Katrina survivors in Austin & Huntsville and soon on cruise ships docked in Galveston

A man and his wife, a nurse, had this to say after the couple helped Katrina survivors now in Austin:

We heard dozens of stories from the people of NO (part of the job was just to listen to those who needed to talk), but there was one clear pattern. Very few of them had seen any sort of first responder. No police, no firemen, no EMT's. The first help they saw was Coast Guard helicopters.

One of the Austin EMT volunteers said to me after they left, "I can't believe these people were abandoned by their own city." He took it personally, I think. He said that the city has responsibility for the first three days in a disaster. The first responders are supposed to have a plan good for three days, while outside response gears up.

In Huntsville, prison inmates helped.

"They're very thankful that we're here to help," said Shannon Smith, 33, who is serving 10 years for aggravated assault for beating his wife while he was a drug addict.

Some evacuees said they felt blessed and had no fear of the inmates.

New Orleans' loss could be Houston's gain, and we're not talking about good karma gains, but cold hard business gains, kinda like after the 1900 Storm wiped out Galveston.

If the storm works to Houston's benefit, it would not be the first time a natural disaster of extraordinary size sparked some economic dynamism here. The hurricane of 1900 in nearby Galveston, which killed more than 6,000 people and almost leveled the most thriving commercial city in Texas, paved the way for Houston, located 50 miles inland, to emerge as a regional center for shipping and the refining of oil discovered in East Texas fields.

[richard lawrence cohen]
[nyt]
[nyt]