Hurricane Evacuees in the Atlanta Area

[Newnan]

Do you know of any in the area. Where are they staying, how many are there?

[teshadoh]

There are 50 staying at St Pauls Methodist Church in Grant Park, they are families of those transported from New Orleans hospitals to Grady Hospital.

[socaguy]

I read somewhere there were several thousand in or around Decatur/Dekalb county. I am sure plenty more are coming soon. I would imagine the reason there are not alot more is because interstate 10 is blocked.

[teshadoh]

Correct - I-10 actually doesn't exist anymore east of New Orleans. So it would require a big detour to get to AL & GA - which is why TX has received so many survivors. But fortunately the folks in TX are doing an incredible job of helping them out, I can only hope we can pick up some of the slack where they leave off.

[ironchapman]

There are about 40 that my church is looking after who are currently staying at the Ramada Inn in Douglas Boulevard in Douglasville. (This is only a temporary location until we can find them a better set up).

[RiverwoodCLT]

Its great the people in your area are helping.

Maybe they will like Atlanta and Ga. and not go back.

I saw in the paper this AM they have raise the number coming to Charlotte to 1000. There are about 100 coming to our hospitals.

There is a good chance that some of these people might not go back after a year or two in which they are saying it is going to take before they can go back.

From I have seen, it looks like they are going have to spread out these people all over the country.

I feel so sorry for these people, most have have lost evrything they own.

It is going to be interesting on how this unfolds over the next 2 years.

[socaguy]

Hopefully they will all be back in New Orleans by them...at least most of them.

[paulblackgsx]

There are TONS of people in hotels running out of money and with no where to go. You can help a lot people out just by visting the hotels and getting them hooked up with an organization that can get them longer term housing, schools, and job assistance. I can't tell you how many people we helped this weekend and we touched such a small portion of the hotels, I know there were plenty more.

Here is a link to a more detailed explanation of what we did and who can help:

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=15629

You can accomplish it all without donating anything or spending any money (other than gas). You will be amazed how many people you can help and it's something most of the charities are overlooking.

[socaguy]

I read today that there are 30,000 families (evacuees) in the Atlanta area. That could be more than 100,000 people? Especially when many of these families are large, like the Herrera family from Pass-Christian Misssissippi (17 family members) who are now calling Covington home. That article made me cry.