Ky. starts taking in evacuees
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - More than 830 evacuees from the Gulf Coast arrived in Louisville over the weekend ahead of Hurricane Gustav, which is expected to make landfall in south Louisiana sometime today or Tuesday.
Kerri Richardson, a spokeswoman for Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, said four flights from New Orleans arrived Saturday and two more had arrived by Sunday afternoon.
The evacuees were taken to the south wing of the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center, where a shelter had been set up.
Kentucky has agreed to accept as many as 4,250 people. The number coming to Louisville will be capped at 3,000. After that, evacuees will be sent to Lexington, Bowling Green and Owensboro.
Capt. Dale Greer of the Kentucky Air National Guard told The Courier-Journal that people were arriving on C-9 military transport planes and 757s. They were taken to the Expo Center on TARC buses.
By mid-afternoon, there were no showers for the evacuees, but Amber Youngblood of the American Red Cross said portable showers were on the way from Lexington. A total of about 30 shower heads were expected.
Annette Jaramillo, a mom from New Orleans, was impressed with the preparations that had been made the evacuees. There was hot pizza when she arrived with her husband and three kids Saturday night, and breakfast from McDonald's in the morning.
“Not knowing what we're going back to is probably the hardest thing,” Jaramillo told the paper.
New arrivals from the Gulf Coast were given identification bracelets and divided into three groups: single men, single women, and families.
A television was set up at the Expo Center so the temporary residents could watch news coverage of the hurricane. Weather officials said today that Gustav has weakened to a Category 3 storm, but it was unclear what will happen as the hurricane passes over the warm waters of the Gulf on its way toward land.
Also, the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Ohio Valley based in Louisville deployed three Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) from Louisville, Paducah and Huntington, W.Va., to the Gulf Coast.
The teams are designed to handle search and rescue operations in shallow water and urban environments.
Additional DARTs teams in the Pittsburgh and Nashville are on standby.
Story created Aug 31, 2008 - 22:28:59 EDT.
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