[Original post: September 6, 2005]
It’s Tuesday evening, and I wanted to post about one of the shelters here in Marksville, the one in Garan, Inc. This was a garment factory until a few years ago, when the work moved south to Mexico.
On Friday, my friend Paige and I visited and talked to Roland Scallan, who’s running the place. It’s not a state-run shelter. As far as I can see, it’s a building owned by the Marksville sheriff, T-Bill, and Roland was supposed to be in charge of a new communications company T-Bill plans to set up there. (The T is short for petit: the sheriff is short, we hear.) There are 550 people sleeping on cots in there. Everyone here has come from another shelter. The staff is made up of volunteers from the community and inmates from the local prisons, both women’s and men’s.
It’s a clean and cool facility, but it’s still a factory in a small town – a stark industrial space with no showers and limited bathroom facilities. The air-conditioned half is where everyone sleeps on a multicolor quilt of cots and where food donated by Marksville residents is served. The other half is where donated items are stored – boxes of old clothes, piles of toilet paper and sanitary items, dozens of bottles of water and canned goods.
Roland is a retired banker. He has gray hair and a tan. The look in his eyes is kind of wild. He’s dressed in a polo shirt and khakis; his name tag gives his name but no job title, because he doesn’t have one. “I’m not Red Cross, I’m nothing. Not social services. I’m a civilian who’s become the person in charge here.”
When we meet him, he’s clutching a pharmacy bag containing an insulin prescription – not for himself, but for one of the evacuees, paid for out of Roland’s pocket. “People arrived here with just the clothes on their backs,” he says. “They have nothing. We have children, old ladies – one just had surgery and lost her toes. We just got her a wheelchair. We’re getting prescriptions illegally: we have to. Some won’t go to a nursing home because they want to stay with their families.”
He talks a mile a minute, his voice hoarse, leading us towards the food line. “All the food is donated,” he tells me. “We don’t know where it’s coming from. Someone donated a refrigerated truck and someone donated the diesel for it. We put milk in there. Someone is donating a washer and dryer.”
Local pastors have been visiting. One has thirty people at his church. “He wants to bring them here, but we’re at capacity.” Other visitors are less welcome. “Those people talking to me back there – they’re from the State Board of Health, asking all sorts of questions. I’m telling them all kinds of lies.”
Local AC contractors have been in getting the units to work; local plumbers have come in to unblock the toilets when they get jammed with diapers, or to fix the urinals when someone kicks them loose from the walls. At a table in the corner, two nurses talk to evacuees: local nurses are coming in on their days off. A doctor who’s an evacuee himself has just come in to write prescriptions. Even the security guards on the door, checking people in and out, making sure nobody has weapons, are volunteers. We say hi to a fireman that Paige knows. He’s the first black person called Bubba I’ve ever met.
“This can’t last – people donating. Everything’s free,’ Roland says, noting that evacuees “get angry and it’s understandable. There’s so much uncertainty – people don’t know where they’re going next. They get mad at me because we have no facilities for showers. We got some school buses to pick people up from the different centers and take them to the youth center fifteen miles up the road.”
Roland gets frustrated, too. He’s having to ration toilet paper and diapers, because people stockpile them, or use them to barter. “I try to tell people, you’re not going home Monday. We might be here for a month unless they build a big refugee facility closer to New Orleans.”
Bureaucracy is also driving him crazy. “Some people were asking for pay phones, so we tried to get some in here. We’re still waiting for the permit. It takes six days.”
We walk towards the plastic flaps to the humid storehouse section. People sit eating their food out of polystyrene boxes, or watching one of the two televisions. The women serving food tell Roland that they need ice for the coolers filled with soft drinks: he says we’re waiting on the Lutheran church to deliver some more. Roland pauses to thank all the women serving lunch, and the people from Bateman Senior Meals delivering food, then he starts to choke up. “You can’t thank them enough,” he says, explaining to me that this is a poor community, dependent on farming. “And the farmers are struggling. We have no industry in Avoyelles Parish.”
In a small back room littered with supplies, beyond stacks of folding table, a donated microwave, and scattered toys, Roland gets upset again. A male inmate walks in, looking for more paper towels. “We never thought we’d get the mass of stuff from the local community,” says Roland. “But we need more, especially pull-ups for the elderly, and maxi-pads. Some people think we’re holding out, that we’re keeping the good stuff. We’re not. I brought in stuff from my own baby to give to a two-week-old here.”
On Monday, Paige and I drive to Wal-Mart – now decimated, with no water left and most supplies gone – and she spends $300 buying tampons, pull-ups, maxi-pads and toilet paper. The guys in line behind us, a father and son in camouflage, giggle and point as we stack everything on the counter. “You must have a real problem,” they titter, gesturing at the pull-ups. I become Lady Bracknell-ish and tell them, in stern Victorian tones, that it’s for the shelter. They stop giggling.
When we drop the stuff off around the back of Garan, Inc, the women who help us unload tell us the shelter urgently needs baby socks and women’s underwear. (Today, Tom and I drove into Alexandria and bought some at Target. If anyone wants to contribute stuff like this, I can get you an address.)
Sorry this post is so long, and that I’m still unable to add pictures. Our friend and landlord, Paul, got into the city yesterday and got close to our house, but there was too much water to reach our street. Those of you who know Deanna Schmidt and her beautiful antebellum house in Jackson Barracks – the whole ground floor is flooded. Her son, Robbie, looked in the window and said it was like visiting the aquarium. (A very polluted aquarium, with a floating fridge.)
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