Big relief effort meets Katrina

The Red Cross typically pays for the food, and the Texas Baptist Men prepare it. The Texas chapter alone has 18 mobile units. Seven are on their way, and the rest are on standby, says Gary Smith, disaster relief coordinator for the Texas Baptist Men in Dallas. "Earlier this year we mobilized for hurricane Emily," he says, "but it was nothing like this."

FEMA, meanwhile, had moved generators, ice, water, and food into the region for deployment after the storm. FEMA also brought in urban search and rescue teams from Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas, and set them up in Shreveport, La. Similar teams from Indiana and Ohio were staged in Meridian, Miss.

FEMA also deployed 18 disaster medical assistance teams to staging areas in Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee.

Louisiana deployed 3,500 Army National Guardsmen to help hurricane victims, and another 3,000 were on standby as of Monday morning, according to a Guard spokesman.

Statewide, 48 Red Cross shelters opened to residents in the storm's projected path. Hotels were packed as far away as Houston and Jackson, Miss. For New Orleans residents who couldn't - or didn't - leave, the city opened the Superdome. Katrina's 145-m.p.h. winds ripped away part of its roof Monday but as of press time had not forced an evacuation.

Other private and public aid - as well as volunteers - have been pouring into Louisiana over the past 48 hours. Office Depot says it will donate $1 million to the Red Cross, while Anheuser-Busch shipped 300,000 cans of drinking water to relief agencies in Louisiana and Mississippi. Wayne Elsey, president of Kodiak-Terra, a footwear company that donated thousands of pairs of shoes to South Asia after last year's tsunami, is setting up a "Katrina Relief Effort" fund.

The US Coast Guard shut down and evacuated its Gulf coast facilities, even as it sent more than 40 aircraft from the Eastern seaboard, and at least 30 small vessels, to the surrounding area. The units will be used for search-and-rescue operations and repairs of damaged waterways.

Though New Orleans has not taken a major direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy, a Category 3 in 1965, Katrina is being likened more to hurricane Camille in 1969, says Frank Lepore of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before making landfall, the storm's winds exceed 200 m.p.h. but weakened to less than 150 by the time it hit just east of New Orleans.

American Red Cross: PO Box 37243, Washington, DC, 20013, or online at www.redcross.org.

Salvation Army: Online at www.salvationarmyusa.org.

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