Gustav evacuees wait for OK, buses to return home
BY PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 10:19 AM PDT
TYLER, Texas — Hurricane Gustav didn’t barrel ashore as the devastating terror everyone feared, leaving some of the 2 million people who evacuated second-guessing their decision to flee.
Better safe than sorry? Definitely, evacuees said. But better home than stranded elsewhere, too.
Impatience at overcrowded shelters around the Gulf Coast figured to rise today as evacuees from New Orleans to Southeast Texas waited to learn when buses that whisked them to safety during mandatory evacuations would return to take them home.
‘‘That’s the first question everyone is asking,’’ said Jim Rollins, whose First Christian Church in Tyler took in about 140 people from Beaumont. ‘‘If you know, please tell me. These people want to go home.’’
Gustav slammed the Louisiana coastline as a Category 2 hurricane Monday, leaving parts of New Orleans in the dark and threatening some levees. But it fell short of bringing the catastrophic blow many feared, and had been downgraded to a tropical storm late Monday night as it moved across Louisiana and toward Texas.
The same storm that evacuees fled now threatened to dump 4 to 6 inches of rain on parts of northeast Texas with some locally higher amounts possible, National Weather Service meteorologist Nick Fillo said early today. The rain could keep many evacuees from going home as quickly as they would like and fray nerves.
Some minor fights broke out at a shelter in Shreveport, La., where evacuees had been packed together in a vacant Sam’s Warehouse for three days.
Others became frustrated simply trying to find a place with a cot available. Kenneth and Leslie Smith, of New Orleans, said they spent a day driving city-to-city before finally finding an open shelter for them and their three young children late Monday near Dallas.
‘‘Everyone wasn’t mean,’’ Kenneth Smith, 36, said. ‘‘But you have some people with nonchalant attitudes who, if they were in my shoes, they would want some help.’’
Gulf Coast residents have often been reluctant to evacuate — dreading the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the hassle of finding a place to stay and the expense of gasoline, restaurants and hotel rooms — only to return to an unscathed home.
But three years nearly to the day after Hurricane Katrina hit, many residents were glad to leave ahead of Gustav. By late Monday, those still in shelters wanted simply to leave.
