A Surge in Baton Rouge

Charities in Louisiana’s capital struggle to cope as refugees from Katrina double the city’s population

In a matter of days, the population of Louisiana’s capital doubled as people fleeing the wrath of

Hurricane Katrina arrived by foot, in buses, and even barges.

Eighty miles north of New Orleans, the city attracted many of the poorest residents of the Crescent City, and local charities have been pushed almost to the breaking point. The coordination of their efforts at times has been chaotic, but the Baton Rouge groups are facing an unprecedented situation.

“With 250,000 new people in town, it is straining all the services of our agencies,” says Kenneth L. Hinrichs, chief executive officer of the Capital Area United Way, in Baton Rouge. “It’s sort of mind-boggling.”

‘18 Hours a Day’

The United Way has established a “command center” in its basement to help coordinate the work of the 54 social-service and health groups it supports. It is also providing office space to its sister United Way from New Orleans, whose offices were damaged by Katrina.

At the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, the emergency has meant little sleep and long hours.

“We’re going on roughly 18 hours a day,” says Mike Manning, the nonprofit group’s executive director. Since the disaster, his organization has donated more than 250,000 pounds of food to small churches and other groups housing storm survivors in the city and in the parishes outside New Orleans.

One of the groups leading the local response to the refugee crisis is the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Louisiana’s largest community foundation, which has $400-million in assets.

The group’s modern office building in downtown Baton Rouge is a swirl of activity as it coordinates meetings with government officials, the American Red Cross, churches, and even international aid groups.

The foundation has enlisted seven relief workers from the International Rescue Committee, for example, to lend a hand.

“This is Banda Aceh, not 9/11,” says John G. Davies, president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, referring to the region in Indonesia decimated by last December’s tsunamis. “Because of that, we went and found the guys that did Banda Aceh.”

The phones at the foundation ring constantly with requests for aid or people wanting to help. For example, the foundation helped a team of French firefighters enter the country to conduct search and rescue missions.

To figure out the immediate needs of the survivors, the nonprofit group has doubled the number of grant-making officials on its staff to eight people and has organized them into “SWAT teams” to evaluate the needs of individual shelters.

“We’re trying to get our hand on what the issues are,” says Mr. Davies.

Inventory of Needs

On a recent Sunday here, Gerri Hobdy, director of grant making for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, meets with doctors working at the temporary shelter set up in Southern University’s arena to ask one question: “What do you need?”

Ms. Hobdy, a 47-year-old woman with tightly rolled dreadlocks, discovers they want to use a small shelter, such as a church, to house women who have just given birth. She quickly writes down the request and drives her Nissan Altima to her next destination: an old K-Mart store that has been converted into a field hospital.

Once inside the large building, which holds about 300 patients, she tries to find the person in charge — a challenge in the chaotic environment. Eventually she learns that doctors here need sterile medical gloves and portable showers, among other things.

Ms. Hobdy says she has worked almost nonstop since the storm hit and has also taken in 10 people who lost their homes to Katrina. She says she forgot her husband’s birthday because she has been so busy.

“It’s like walking in quicksand,” Ms. Hobdy says. “Everything keeps shifting.”

The foundation has received at least $8-million in contributions so far to help hurricane survivors with immediate assistance and long-term needs, such as mental-health counseling, housing, and schooling for the thousands of displaced children.

Other Baton Rouge groups have started similar funds but with much less success. The local United Way, for example, has garnered about $510,000 for its disaster fund.

While some charity officials hope the New Orleans businesses that are relocating here will donate money to them, Mr. Hinrichs of the United Way, is skeptical.

“What we’re going to see here is a huge demand for an increase in services, and yet the focus of the giving desires will be to support those organizations in the New Orleans area,” he says.

At least one charity’s fund-raising efforts already have been hurt. Cancer Services of Greater Baton Rouge last week was forced to cancel its annual Capital Chefs Showcase, a fund-raising event with local caterers that brings in about $100,000. “How appropriate is an event that would involve food when there are so many in our community without?” asks Judy Pol, co-executive director of the charity.

Volunteers Offer Aid

While the challenges facing Baton Rouge charities are huge, many volunteers have pitched in to help.

Some people here have complained about the traffic or about the possibility of increased crime due to the thousands of new residents. But Randy Parker, 27, says he felt compelled to volunteer with the Red Cross when hurricane victims started arriving.

Mr. Parker, who used to commute to New Orleans for his job as a suite attendant at the Superdome, says he had wanted to help out at that sports complex after the hurricane, but decided it was too dangerous.

Instead, at the Riverside Centroplex convention center, the largest shelter in the state, with 5,500 people as of last week, Mr. Parker entertains young children with a hand puppet in the form of a white rat.

“My daughter named him Bunny. I told her it’s a Louisiana bunny,” he tells the children.

Nearby a line of Riverside residents wait to enter the building through a metal detector manned by members of the U.S. military. After looting and violence errupted at the makeshift shelters in New Orleans in the days after the hurricane passed through, security has become a key component of many relief efforts.

Besides Mr. Parker’s antics, the convention center also provides other amenities, including basketball hoops, free books, and back massages from a group of “volunteer ministers” from the Church of Scientology.

But the conditions here and in other shelters are far from perfect, says Mark Bartolini of the International Rescue Committee. Many people here “are living in far less than international standards,” which require, for example, a certain ratio of toilets to people, he says.

One problem is the lack of coordination and communication between Baton Rouge charities and federal, state, and local government agencies. “There’s been an inability to meet needs because we don’t know what they are,” says Mr. Bartolini.

What’s more, some charity leaders and state officials have bristled at receiving assistance from organizations that traditionally work outside the United States.

Melissa S. Flournoy, president of the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations, who has been asked by state authorities to coordinate relief work among charities, defends the work of local nonprofit groups but agrees the relief efforts have been confusing. “There’s still a lot of noise in the system,” she says.

But Ms. Flournoy adds that government officials also have not handled the disaster smoothly.

“After being in there for a week,” she says, referring to the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness, “I know why we’re not doing so well in Iraq.”

At the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, which has been housing about 30 people, the difficulties of the relief efforts are starting to show.

James Parker, a 35-year-old construction worker who escaped New Orleans, praises Shiloh, but criticizes the government and the Red Cross.

“Thank God for this church,” he says, as he works on a crossword puzzle. “You call the Red Cross, you get a busy signal.”

Mr. Parker also objects to the terminology that the government and some nonprofit groups use to refer to the people who have been made homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

“We ain’t no refugees,” he says. “We’re United States citizens.”

Ms. Hobdy of the Baton Rouge community foundation respects Mr. Parker’s concerns. She prefers the word “evacuee,” but acknowledges it seems to imply that the displaced people will return home soon, when in reality many of them may end up staying in the city for months or years.

While this crush of people will challenge Baton Rouge charities like never before, Ms. Hobdy continues to smile and joke.

“Please tell me this is kicking your ass too,” she says with an exhausted laugh to another tired charity worker.