Katrina evacuees find Cape; local volunteers leave to help

Hurricane Katrina claimed the lives of at least 55 people Monday. She chased thousands more from their homes. The hurricane also drew many volunteers to the rubble that was left behind.

Cape Girardeau has already sent five volunteers to the south. The city has also become a refuge for others.

Cape Girardeau, with its location on Interstate 55, was a safe destination for many, various motel managers reported.

The storm hit New Orleans with 145-mph winds, knocking out power to some 750,000 people and killing an estimated 50 people in one Mississippi county alone. Katrina's torrential rain submerged entire neighborhoods up to their roofs. It swamped Mississippi's beachfront casinos and blew out windows in hospitals, hotels and high-rises.

Belinda Chatman of Luling, La., wasn't going to stick around to face Katrina's fury. She wound up in Cape Girardeau instead.

Chatman checked into Victorian Inn late Sunday evening with her husband and three children. Shortly after arriving, the 33-year-old elementary school teacher discovered that both old and new friends were just a few doors down.

Niki Short, 40, also drove from Luling with two neighborhood friends, her parents, five dogs, a cat and a ferret. All of them made the trip in two cars. Short's family and pets reserved rooms at the inn because it accepts pets. The hotel is the regular stopping point when the family visits northern Illinois every two months.

Though Chatman and Short have lived only two blocks away for several years in their hometown of 11,500, it was Katrina who introduced the neighbors -- two states away.

"I just find this totally, coincidentally ironic," Short said. The new friends spent Monday exploring Cape Girardeau's downtown antique shops and visiting local bars. By the afternoon, the group settled by the hotel's indoor pool, where Chatman was reunited with an old friend, one of the passengers in Short's car.

Scott Rivere, 25, appeared shocked when he saw Chatman's familiar face, asking "You don't remember me, do you?" After several moments of conversation, he was confident they had lived on the same street 14 years ago.

It was not just a hometown that the friends have in common. Both have family members who stayed behind despite the mandatory order to evacuate. Chatman took comfort in knowing that relatives live just an hour outside of Cape Girardeau, but her heart ached for her sister who stayed home in Louisiana with four children. Short also worried about her parents, who decided to stay in a home at a fishing camp.

Within a day of arriving in Cape Girardeau, Chatman lost contact with her sister.

The storm has made communication back home difficult.

Authorities said it could be two months before electricity is restored to everyone. The federal government began rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid supplies. The Pentagon sent experts to help with search-and-rescue operations.

For New Orleans -- a dangerously vulnerable city because it sits mostly below sea level in a bowl-shaped depression -- it was not the apocalyptic storm forecasters had feared, although five deaths have been blamed on the hurricane.

Since Luling sits alongside the Mississippi River and among three lakes, the swampy terrain already makes heavy rainy days a flood zone. The town had narrowly escaped hurricanes in the past.

"It makes you wonder what's going to be there when you get back," Rivere said.

As for those who are heading toward the destruction, three local volunteers of the American Red Cross will be there as soon as the worst has past. Tina Bles of Cape Girardeau, Adam Moore of Oak Ridge and Tina Pattengill of Scott City flew from Cape Girardeau Regional Airport Sunday to Miami, Fla. and will be dispatched into the Florida Panhandle for bulk distribution of relief commodities.

"They're just people who really want to help other people, so they're in their element," said Christy Thurman, director of emergency.

Additionally, the state of Missouri will pay for two volunteers to stay in affected areas for three weeks. Steve Stacey of Poplar Bluff will join the three volunteer workers as a mental case worker. David Fleming of Sikeston will stay in Houston, Texas.

Once conditions become safer, the volunteers will be dispatched to more hazerdous areas.

"These people are going into very tough circumstances," Thurman said. They will likely live without electricity, will stay in staff shelters and will need to be wary of contaminated water.

As of Monday evening, Katrina was passing through southeast Mississippi, moving north at 18 mph. It had weakened into a mere Category 1 hurricane with winds near 75 mph.

Forecasters said that as the storm moves north through the nation's midsection over the next few days, it may spawn tornadoes over the Southeast, swamp the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley with as much as 15 inches of rain, and dump up to 8 inches in the drought-stricken Ohio Valley and eastern Great Lakes.

Southeast Missouri will receive between 1 to 2 inches of rain from the storms, said meteorologist Chris Noles, of the National Weather Center in Paducah, Ky. The boundary under flood warning begins at Cairo, Ill., and extends eastward with expected rainfalls to be between 3 to 5 inches. In short, the region west of the flood warnings might receive "a glancing blow from Katrina," he said, and the precipitation might help crop growers considering the recent drought conditions.

jmetelski@semissourian.com