Here's a story from the Orlando Sentinel on Baton Rouge as both launch pad for recovery and site for evacuees. Starting to think you all are right on the LSU-Tenn game being put off or moved.
BATON ROUGE, La. -- The crowd at the corner of St. Ferdinand and Government streets had the empty eyes and slack faces of a wobbly prizefighter.
Sweating in the Louisiana sun, a few lugged white plastic bags filled with clothes -- all they could carry in their flight from flood-ravaged New Orleans. Others shuffled into the Frostop Diner here in Baton Rouge looking for something cold to drink.
In the grass along the sidewalk, 6-year-old Joel Skidmore sat in his father's lap, stroking his dad's face. Berthard Skidmore smiled and rubbed the boy's head.
"I have to start all over again," said Skidmore, a 64-year-old housepainter who watched as Hurricane Katrina battered, then soaked his Garden District apartment. "We've got nothing left, and I'm not sure where we're going to go."
For now, Skidmore and thousands of other victims of Katrina are in Baton Rouge, a city of 227,000 about 90 minutes northwest of New Orleans. The state capital, which sits on the banks of the Mississippi River, has become the epicenter of Louisiana's recovery effort. It's here where hundreds of workers and dozens of top government officials have set up shop, frantically working to repair and rebuild New Orleans, a city that has been swamped almost beyond recognition by floodwaters.
It has also become ground zero for the humanitarian effort of feeding, sheltering and caring for tens of thousands of residents driven from their homes by the storm and later by the rising floodwaters. Every hotel room in the city is filled, and Baton Rouge shelters have swelled with evacuees.
The River Center, an arena turned into a shelter, had about 2,000 people in it Tuesday. Citywide, there were about 5,000.
By Wednesday afternoon, the River Center alone was housing more than 5,000 people, and officials expected more to arrive. Citywide, about 7,000 people were spread among 20 shelters.
"Most of them come in here with just this overwhelming feeling of being lost," said Aaron Baker, a Red Cross worker at the center. "They don't know what happened and they're not sure what's going to happen."
While Baton Rouge opened its arms to those in need, the New Orleans refugees didn't find a city untouched by Katrina. They found gas stations without fuel, and traffic jams at intersections where signal lights were dead. Hotels had their own traffic jams of people desperate not to be homeless.
They arrived at shelters, churches and supermarkets, nursing sunburns and the grime built up from several days without showers. On Wednesday, 13 spilled out of one car at the River Center -- all hitchhikers.
Again and again, the refugees were on the verge of tears, if not crying, over lost pets, homes and jobs.
Extended families came together in several carloads at a time, unloading into single hotel rooms.
Iosha Conners, 28, shared a room with 10 other family members, young and old, in a Courtyard Marriott at the south end of Baton Rouge. By Wednesday, they had run out of money and places to go, and were nursing a vague hope that relatives in Houston would open their doors.
"It's $112 a night. That's a night and we still have to buy food," said her husband, Shawn, 28. "We can't afford to stay here."
Also at the Marriott, Gizelle Johnson, 30, and her mother, Gwendolyn Johnson, 66, searched out new arrivals, asking if they had come from their part of New Orleans and if they had seen or heard about two family members last seen in a rapidly flooding area.
At a Wal-Mart near Interstate 10, Lianne Ficarra, 54, parked her camper, propped up tarps for shade and set out cookware for an extended stay.
"Our bank is in New Orleans and we've got no checks," Ficarra said.
As Ficarra and her son settled in, New Orleans evacuees showed up in a steady stream, wanting to know if it was OK to camp in the parking lot.
"We heard it's all right to camp out," said Vera Rimkus, 59, her hands shaking and barely able to clutch an inhaler for her emphysema.
She was in charge of seven family members and by late in the day, they were down to two choices -- camp in the Wal-Mart lot or a city park where there might be showers. She still hadn't made up her mind late Wednesday.
"We don't know where we are and we don't know where we are going," Rimkus said.
Eric Reynolds knew where he was headed. But he had no idea what he'd find when he got there. Reynolds, 47, was one of the evacuees camped out in the lower level of the River Center. He fled the New Orleans area with his son Sunday before the storm hit.
Like most of the evacuees, he doesn't know what happened to his house. He arrived in Baton Rouge with a backpack full of clothes and nothing else. Sprawled on the hard, cold floor of the arena concourse, he said he'll return to New Orleans as soon as possible.
"We'll see what the Lord's got available for me," Reynolds said. "Hopefully, it'll be OK."
