Gustav Experience-Part 2
Saturday morning, August 30th, my grandmother, mother and sister evacuated at 3AM. They set off for Austin, Texas. I drove to Tulane U and picked up Jon at 6:30AM, picked up Giovanni after that and met up with Rafa outside the Union Passenger Terminal, better known as the UPT, for a 7AM walk-through of the bus loading process. We met up with the city’s volunteer coordinator, a hard-working, high-energy guy named Robert who handled all of the volunteers working at the UPT. There were several other Spanish speaking interpreters present, people we already knew. We discussed the game plan, walked through the process and signed up for a day-long tour on Sunday.
After we wrapped up our walk-through, we drove around looking for a place where we could eat breakfast. Most businesses were already closed, as many people were evacuating early. Already, the city was beginning to look deserted. We found the Shoney’s on the Westbank Expressway open and stopped there for breakfast. The manager there informed us that he was trying to stay open as long as possible, all depending on how many workers would stick around deep into the evacuation. As the four of us ate, the air of an arriving hurricane hovered over us despite our lighthearted conversation.
We parted ways, each of us separating to our respective homes to wrap up final preparations before meeting up later that evening. I took Jon with me, who as a resident on Tulane’s campus was now without a home because Tulane had closed down the school that morning. On our drive to my home we stopped to help an elderly couple fix a flat tire. The couple was evacuating. They were very thankful–we hope they made it to their destination.
After a couple of hours of clean up work, we all agreed to meet up with another colleague and friend, Carolina, who heads up our LatiNola volunteer committee. We had dinner and watched news reports of the arriving storm. We were in good spirits, as you can see from the pictures below.
Our good spirits went downhill after Mayor Nagin’s news conference that night.
After that, we did the best we could to keep our spirits up. We were committed to staying an extra day to help. So we parted ways that night and made our way to Rafael’s house, where we staged for the night in preparation for our 7:00AM day shift at the UPT on Sunday.
Tags: gustav evacuation, hispanic community new orleans, hispanic evacuation, hurricane gustav, latino, latino community, latinola, puentes