25 left between them.

"We were waiting on mama's Social Security check. It comes to the Hibernia on Sept. 1, but how are we going to get to it?" she asked. "I don't even know if it will really be deposited because of the electricity problems."

Though she's unsure of what will happen next, or what she'll do with her animals—one of her dogs has an eye infection, she says, after being crowded with several other dogs outside of the coliseum—but Corwin's thankful for the shelter. "There are too many kids running around, but the workers here have been nice to my mother."

'She's Talking to Me'

One of these workers is Jen Nagelin, a 23-year-old schoolteacher in Jackson. Nagelin normally teaches third grade at Lee Elementary, but is off work this week as the Jackson Public Schools district is closed. Nagelin was at home, without electricity, listening to the radio when she heard a Red Cross representative asking for volunteers.

"The woman said, 'If you're off work and at home in the heat without electricity, come on up to Riverside Drive and volunteer," Nagelin recalled. "I thought, 'She's talking to me,' so I went to Riverside to help."

When Nagelin arrived to volunteer, she asked where she should sign up. One man, organizing a small group of people unloading food, pointed to the truck and said, "Get on in there."

After unloading food, Nagelin volunteered at the Red Cross's shelter at the coliseum on Tuesday night, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Like Corwin, Nagelin admitted that the shelter gets a little chaotic at times, but she explained that people are "just flying by the seat of their pants." Many volunteers have never worked with the Red Cross before, but want to help the hundreds of refugees in the shelter.

"Most of these people don't have any other options," she said.

On Tuesday, Nagelin's work ranged from serving food to reading to younger children. Mostly, she was responsible for talking to people who had been cooped up inside for 48 hours. She pointed to various visitors, giving brief versions of their "stories."

In the corner was a man she met earlier in the day who had traveled to Jackson by himself. Across the room were two brothers who had been holding card trick competitions earlier in the day. The kids seem to be most fond of her. During our interview, two girls approached her, stifling a giggle. Holding out a piece of paper with a cartoon face, one girl asked Nagelin, "Have you seen this person?"

Ever the good sport, Nagelin smiled back at the girl. "Hmm," she said. "I think he went that way."

The girls laughed and ran toward the back of coliseum where other kids played Chinese checkers, jumped rope or threw a beach ball around as volunteers prepped to serve a dinner of barbecue, macaroni and cheese, and rolls to hundreds of people who have lost everything.

The next morning, on Wednesday, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reported a death toll possibly in the thousands, the evacuees in the coliseum continued to work to continue their lives one more day. With Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco saying New Orleans may very well need to be "abandoned," the evacuees in the coliseum struggled to create temporary homes together in the shelter.

The Red Cross became more organized, roping off several portions of the coliseum for donations. Residents stood in even longer lines to get lunch. Workers moved to remove the stage from the center of the coliseum to provide more space for the residents, and Alvin Thibodeaux just kept working.

Unsure of when, or if, he'll see home again, Thibodeaux organized books by size into a makeshift library for people in the shelter to borrow.

"I don't know when we're leaving. So I'm just doing whatever (the Red Cross) needs," the young volunteer said.

Visit the Jackson Free Press' KatrinaBlog here.

Previous Comments

ID

78896

Comment

Joe Scarborough on MSNBC says now that there are few feds, state, or emergency workers in Biloxi. Where are they? Where is Barbour and MEMA?? Where is the national guard? Every channel on TV talks about the outrageous lack of help from the feds and the state in Mississippi.

