City asks La. to do it in phases in daytime

By Katy Reckdahl
The Times-Picayune
Gustav evacuees find the going home is harder than the leaving
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NEW ORLEANS — On Wednesday night, the city of New Orleans planned to request the return of the 18,000 residents who left on government-coordinated buses, trains and airplanes.

For two days after the storm, the city had only vague estimates about when the evacuees would return. It couldn't occur until the town was "truly ready," with more power restored in neighborhoods and ample food supplies, said Col. Jerry Sneed, the city's director of homeland security.

And until the city gave its blessing, state and federal agencies couldn't begin to coordinate the return of the mostly low-income evacuees from cot-filled shelters across the South.

Now that the city has signed off, the state must respond with an estimate about when evacuees will return to the Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans to board city buses back to their neighborhoods.

Mayor Ray Nagin asked the state to bring people back in phases rather than all at once. The city also asked that evacuees not arrive in New Orleans after dusk, Sneed said, because some neighborhoods still lack lights.

Glenda Harris, Gulf Coast regional field coordinator for the Children's Defense Fund, applauded the city's decision but wished it had come sooner.

The lack of a concrete timeline had caused unnecessary anxiety, she said, prompting many calls to her agency from evacuees wanting to get back to their families, jobs and homes.

Without any official announcements about their return, evacuees reached in shelters during the day Wednesday were forced to rely on news conveyed through personal cell phones with dwindling minutes, they said. The frustrations were compounded after they heard that New Orleans had removed its checkpoints, allowing most other citizens to return.

"I really commend our mayor for getting us out of there this time. But I want to come home," said Florence Clark, a resident of eastern New Orleans who was flown to a shelter in Nashville. While some evacuees groused that the city seemed more concerned about the Saints' return than about theirs, she said she wasn't bitter. But she was upset that her tickets for Sunday's game might go unused while she cooled her heels in Tennessee.

"People are getting cranky. We want to come back, but the buses aren't ready to leave," said Arthur Gibson, a 7th Ward resident who took a 14-hour bus ride to a shelter inside a school gym in Birmingham, Ala. Conditions he could endure at first now were getting tiresome, he said: the living space shared with 200 people, cold food that lacked New Orleans spicing and fitful slumber on "thin, thin" military-style cots.

Gibson's bus, like others that left Louisiana, was turned away at several cities where shelters were already full before finally arriving in Birmingham. "When there was no room at the inn, we'd keep moving to the next city," Gibson said.

Once the city submits its official request, all trains, planes and buses will depart within 24 hours, said Cheryl Michelet, spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services. State officials said that whatever mode of transportation took evacuees out of town will also carry them back home, with one exception: Those who left aboard yellow school buses will return on air-conditioned coach buses, because the busing contractor has now located an ample number of coaches.

Gibson said some evacuees were getting frantic calls from bosses who had driven into New Orleans on Wednesday and now wanted their businesses to open. Some were wondering whether they should take a Greyhound bus home or pool resources for a rental car, he said.

Sarah Carr contributed to this story.