09:59 AM CDT on Friday, September 16, 2005

Crayton Harrison / Dallas Morning News

BATON ROUGE, La. – Outside the front doors of Louisiana's largest Katrina shelter, an evangelist, Martin Mallette, sang gospel songs and played guitar.

"You can't trust in FEMA; you can't trust in the Red Cross. All you can do is trust in God," he preached over his strumming.

"Trust in God," muttered Chevy Jones, 28, an evacuee sitting nearby. "He doesn't understand. FEMA done let me down."

In the shelters closest to New Orleans, frustration and anger are setting in – over the living conditions, the situation and what evacuees and volunteers alike say is a lack of answers.

Evacuees in sports venues and civic centers say they're sick of living and sleeping among a sea of strangers, with armed National Guardsmen watching their every move.

And the government and volunteer aid systems designed to feed, clothe and protect them are "overwhelmed by the large number of people," said Christine Berge, a Red Cross volunteer from California working at the makeshift River Center shelter here. "It's hard."

Red Cross spokesman Jeff Walker acknowledged that some shelters in outlying rural areas have had struggles over control.

After the hurricane, many small towns opened their own shelters and were reluctant to hand the reins over to the Red Cross workers who arrived a week later to supplement their staffs, he said.

But the Red Cross plans to keep trying.

"These communities are not going to be able to keep some of these shelters open forever," Mr. Walker said. "We carry our own bureaucracy, and everything that comes with it, but we know how to run these."

Keeping their tempers

Evacuees try to keep their tempers, but with each day that passes, they say it becomes more difficult.

They want the Federal Emergency Management Agency to tell them two things: how to get their disaster relief funds, and when temporary housing will become available, places where they can live private lives again.

"This situation, to me, is like some concentration camp," said Ernest Johnson, president of Louisiana's NAACP chapter, decrying the military presence.

He's urging evacuees to organize and appoint representatives who can influence aid workers' decisions.

FEMA is distributing $2,000 per household to victims of the hurricane, but the process has been slow. After a brief experiment with debit cards, the agency is now directly depositing the money in bank accounts.

Hurricane victims have to register with the agency by calling an 800 number that is almost always busy. The same goes for a Red Cross fund, which has distributed $140 million thus far, determining the amount per family based on need.

FEMA is also beginning to move trailers in the area to house evacuees in a more private, lasting environment while they adjust. The agency still has to determine where many of the houses will go.

While evacuees at the shelters wait for money and a temporary home, they have to find other places to stay. Many have left the shelters. The River Center is home to about 2,000, down from 4,000 to 5,000 at its peak.

Those who stay say they're trying to figure out their next step, but the answers they need to make a decision haven't come yet. Some also want to wait to see their homes when floodwaters subside before making a permanent move.

And the wait is a burden.

Merry Major, 58, who uses a motorized cart to get around, can't get out much, so she writes poetry. She lost all of the writings in her Lower Ninth Ward home to the flood, which she survived by clinging to a pecan tree for 13 hours. Her dog drowned.

Sometimes fights break out in the River Center's living quarters, and National Guardsmen rush in to break them up, Ms. Major said.

Sometimes, organizers argue.

In Houma, La., local volunteers organized a shelter at the civic center. Then Red Cross volunteers came in, unwilling to work long hours to meet evacuees' needs, said Rene Rhodes, one of the organizing volunteers.

"The Red Cross sucks," Mr. Rhodes said.

Many questions

Meanwhile, evacuees keep waiting for things to get better.

"They need to try to find us housing," said Ms. Major. "We hear a lot of things that are going to happen. What they need to do is give us something to hold on to."

Compared to the River Center shelter, where announcers on loudspeakers delivered instructions to evacuees, the Houma center seemed chaotic. Harried volunteers from the area dashed about, filling requests, and evacuees said they were having a difficult time getting questions answered.

In Thibodaux, La., National Guardsmen didn't wait for the Red Cross to take over, organizing volunteers and doing much of the grunt work themselves. Soldiers made phone calls to get families reunited. One soldier arranged a civilian helicopter to rescue a stranded resident from a New Orleans rooftop.

"We've been told that we are out of our box," said Lt. James Wallace Hess. "But we're the only ones that have been able to help people. The resources and infrastructure just weren't here."

Red Cross workers told Lt. Hess that their rules prevented him from serving bottled water that had been sitting in the sun too long, he said. Lt. Hess, 26, didn't buy it. He drank plenty of sun-kissed bottled water as a corporal in Iraq.

Soldiers at the Thibodaux shelter, at Nichols State University, have also stopped carrying their rifles. The guns were intimidating people who had already been through a lot, said Lt. Lance Beal, 22.

"They're still Americans," he said. "Nothing has been done wrong."