Washington Area Residents Mobilize to Help Evacuees

Yesterday afternoon, Linda Mathes of the District was hunkered down in a Covington, La., school. The power was out, the winds had whipped the shutters off the windows and the rain was driving hard.

But from there, Mathes and other American Red Cross staff members and volunteers were able to coordinate emergency shelter for about 3,000 people who fled the Gulf Coast and Hurricane Gustav. The shelters, she said, had plenty of water, food and blankets to help people feel more comfortable and safe.

"My heart goes out to the people having to go through this yet again. There are memories and fears and anxieties," said Mathes, chief executive of the American Red Cross of the National Capital Area. "It's a very impressive and comforting experience in the midst of a weather pattern that is very ugly."

As Hurricane Gustav bore down on the Gulf Coast, Washington area residents checked on the safety of friends in the storm's path, offered prayers and mobilized to help.

Kerry Schrader, treasurer of the Washington chapter of the Loyola University alumni club, said he sent a friend in New Orleans a text message yesterday morning asking, "Are you still there?" He said his friend replied that they were using a portable generator for power but expected the worst to be over within hours.

On Sunday, 32 officers with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, armed with chain saws and axes and trained for high-water rescue operations, headed to Baton Rouge. Maryland sent a medical strike team of 26 emergency workers and five ambulances to Louisiana. A handful of volunteers with the Prince William Chapter of the American Red Cross left for Texas, while others were manning phone lines in a Loudoun County center that evacuees can call for help.

In Fairfax County, the fire department's veteran search and rescue team was called on early Saturday and bused to a staging area in Atlanta with eight other teams from across the country. Lt. Raul Castillo, a Fairfax fire spokesman, said nine other search teams also were deployed to Houston.

Fairfax's 80-person team has been responding to disaster scenes around the world since 1993, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

District officials said there are ambulances, fire engines and emergency personnel ready to head south if needed. The city also lent a staff member to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Kate Bouterie was one of the millions who evacuated southern Louisiana on Friday, joining bumper-to-bumper traffic out of New Orleans and eventually making the 16-hour drive, with her cat, to her parents' home in Bethesda.

"It's hard not to just sit here and watch the Weather Channel nonstop," said Bouterie, a financial planner who moved to the Big Easy in May.

"It's a city that hasn't recovered yet, which is part of the reason I moved there," she said. "It's tough to see the people standing on the street there, waiting."