The Next Deluge:
Refugees Flee Coast

Louisiana's largest prison, Angola, yesterday opened its doors to hundreds of inmates from Orleans Parish Prison, who hadn't eaten in two days. In Baton Rouge, refugees lined up for cash and gasoline and quickly saturated the apartment market. In Houston, even more exiles poured into temporary shelters, as the Astrodome braced to accept 23,000.

All were part of a massive, chaotic and unprecedented stream of American refugees fleeing the ravaged Gulf Coast area. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an estimated one million to two million people have suddenly found themselves pulled away from their homes and jobs and searching for food and shelter, missing relatives and a way to rebuild shattered lives.

For many, yesterday was the day when it began to sink in that their exile will last weeks or months -- and that their communities are permanently changed.

"We don't know what to do," said Iris Lindberg of New Orleans, tears streaming down her face, in a Baton Rouge Starbucks where she and her husband searched for apartments on the Internet. "We don't know if we need someplace to live for two weeks or two months. We don't know what to do about our daughter's school -- should we enroll her here, and where, or should we just wait till we get back...assuming we do get back."

She added: "A lot of people are telling me they never want to go back, and that's a thought."

Since the weekend, tens of thousands of people have swarmed into Baton Rouge, normally a city of 230,000 that is 80 miles from New Orleans. Other cities are getting an influx, too; Memphis, for one, said it had received more than 10,000 refugees and set up a committee to help them find housing.

Houston's Astrodome was preparing to receive evacuees from New Orleans, 350 miles away, who have spent several days inside the sweltering, deteriorating Louisiana Superdome. They are expected to start heading for Houston this morning in 475 buses provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Yesterday, the stadium was being equipped with 30,000 cots and blankets and outfitted with a medical clinic and food service dispensing three meals a day. The Red Cross, which is coordinating disaster relief for all charities in the region, said it expects to provide shelter for at least a month at the Astrodome, then begin moving Louisiana residents to shelters closer to their homes.

In all, the Red Cross said it has more than 250 shelters open in the disaster-struck area. Last night, it was sheltering 100,000 people, and expecting the number to rise to 150,000 in the coming days.

FEMA asked the mobile-home industry to provide trailers and mobile homes and asked all landlords to make intact, unoccupied apartments available to the displaced. The Department of Health and Human Services said it was setting up 40 new medical centers in the region, with 10,000 beds and 4,000 health-care professionals. Half the centers are expected to be open within about a week.

Besides basic necessities, many were looking for lost friends and relatives. Last night, more than 2,600 messages were posted on a "missing persons" Web site sponsored by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Missing maureen coogan quinlan," read one. "Last heard from 8/30/05 on the roof of her home in the lakeview area."

In the morning, Sherrill and Sandra Nelson drove from her mother's home in Gulfport, Miss., to Pascagoula, to check their house, which was four blocks from the water. They found it still standing, when most of the others on the street were blown apart.

But inside, water had risen past the countertops. Everything smelled of briny water and rot. They think it is a total loss. "I am homeless," Mrs. Nelson told her mother later. "I don't have anything."

Said her sister, Brenda Moseley, "We've got each other." Another sister, Kim Morgan, had lost her home, too. A fourth hadn't been heard from.

In Houston, cars streamed into the parking lot of St. Peter Claver church, home to one of a dozen local Red Cross shelters. Inside, volunteers manned a small kitchen doling out hot dogs and soup and tables to counsel those seeking health care, housing and schooling.

More than 200 refugees had arrived, including 17 who had driven in a caravan from Metairie, La., to Houston on Sunday and left an area hotel when they ran out of cash. Kenneth Lott, a 38-year-old employee of a Coca-Cola bottler near New Orleans, said he had called a local bottling plant in Houston. "I need a job," he said. "If I could land me a job, I would bring all the money here to my nieces, mama and daddy."

His girlfriend worked her cellphone, trying to track down her two children. She said she hadn't seen them since their father picked them up for the weekend, and hadn't been able to reach them since Sunday. "I called his sister last night -- they've been trying to find him," she said.

Michele Boissiere, her 22-month-old daughter and her fiancé were staying at a nearby La Quinta hotel, after arriving from New Orleans prepared to stay for just three to four days. All she brought, she said, were clothes, her laptop computer, some diapers and medicines.

"We knew it would be bad," she said. "But we didn't know it would be devastating."

Houston said its schools would be open to all displaced Louisiana children. Mayor Bill White said the city had been contacting churches for longer-term help, such as donations of money, clothing and jobs for evacuees.

"We need to do some planning and thinking on what we do with people out of their houses for a very extended period of time," he said. "We have a plan for what we will do for 14 weeks. After that it is unclear."

Many in the region took in friends and relatives. In Memphis, Margy Burchfield, 37, and her husband, Jason Gallop, a 39-year-old bond trader, housed a large group of 22 people, including nine visiting children to add to their five.

"We are just trying to keep them happy and not depressed," said Ms. Burchfield. "We still have plenty of wine."

Yesterday, as the group packed in front of the TV, it began to dawn on them that those that had left New Orleans wouldn't be returning to anytime soon.

"At first we were thinking since Labor Day weekend is coming up, we'll have an extended vacation," said Ashley Nolan, a 36-year-old divorced mother of one and a theater teacher at Tulane University in New Orleans. She brought just three pairs of clothes, thinking her stay with Mr. Gallop and Ms. Burchfield would be short. "We were on the verge of tears when the severity of it hit us."

Shelters in Baton Rouge were packed, with about 45,000 New Orleans-area refugees. Five thousand started arriving in the city's convention on Tuesday. "These are people who really have nothing," said John Spain, executive vice president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. "No clothes, no medicine, no money. These are people who ran out of their homes with nothing."

Most of them, he added, were poor to begin with. "They have no credit cards," he said. "They live paycheck to paycheck. Their jobs were at companies that are now under water." Many had brought pets with them, filling the center with dogs and cats.

Area schools were inundated by evacuees seeking to enroll children and get them back into a routine. Schools in and around New Orleans are expected to be closed for three months, if not longer. Some schools talked of bringing in New Orleans teachers and essentially running a platoon system, in which Baton Rouge students attend school in the morning and New Orleans kids in the afternoon.

Elsewhere, some refugees made their way to College Drive and Bennington Avenue. There they could access the Internet inside Starbucks, withdraw cash from a Regions Bank branch and set up a local postal address at a U.S. Post Office.

At the bank, Carmen Martinez withdrew a wad of cash from her savings account. She and her boyfriend, David Pfeifer, had come to Baton Rouge on Sunday from Harahan, just west of New Orleans, and were scouring the city for rental homes and apartments. "This is the money we need to use for a deposit," she said. "And to live on."

Across the street, Mr. Pfeifer was setting up a post-office box for his business. He appraises cars and trucks damaged by accidents and flooding for a living, but said all his equipment was back in his apartment, "and I can't get to it. And the insurers can't call me because my cell is dead, and I can't get to them. So I let them know by email that I'm up and running and relocated to Baton Rouge."

The couple is staying with Mr. Pfeifer's sister and planning to look for an apartment. "Harahan is my home," he said." But I don't know what to do now. Where do we start over?"

"Not in New Orleans," said Ms. Martinez.

"Maybe it is," he said, "that we end up having to rebuild our life in Baton Rouge."

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