The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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September 3, 2008

Oklahoma: Hurricane evacuees eager to return home

The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY — Hurricane Gustav evacuee George Mitchell planned to stay a few nights at a temporary shelter in Oklahoma City after being forced from New Orleans, but those plans were cut short following his arrest on a complaint of public drunkenness.

Mitchell, who spent Tuesday night in the Oklahoma County jail and received a municipal citation for $173, is one of 25 evacuees bused to Oklahoma City who have been banned from the shelter at the old Lucent Technologies plant in west Oklahoma City following arrests.

“They told me to get my stuff and get out of there,” Mitchell said Wednesday, while sitting inside a fast-food restaurant across the street from the shelter. “I don’t know my way around here. I don’t know where to go.”

Oklahoma City police Sgt. Paco Balderrama said Mitchell and others who have been banned from the facility will be allowed to board a bus to return to Louisiana once the evacuees are returned home, but until then, they won’t be allowed to stay at the shelter.

“He’s on his own,” Balderrama said. “Luckily we have some homeless shelters in the city that would probably be willing to take him in.”

Balderrama said the policy is set up to ensure the safety of the nearly 1,700 evacuees being housed at the shelter.

“Other people have been arrested for fighting, possession of marijuana, vandalism — that type of behavior just will not be tolerated,” he said. “We believe the reason we haven’t had a whole lot of problems inside the facility is because we have imposed those policies and the troublemakers have not been allowed back in.”

All of those arrested were taken into custody outside of the facility, Balderrama said.

The big question on the minds of most of the evacuees is when they will be allowed to return to their homes, and Balderrama said those details haven’t been worked out. He said city officials are working with emergency management coordinators in Louisiana to develop a re-entry plan for the evacuees.

“Although they love Oklahoma City, they want to get out of here,” Balderrama said. “Realistically, it’s probably looking like sometime tomorrow. We don’t have control over that. We have to get the go-ahead from Louisiana.”

Meanwhile, evacuees braved rain and gusty winds Wednesday as they wandered along Council Road near the shelter, many sporting Red Cross rain ponchos.

“It’s kind of boring,” said 11-year-old Kayla Nunez of Abbeville, La., as she stood outside the shelter with her uncle, Timmy Harris.

Harris said he and his family have been well-treated at the shelter, but he’s eager to return to Louisiana.

“I feel safe, but to be honest, I’m ready to get back home.”

Balderrama said the Salvation Army and other organizations have brought in basketball goals, board games, playing cards, dominoes and a giant projector to play movies, and a local church group sponsored child activities on Tuesday.

A makeshift medical clinic also has been established, and more than 88 evacuees have received medical attention, including 40 who were transported to area hospitals, said Lara O’Leary, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Medical Services Authority.

Most of those hospitalized were treated for pre-existing medical conditions, O’Leary said.

“You put them on a bus for 20 hours, and you’re going to get off the bus with some issues,” she said. “But we’re now scaling back the clinic hours.

O’Leary said volunteer doctors at the clinic wrote more than 450 prescriptions.

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