Tuesday, August 29, 2006

San Antonio & last year's storms

If you've paid any attention to current news, particularly of the printed genre (newspapers), you'll know that we're at the anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina came ashore and dealt its deadly blows against the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Louisiana & Mississippi. That was such a sad time, back then. Imprinted in my memory lies a photo from the front page of the San Antonio daily, showing an Afro-American woman wearing a print dress typical of middle-aged women, floating dead, face down in the floodwaters. Yes, it was horrible!

And then within a month, Hurricane Rita stormed ashore further to the west. She had her deleterious effect on the region still reeling from Katrina, plus visiting damage on southeast Texas.

Far stronger in my memory than that photo of the dead victim in New Orleans is memory of my city's response to the two storms and to those negatively impacted by them. San Antonio REALLY stepped in and helped our coastal neighbors! Tens of thousands of evacuees, mostly from the Big Easy, swelled our population for several months. This city was ready to aid them, and gave the evacuees a strong welcome and assistance. Even VÍA buses got in on the action, giving free rides to resident evacuees, so they could get around the city for immediate help of all kinds, to find shelter more comfortable than the temporary group lodging arranged in old hangars, an abandoned factory and a mostly vacant shopping mall, and to seek out employment either for the duration or permanently. It says A LOT about our welcome and assistance, that many, many New Orleans evacuees have chosen to make the Alamo City their new residence (and to not return to New Orleans).

Then came Rita. Again, San Antonio and VÍA went into action, as buses were sent to Corpus Christi to help in the evacuation of the Gulf Coast city. Turned out this evacuation wasn't needed, since the hurricane took a more easterly trajectory. But then, we saw lots of folk from the Houston-Galveston-Beaumont area. And thank goodness, these evacuees weren't as numerous as those from the previous storm. And Rita wasn't quite the ogre either that Katrina had been.

As the news media reminds of this sad anniversary, the sadness of the memories of the storms is lightened by the memory of how San Antonio responded! This city knows how to party; we also know how to work hard at helping neighbors less fortunate!

No comments: