AMERICAblog's Kyle In Baton Rouge -- Talking To Angry Evacuees And Pitching In To Help

I am blogging now from Baton Rouge after a hell of a day yesterday. We were fortunate enough to get a few good hours of sleep NOT in the Excursion. The previous night was spent inside the truck outside of a Sonic fast food joint in god knows where Louisiana. The Tank is covered in toxic waste from the floodwaters and still wreaks of that stench I tried to describe earlier. Entering and exiting the vehicle has been interesting because we can only touch the clean doorhandles. Disinfectant wipes, anti-bacterial soap and napkins have become our life lines.

This morning we went to the Riverside Convention center shelter. I talked to several evacuees as they waited in the long line to get through shelter security. A topic that came up again and again was housing. These people want their privacy; they want their own lives. There needs to be a coordinated effort on the part of the federal or state government to get something going on that front. Another issue was red tape and the people I spoke with were frustrated with all the paperwork FEMA was throwing at them. None of the survivors I talked to had received anything from any federal agency at all.

We also visited with Red Cross officials at the convention center about consolidating the hundreds of people-finder databases into a single interface. I will be helping this process along by getting the shelter off a single Excel spreadsheet and onto a connected web database. Right now, Bob and Macon are having to hook people up manually with their families and coordinate free flights for the victims.

Correction - I made a mistake in the interview with John yesterday. The soldier we were bartering with was from the 82nd airborne; not the National Guard.