Everybody needs to get down here and help'

By: DENIS DEVINE - Staff Writer
September 10, 2005
North County Times

Last weekend, San Diego businessman David Perez flew into the wake of Hurricane Katrina and came back with 82 people. Fed up with federal relief efforts that seemed too slow and ineffective to save thousands of lives, Perez chartered a Learjet out of Carlsbad on Saturday, filled it with relief supplies and reporters, and landed in Baton Rouge, La. Less than 24 hours later, he flew back to San Diego with 82 people who had been staying at overcrowded shelters north of New Orleans.

His efforts have continued since then; this is a closer look at the events of last weekend.

Perez spent much of Sunday morning at a strip of storefront churches in Baker, La., a town about 15 miles north of Baton Rouge. The Miracle Place Church became a massive shelter hosting dozens of families from New Orleans and its outskirts. Some admitted to having been among the looters who were vilified in the national media during the first days after Katrina struck. One young woman bristled at the actions of New Orleans police officers.

"We went to get shoes and food, but the police stopped us. They said the food was for the (police) station," she said. "But there wasn't no station left! ... They had guns, they were shooting people because they tried to get some food."

Another young man said he had fed starving neighbors. When asked if he had stolen that food, Norman Brown said, "How else we gonna eat? At some stores, there were police at the door saying it was OK."

Volunteers also came to the Miracle Place Church shelter. Ray and Elaine Thurman, owners of Way to Go Coach, a charter bus service out of Mount Juliet, Tenn., had driven a church group of 55 from Waverly, Tenn., down to Baker. They were busy Sunday morning hammering away at the back of the shelter, building showers and beds.

"We sat and watched it on TV," said Elaine Thurman, "but we felt like it wasn't enough to donate." Looking at the tumult around the crowded shelter, she said, "Everybody needs to get down here and help."

But each volunteer leader shared stories of bureaucracy delaying or preventing help from getting where it was needed. The church group also brought along a tractor-trailer full of supplies. The trip took 18 hours because they were forced to unload thousands of pounds of water and wood by someone operating a highway scale designed to prevent long-term damage to asphalt; those supplies were left at the side of the road in Tennessee.

Within a half-hour of touching down at the Baton Rouge airport on Saturday afternoon, Perez talked himself onto a paramedic helicopter operated by Petroleum Helicopters Inc. He got to see up-close the chaos at New Orleans International Airport, the area's main triage center for medical patients and helicopter-rescued evacuees. Later, Perez's digital photos showed crowds surging against the gates that resembled the Irish locked in the lower decks in James Cameron's film version of "Titanic."

Back in Baton Rouge, the Rev. Jesse Jackson materialized and launched into a sermon on the need for U.S. military resources to come to the aid of New Orleans storm survivors.

"This city, these people have been left to die," Jackson said, not breaking a sweat in the sweltering heat. He called for housing people on military bases and tent cities.

"None of the creative ideas used in Iraq have been used in New Orleans," Jackson said. "Is it insensitivity? Incompetence? Ineptness? All of the above?"

He paused before recounting a convoy of seven buses he had joined to evacuate some people stranded in New Orleans. When the buses were full, they drove past hundreds of ailing people in equally dire need of transport.

"When they saw that the buses weren't coming for them, they formed human chains to stop us from leaving," Jackson said, wet eyes glinting in the camera spotlights. "That was the most painful part."

The storm survivors at the Miracle Place Church shelter were almost all black, and many were related. One, a goateed man in a white bandanna named Royce Bechet, mixed his gratitude for the compassion of the church volunteers with criticism for police he felt were enforcing too strict a curfew. When rumors spread the previous night that someone was breaking into cars in the church parking lot, Bechet said he was prevented from going out to secure his truck.

"That's all I have left," said the 40-year-old house painter, getting fresh air outside the crowded shelter. "I was like, 'I'm gonna go check on this.' "

The population of Baton Rouge doubled in just a few days.

Some trees had crushed homes, a few telephone poles and power lines had come down. But for the most part, the city looked nearly normal. Most businesses closed early Saturday, and many fast-food restaurants were shuttered by 6 p.m. ---- afraid of looting, someone suggested. Plastic bags were draped over the nozzles at most gas stations.

At a sports arena turned field hospital at Louisiana State University, some storm survivors were willing to tell their stories. They offered details about people they were separated from, friends and family they had not heard from since Sunday. I should've stopped them; publishing this information in a North San Diego County newspaper probably would not help them find their missing. But allowing them to tell me about their missing daddy, children, husband, uncles, aunts and cousins seemed the decent thing to do at the time. I also directed them to the Red Cross desk inside, which I heard was working to connect separated family members. I hope by now they're reunited, or at least in touch.

Just off campus, LSU students were going about their normal college lives while a good chunk of their campus had been transformed into a bustling field hospital. But we saw a lot of that in our short stay in Louisiana: Golf games and sidewalk prostitution both seemed to be continuing unabated, though at different hours and in different neighborhoods.

At 9 a.m. Sunday, Perez had not yet found anyone willing to come back to San Diego on the Miami Air jet he had chartered for just that purpose. It was due to arrive from Florida at 1:30 p.m., unload a crew of workers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and relief supplies Perez's credit card paid for, and take off for San Diego shortly thereafter.

"All I know is, I got a jet I paid for and it's not coming back empty," he said. So Perez stepped up his salesmanship. Asked if someone could bring a baby's new car seat on his plane, Perez answered, "You can bring anything. We'll give you gift cards to buy all new stuff."

Later, after promising jobs, flights back to Louisiana or anywhere else evacuees wanted to go, and lodging at a five-star hotel, Perez tried a little guilt.

"This shelter needs space for other people coming in," he said. "Louisiana can't do it, Texas can't do it. California wants to do it."

Perez was determined not to split up families, so single people were out. His criteria helped many wavering people at the shelters make their decisions; once a key decision-maker from a family opted to stay or go, the rest of the clan soon followed.

Inside the Miracle Place Church shelter, Krischelle James, 16, was cradling someone else's newborn son. James was there with her boyfriend and his family; her family was mostly in the Louisiana Superdome, she said, her baby brother possibly in Texas.

She agreed to come with her boyfriend's family to San Diego. "I'm nervous," she said, "going so far away. I don't know how to get back home. How am I going to see my family again?"

When the time came to board the plane, the 82 evacuees squeezed and surged toward the door. Then Perez opened the gate door to the tarmac himself. Furious Transportation Security Administration employees raced to the gate, shouting at Perez that he had just violated several laws; a police car raced toward the gate. Meanwhile, the passengers rushed toward the plane. Most had never flown before, according to a show of hands once aboard.

They ranged in age from 86 to 1 month. Also aboard were two dogs, two cats and two birds in a cage.

Perez hugged each passenger on his or her way off the plane. He asked Anthony Powell if he was ready to work, to which the 31-year-old warehouse worker nodded appreciatively.

Aboard a school bus escorted by police to a temporary Red Cross shelter at Kearny High School, Powell's two young sons waved Mickey Mouse dolls with Red Cross tags.

Powell said, "We will never forget what he did for us."

When the return flight landed at Lindbergh on Sunday to a hero's welcome, the hero hid in the plane. "The story's not about me, it's about them," he said ---- and shouted ---- repeatedly. When last I saw him, Perez was still in his seat, working his Blackberry e-mail gadget to arrange more relief flights.