Two Cape men helping Katrina refugees in Houston

HOUSTON -- Matt Anders couldn't just sit and watch the tragedy in New Orleans unfold on the television news.

The 33-year-old Cape Girardeau respiratory therapist volunteered to help the thousands of refugees who were bused to emergency shelters in Houston. A friend, Dustin Michaels of Cape Girardeau, also volunteered.

The two men arrived in Houston Thursday night.

"There was so much suffering and so many people needed help," Anders said after working a nine-hour shift Friday in the makeshift medical clinic in Reliant Arena.

"I saw an opportunity and almost a calling," said Anders, who works at Saint Francis Medical Center.

Anders said co-workers offered gas money while others agreed to work his hospital shift so he could volunteer in Houston.

"I was overwhelmed," he said.

For Anders and Michaels, nothing prepared them for the sheer number of hurricane homeless.

The arena and neighboring Astrodome and Reliant Center housed more than 6,900 refugees on Friday, nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, flooded New Orleans and left the region mired in muck and misery.

For the refugees, the exodus came via bus rides to the emergency shelters in Houston. Many arrived with little more than the clothes they were wearing. What they've got now are cots, hot meals, medical care and the comfort of air conditioning.

But life is hardly normal.

Hard to ease sadness

"One 5-year-old girl started crying. She said she wanted to go home," Anders said. "A doctor just took her in his arms and held her."

Words can't ease such sadness. "There is not a lot you can really tell them," Anders said.

Television doesn't show the scale of human tragedy wrought by Hurricane Katrina -- it's staggering to see an entire sports arena crowded with refugees laying on cots, Anders said.

He spent his shift providing respiratory treatment for children, many of whom were suffering from asthma. "The youngest was 2. The oldest was 14," he said.

Michaels, who works in the writing center at Southeast Missouri State University, said he and Anders plan to help out through the weekend, maybe longer.

Hundreds of volunteers man the shelters. Michaels, 27, spent the day handing out water and working in the information center.

"You have thousands and thousands of people who need help," Michaels said.

Anders said he and Michaels are just like a lot of Americans who have left jobs and homes to assist the hurricane victims.

"I don't feel like we did anything magnificent or outstanding," Anders said.

Today, they plan to do it all over again.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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