This time, getting out is taken seriously

By SHAILA DEWAN, New York Times

Last update: August 31, 2008 - 9:51 PM

ABOARD A BUS FROM NEW ORLEANS - The 40-odd people boarding the black, red and white bus that the city provided late Saturday afternoon embarked on a journey of pure faith. They did not know how long they would be gone or whether they would have anything to come home to. It would be many hours before they even learned where they were going.

They had no way of knowing that when they finally reached their refuge 350 miles away it would be ill-prepared for their arrival. But they did have a firm grasp of what the worst could mean if they stayed in the broad, unpredictable path of Hurricane Gustav.

So, uncomplaining, they clambered aboard, taking advantage of the government's offer of free transportation for those without cars. There was the matriarch shepherding 15 family members of four generations; the couple who slept on the Riverwalk on Friday night after their usual shelter, the Salvation Army, shut down; the school janitor whose three teenagers were too many to squeeze into her relatives' cars. And there was the friendless Puerto Rican man who spoke little English and lacked a television; he had followed the people dragging suitcases through his neighborhood after being told that anyone who stayed in town could be arrested.

By and large, these were the same people who would not or, more often, could not leave town before Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago -- those who ended up swimming, walking or climbing their way to safety and who witnessed many others less fortunate. This bus was but one tiny part of an unprecedented effort to make sure that no one, no matter how poor, sick, disabled or carless, stayed behind as the city evacuated.

Memories of Katrina

Denise Grant, for one, wanted no replay of the four days she spent amid corpses on an overpass after Hurricane Katrina, nor did she want her daughter or grandchildren to have to. "What my eyes caught -- if they could see what my eyes caught, they wouldn't want to go through it either," she said.

Anyone could show up at one of 17 stops throughout New Orleans, get a ride to the Union Passenger Terminal, then stand in line for a bus, plane or train to shelters. By Sunday afternoon, more than 18,000 people had taken the free rides, Mayor Ray Nagin said.

Many seemed convinced that New Orleans would fare no better in this storm than it had three years ago. Shannon Branch, 34, said she had only just saved enough money from her jobs to move her three teenagers out of their government-provided trailer and into a rental house. Her family had just begun rebuilding their home in the Lower Ninth Ward. "We're going to start all over now, I guess," she said.

As the passengers settled in, no one seemed to know where the bus was heading. Finally, as the bus pulled out of the terminal, the driver was handed a map to Cuba, Ala., a town of 322 on the Mississippi state line.

It was 2 a.m. by the time the bus reached Cuba -- or rather, a large staging area in Cuba where dozens of buses with evacuees had stopped to be redirected by Alabama officials. This bus would go to Birmingham.

Finally, at about 6 a.m. Sunday, 12 hours after it left New Orleans, the bus pulled up to what looked like the rear service area of the Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham.

After an hour, people were instructed to get off and get their luggage, only to find themselves part of a mass of humanity, pressed up to the single entrance to a shelter already over capacity, out of cots and had no visible food. Eventually cots and some stew were found, and the passengers joined 1,200 people packed in a shelter prepared for 500.

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