Robyn Rafferty had wanted to pick up her pets and jewellery from her wrecked home before heading off to start a new life with her family in Nashville, Tennessee. But as thousands of her fellow citizens in New Orleans are discovering, suddenly becoming an evacuee can be a frightening and painful experience.
Driving into the flooded area where her animals were trapped, she had tried to navigate a road that had swallowed up her car.
She is fearful as gangs of young men cruise the area.
”The police said they would only take me to the Superdome and I just started shaking,” she said.
Now she is abandoning her home and everything in it and looking for any way out of the city to start again in another town.
”It will be hard on the children because they had just started at a new school,” said Rafferty, who worked for a law firm dealing with bankruptcy cases — of which there will now be no shortage. ”But at least we are alive. All of our friends are in different cities. People are scattered all over the place.”
What is in the process of unfolding is an enormous evacuation operation. The nearest cities and towns to the damaged areas are already experiencing an influx of the more than 400 000 people who have fled New Orleans and surrounding areas. Some are only there temporarily as they wait to see what has happened to their abandoned homes, but others have already decided they will never return.
”We might go to Chicago,” said Zachary Edwards resignedly as he waited for transport out of the city from the convention centre in New Orleans. ”We have relatives there that we can call. We’re leaving our house now.”
His daughter Tyra (13) was already preparing for a new life in a colder, faraway city. ”I would happily live in Chicago,” she said, clutching her few remaining belongings to her.
Baton Rouge, the state capital, has already seen the first waves of what may become a permanent addition to the city, bringing with it new tensions.
”Baton Rouge is a mainly white city,” said a local reporter who has been watching the arrival of the newcomers, ”and the people arriving are mainly black. They are very different communities.”
Just the term ”evacuees” carries with it, like those fleeing the wastelands, a certain amount of baggage. When some news reports started referring to refugees, there was strong condemnation from civil rights groups.
”I think it’s an offensive term,” said Bruce Gordon, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest civil rights organisation in the country.
He was in Baton Rouge as part of a large NAACP contingent that has arrived to assist with relief efforts. ”These people are fellow Americans. Using the word refugees makes it sound like they are not of us.”
The use of the word is still the subject of debate, with some newspapers and television stations deciding to use it regardless of objections, claiming there is nothing offensive in the word. Gordon said he knew of many people who were planning to start anew in places as far away as Detroit but he believed that they would be welcomed.
”It is our duty to do so. These are our brothers and sisters. They are Americans and we need to care for them.”
In Baton Rouge, at present, the evacuees are being put up in civic centres and at Louisiana State University.
Some civic leaders fear there may not be enough jobs for those who decide to settle. How many finally decide to make their homes in the safer climes of the state capital is unclear.
”I don’t think we want to put our arms around that at the moment,” said a Baton Rouge official who is handling the arrangements for the evacuees in her city. ”As long as they are rescuing people, there will be a need to find shelter for them.”
About 10 000 are already housed in the surrounding parishes but the sudden influxes have put pressure on schools and hospitals.
Some will find that their new home is the result of the compassion of dozens of different groups, some faith-based, some just concerned individuals.
On Sunday a team arrived on buses from Lansing, Michigan, offering homes to 150 stranded souls in ways reminiscent of the evacuation of children in Britain during World War II.
At the refuges in Baton Rouge, families were having to make the difficult decision as to where to start their new lives, albeit in a country that has been built on people making that choice without knowing quite what awaited them.
Some still do not know where their new home will be. ”Hell, I don’t give a damn,” said Elisa Ragsdale (47) who was still waiting to leave the city and was relieved just to be able to make that choice. ”As long as we get out alive, I’m not tripping as to where we go.” – Guardian Unlimited Â