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By Hook or by Crook, Surviving Storm
Derrick Evans, left, Karen Savage and John Wathen plan their route for delivering supplies to areas surrounding the Turkey Creek neighborhood of Gulfport.
(Photos By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)
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He never got the generators.
Pascagoula, where Lott lost his beachfront home, was hammered with a 22-foot wall of water and 160-mph winds, and yet, Lott says, "It's been hard to get attention." He did help to get the USS Comfort hospital ship sent to Pascagoula to provide emergency beds and food for the town's first responders, 400 of whom lost their homes.
But when Lott asked a Harrison County sheriff how they were faring, the sheriff reported that he was worried about FEMA diverting supplies.
Lott told him, "If anyone from FEMA tries to confiscate anything, arrest them."
Sometimes, when coordinated federal aid has broken down or failed to appear, corporate ingenuity has filled the gap. Diageo, an international beverage company, sent two large generators to Gulfport 29 hours after the storm.
Lott said he asked a Diageo executive, "If you can get there that quickly, how come the federal government can't?"
The executive replied, "I refuse to answer that, on grounds it might incriminate me."
Helping Each Other
In Gulfport's Turkey Creek neighborhood, residents expect to fend for themselves, because that's what they have always done, ever since emancipated slaves established the inland community along a winding canal during Reconstruction. When flooding from Katrina reached the attics of the shotgun houses, some of which dated to the 1880s, the residents rescued each other. Two men filled air mattresses, threw them in a boat and began plucking the elderly from their roofs and floating them to safety.
Among those rescued was the Rev. Lettie Evans-Caldwell, 70, a sixth-generation Turkey Creek resident. By way of thanks, her son, Derrick Evans, 38, has set up one of the more effective ad hoc relief efforts in the area.
Evans was driving frantically to Gulfport from Boston, where he teaches civil rights history at Boston College, when he heard that his mother had survived. Evans, who spends vacations in Turkey Creek and spearheads a local group dedicated to preserving the area and promoting its economic development, immediately began thinking about what his neighbors would need.
By cell phone, he reached a county supervisor, William Martin. The area, Martin reported, was desperate for supplies and he hadn't seen a trace of FEMA or the Red Cross. "What do you got, and what can you get?" he asked Evans.
In every town, Evans stopped for supplies. By the time he reached Tuscaloosa, Ala., he had rented three trucks and nearly maxed out his credit cards to the tune of $20,000. He was towing six generators, a 28-inch chain saw, pallets of food and water, and tarps to cover roofs. In Tuscaloosa, he and a friend stayed up all night outfitting a trailer to carry gas. When they arrived in Gulfport, they had 600 gallons.