Author

Towanda

Date

2005-09-01T20:03:04-06:00

ID

78897

Comment

Thank goodness the big media are paying attention. I sent out the Sun-Herald editorial to my entire national press list yesterday with a plea for them to pay attention. I know others are doing the same. I heard from AP in Mississippi today that they were putting it on the wire this afternoon -- good for them. Now, how about some damn help here in Mississippi where the local authorities are overwhelmed and, apparently, people are dying without help!?! It's unbelievable.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-09-01T21:16:48-06:00

ID

78898

Comment

I heard that the Dem National Committee were asked to send truck loads of ice and water. They need to do just that. Medicine is also needed. I'm going to call the DNC tomorrow to urge their follow-through, and I emailed them today. Last I checked Pork Chop the Barbourian does not have email. Guess we'll have to call the mansion to query why there's no help on the coast. Where's the Red Cross? God knows they want YOUR money! A friend in CA sent the Sun Herald editorial to bush and cheney. I sent it around to friends. Question: Meanwhile, wee the People and the media are raising hell about the lack of help here on the gulf coast and in New Orleans- but where are the Congressional leaders? Why aren't they outraged? Kerry? Kennedy? Boxer? McCain? Murray? Sen. Mary Landrieu sounds great, but she's developed multiple facial ticks, strange expressions on camera. What about Trent Lott's big mouth? Where is his outrage? Cochran's outrage? Anyone with common sense knows this is being terribly mishandled in a way that is killing people, babies, causing incredible suffering. Why? I haven't seen or heard Mayor Ray Nagin lately?

Author

Towanda

Date

2005-09-01T21:36:27-06:00

ID

78899

Comment

Already, Towanda, stop calling the governor names please. Criticize him on the merits, but be respectful! Otherwise, I'm with you on the need to make some noise about what is/is not happening in Mississippi, both here in Jackson and on the Coast.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-09-01T21:40:29-06:00

ID

78900

Comment

Some short pieces from CNN. Incredibly depressing. Great work, all of you, for getting a paper together so quickly under these circumstances. I know it must have been tough. Peace, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-09-02T01:18:39-06:00

ID

78901

Comment

More on the challenges facing New Orleans, from the Washington Post. It looks to me like the city as we knew it is gone for good. I don't see how the infrastructure can ever be put together to support New Orleans as it was before. And that will change not only the character of New Orleans, but the character of the surrounding areas as well. I don't know enough about the Gulf to say much. I think part of the problem is that even the Gulf damage is more low-key, as it were--conventional hurricane damage on a large scale rather than the completely new and different and very public kind of horror folks face in New Orleans. I suspect this makes estimating casualties impossible, but what is becoming clear to me is that the combined casualties from Mississippi and Louisiana will exceed those of 9/11. I can't speak for anybody else, but I'd gotten so desensitized to the whole idea of hurricanes. I think they come, and they take lives but not very many, they predictably destroy lots of property along the shore, and that's that. Sure, these kinds of phenomena sometimes do horrible things in faraway countries--witness the tsunami--but we're somehow different, somehow protected from all that. American hurricanes are like tornadoes in the ocean. They just kind of happen. But this is so big. This is a nightmare. I'm thinking of Pompeii, of Hiroshima. All that despicably lurid rhetoric about "Atlantis" sounds almost naive now. We have been hit hard, and it's a reminder that there's nothing protecting Jackson, nothing protecting any of us as individuals. We're all so fragile, so helpless. There are so many things that are beyond our power to control, or even to predict. Peace, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-09-02T01:45:33-06:00

ID

78902

Comment

Actually I am hearing now that the relief and recovery efforts on the Mississippi Coast are going bettter than anywhere else. It's taken three days but let's take note that you and I wouldn't be in "Spring Chicken" condition either after a baseball bat to the head. O.K. they've come to now and things are happening. In twelve more hours things will be better and then 24 hours even better.....I undertand from close friends in Jackson that lights are coming on albiet slowly. By the way Senator Lott has lost his family home in Pasgagoula and the other fellow from down there is homeless as well. The coast is flat on it's back but the ones of you that are capable of getting relief in there are now standing up and walking around. It's going to get better.

Author

ATLExile

Date

2005-09-02T09:45:35-06:00

ID

78903

Comment

Some of the hurricane victims who fled to Houston will probably call the city their new home permanently. If they couldn't afford to leave, I doubt that all of them could afford to return. Plus, after getting away from that mess, some probably are too traumatized to return.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2005-09-02T17:41:24-06:00