Published: September 05, 2008 09:17 pm      

Not all agree evacuation was bad experience

Thousands of Orange County residents fled to inland areas earlier this week as Hurricane Gustav threatened Louisiana and Texas, and many of those residents used transportation provided by the county.

According to Jeff Kelley, Orange County Emergency Management Coordinator, the county evacuated more than 1,200 people from locations in Orange and Vidor, by using buses, ambulances and planes.

“We are in the process of verifying and double checking the manifests,” Kelley said. “We want to know exactly how many people we had leave and where they all went and how they got there. We couldn’t even begin to calculate what it cost the county at this point.”

The county easily spent thousands upon thousands of dollars evacuating people to areas like Marshall and San Antonio, which is where the people who needed the most medical care were transported.

“We had an air hub in San Antonio, which received our people who needed medical care,” he said. “From there they were sent to various locations. The ones who were transported by bus went to our sister cities who had agreed to help us.”

One of those cities was Marshall, which is where 15 buses returned from on Wednesday with passengers from the Orange area aboard.

Not all who evacuated felt the experience was what they believed it would be, such as Detra King, who said in Friday’s edition of the Orange Leader the food was subpar and the medical treatment promised to some residents was non-existent.

Many people expressed their dissatisfaction with the overall experience of the trip and stay in Marshall after arriving back in Orange on Wednesday, but King was the only one willing to go on record at the time.

The Orange Leader received several calls on Friday from residents who did evacuate or had a family member use the special needs transportation system through the 211 registry, and they were more than happy with accommodations and treatment.

“Some people are just ungrateful,” said Orange resident Christine Petre. “They didn’t have to leave on those buses and the county didn’t have to take them out of here. You can’t expect people to do everything for you.”

Petre evacuated in her own vehicle with her children, her 73-year-old father, three birds and a dog, and the experience was much more positive than negative.

“I drove to Center, Texas and stayed at First Baptist Church with my dad and two girls,” Petre said. “There were 180 people there, including 30 from Orange, and more from Port Arthur and Sour Lake, and everybody pitched in and cooked and cleaned.”

Petre said the sleeping arrangements included blankets, sheets, pillows and air mattresses for most people, while toddlers and senior citizens had cots to sleep on during the night. She said the food was not too bad either.

“We ate chicken spaghetti one night and had gumbo the next,” she said. “I think all of these shelters use the same cookbook to prepare meals. We had sausage and biscuits for breakfast too and it wasn’t bad. My kids and I would rather stay in a shelter, like the one in Center, than in a hotel anytime.”

Petre knows an evacuation process is never perfect and the arrangements are not always the best, but she was appreciative for what she had in Center and what she has here at home.

“These people better thank God because they may not have somewhere to go next time,” Petre said. “I know I’m thankful.”

Donna Bonin said her brother, Jimmy Vessel, was one of the 39 Orange County residents which were evacuated by plane, and, although she knows everything about an evacuation process cannot be perfect, she believes the county did a fine job.

“It’s not easy to do anything of this magnitude,” Bonin said. “But they airlifted my brother to San Antonio, and he stayed at Trinity Baptist Church. We didn’t even know where he went at first, but we knew he was safe.”

Once Bonin was able to locate her brother, she was put at ease by the staff at the church, including medical personnel who were providing care to those in need of it, such as Vessel.

“(Jimmy) was supposed to have a procedure on Monday, but couldn’t because of the storm,” she said. “The doctors there took care of it on Tuesday. The head doctor, over all evacuees, even took the time to call me three times during the evacuation just to let us know how Jimmy was doing.”

Although Vessel was taken to San Antonio, his dogs, which were evacuated also, were transported to Marshall and stayed at an animal shelter there. Bonin said it took some time to track down where the dogs were, but the staff at the Orange County Emergency Operations Center played a big part in helping her find the animals.

“Once they found the dogs, a lady from there called us and said she was personally caring for them,” Bonin said. “She knew how much the dogs meant to him, and she said she would bring them back to Orange personally if she had to. It was nice knowing she was really looking out for his dogs, because they mean so much to him.”

Bonin said she believes Orange County officials handled the entire evacuation process to the best of their abilities. Even though there may have been some minor issues, things could have been worse.

“It wasn’t without problems, and there is room for improvement, but I think the county did an excellent job,” she said. “Everybody has to work together on something like this, but they handled it really well.”

Janie Johnson, executive director of the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross, said the organization supplied many shelters with food items during the evacuation, but did not prepare the meals.

“(American Red Cross) pays for the meals and deliver it, but it is the Baptist Church Men’s Kitchen which prepares the meals,” Johnson said. “We have a cookbook they all follow, and it is basically the same food we all had after Hurricane Rita.

“I hate the experience was negative for some people, but when you evacuate to a shelter, it’s not the Sheraton Hotel,” she said. “A lot of people had to evacuate, and it’s not a pleasant experience overall. It’s a shame some people were unhappy, but they still had a home to come back to.”

The American Red Cross is not a federally funded program. Instead, it survives on donations from individuals and organizations and is able to provide assistance, whether meals, clothing or other means.

“Red Cross is not disaster insurance,” Johnson said. “We only provide funds for disaster caused needs, and the storm didn’t hit our area like it did in Louisiana. Those are the people who lost everything.”

Johnson said the Orange County chapter spent approximately $10,000 due to storm related expenses in Orange County, and another $20,000 in Lufkin, which is within the chapter’s jurisdiction, meeting the needs of shelters there.

Meanwhile, Johnson and the Orange County chapter are doing what they can to help Louisiana residents who are returning to their homes, some of which were devastated by Hurricane Gustav.

“We gave one woman from Louisiana some MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) earlier because she was on her way back home,” Johnson said. “She said she saw her house on television and it was totally destroyed, and she knew she had lost everything. She just had to see it for herself.”

As of Friday, the Red Cross had supplied more than 1,000 MREs to area residents and Louisiana residents.



Reach this reporter at 409-883-3571, Ext. 2619 or tmann@orangeleader.com