Story Published:
Sep 22, 2005 at 6:50 PM PDT
Story Updated:
Aug 31, 2006 at 2:05 AM PDT
HOUSTON - Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the
officials of this city. If only they would pick up their phones.
"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There
ain't none. No one answers," she said, standing in blistering heat
outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main
commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no
way of getting out. And now I've got no money."
With Hurricane Rita breathing down Houston's neck, those with
cars were stuck in gridlock trying to get out. Those like Skinner -
poor, and with a broken-down car - were simply stuck, and fuming at
being abandoned, they say.
"All the banks are closed and I just got off work," said
Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get
inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or
Hispanic, fretted in line. "This is crazy. How are you supposed to
evacuate a hurricane if you don't have money? Answer me that?"
Some of those who did have money, and did try to get out, didn't
get very far.
Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12
hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed
toward Oklahoma, which by Thursday was still very far away.
"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," she said. "They
say, 'We've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.' Well, you
couldn't prove it by me."
On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and
her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic
bags full of clothes and blankets. "I'd like to go, but nobody
come get me," the woman said in broken English. When asked her
name, she looked frightened. "No se, no se," she said: Spanish
for "I don't know."
Her daughter, who appeared to be about 9, whispered in English,
"We're from Mexico."
For the poor and the disenfranchised, the mighty evacuation
orders that preceded Rita were something they could only ignore.
Eddie McKinney, 64, who had no home, no teeth and a torn shirt,
stood outside the EZ Pawn shop, drinking a beer under a sign that
said, "No Loitering."
"We got no other choice but to stay here. We're homeless and
we're broke," he said. "I thought about going to Dallas, but now
it's too late. I got no way to get there."
Where will he stay?
"A nice white man gave me a motel room for three days. Just
walked up and said, 'Here.' So my buddy and me will stick it out,"
he said, pointing to another homeless man. "We got a half-gallon
of whiskey and a room."
In Deer Park, a working-class suburb of refineries south of
Houston, Stacy and Troy Curtis, waited for help outside the police
station. Less than three weeks ago, the couple left New Orleans
after it was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
With no vehicle, and little money, they tried to get their lives
together while staying at a hotel in Deer Park. Stacy Curtis, a
nursing assistant in New Orleans, had a job interview scheduled for
Thursday.
But most businesses had shut down because the neighborhood will
likely flood if the hurricane hits Galveston Bay. The streets were
empty Thursday afternoon.
"We're stuck here," Stacy Curtis said. "Got no other place to
go."
An emergency official eventually sent a van to take the couple
to a shelter at a recreation center.
Monica Holmes, who has debilitating lupus, sat in her car at a
Houston gas station that had no gas. "We can't go nowhere," she
said, tapping a fingernail against the dashboard fuel gauge. "Look
here," she said. "I'm right on E."
Her husband, a security guard, had a paycheck, but no way to
cash it.
"We were going to try to go to Nacogdoches" in east Texas, not
far from the Louisiana border, she said. "But even if we could get
on the road, we're not going to get out. These people that left
yesterday, they're still on the beltway. They haven't even got out
of Houston."
So she and her husband will hunker down in their Missouri City
home, just to the south. "We'll be fine," she said. "You can't
be scared of what God can do. I'm covered."
As always, there were those who chose to stay, no matter how
dire the warnings.
John Benson, a 47-year-old surfer and lifelong Galveston
resident, said he thinks his town "is going to take on a lot of
water. But as far as the winds, I think here on the island, it will
be a little bit less than they anticipated."
Mandatory evacuation orders were issued Wednesday for the area.
Benson said he planned to use his surfboard as transportation
after the hurricane. "The main thing is you have a contingency
plan," he said, and thumped his board. "You got buoyancy."
Skinner, accompanied by her 6-year-old grandson, Dageneral
Bellard, would settle for a bus.
"They got them for the outlying areas, for the Gulf and
Galveston, but they ain't made no preparations for us in the city,
for the poor people here. There ain't no (evacuation) buses here. I
got nowhere to go."
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