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The number of evacuees coming to Florida soon will probably be 45,000.

Dallas/Fort Worth Airport may serve as a key landing point for hundreds of medical patients airlifted from New Orleans to Metroplex hospitals beginning Sunday, as Hurricane Gustav moves into the Gulf of Mexico.Additionally, if Gustav hits New Orleans, the former Delta Air Lines satellite facility near Terminal E would end up serving as temporary living quarters for 800 federal relief employees who were stationed at New Orleans' Louis Armstrong Airport as the storm approached, officials said."This is going to be a huge team effort," said Brian Magana, D/FW spokesman.The first patients are tentatively scheduled to arrive early Sunday -- D/FW...

State's plan calls for putting some offenders on separate bus Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state's emergency management director says. The idea, according to Jack Colley, is to keep sex offenders and others who may be wanted by police off the same buses used by the most vulnerable during an evacuation: the elderly, disabled residents and children. "This will allow us to help them evacuate," Colley said of sex offenders and others wanted for crimes. "We're not going to leave anyone." Though the...

It doesn't bring back lost family heirlooms, a child's favourite toy or photos of your daughter's wedding but evacuees of the fires raging around San Diego, California can take solace in the fact that their home away from home is safe, comfortable and even has a few extra frills. CanWest correspondent Sheldon Alberts reports about conditions from the Qualcomm Centre, which is housing thousands who have left their homes because of the massive fires in California: Instead of chaos, there was relative calm as evacuees arrived to discover a carnival-like atmosphere that included live music performances, a makeshift pre-school and...

Exerted.... "SAN DIEGO — Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes. The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium." "Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires." "At Qualcomm, thousands of tents, many set up by relief organizations, provided temporary roofs, while hundreds of people slept on open-air cots. Some...

NEW YORK, May 2 (Reuters Life!) - Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005 felt a deep level of distrust towards public health authorities, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) said the level of distrust influenced how people reacted to warnings to evacuate and why some residents decided to stay. "The statements of distrust were all spontaneous statements," said Dr. Kristina Cordasco, the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

WASHINGTON — Just as federal housing money was to start flowing again to thousands of Texas-based hurricane evacuees, a federal appeals court put everything on hold Friday. The ruling means that about 4,200 families in Houston, San Antonio and Austin who were left homeless by hurricanes Katrina and Rita will have to wait until at least February to find out whether the federal government is required to restore their rental assistance payments. By then, the temporary housing program will have expired — unless Congress or President Bush extend it.

In February, the Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ gave a New Orleans family, who was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the keys to a house in Hickory Hill that church members said the wife selected. They got a $75,000 house for free. But we discovered that the family sold it without ever moving in.

HOUSTON - Evacuees from Hurricane Katrina have contributed to an increase in Houston's annual murder rate, which could climb this year to its highest level in more than a decade, police said. Houston had 316 homicides as of Oct. 16. That's an increase of 25 percent from the 252 slayings tallied at this time last year, putting the city on pace to record nearly 400 killings before the end of 2006. "We recognize that the homicide rate is up as far as raw numbers and as well as percentages relative to the population," Capt. Dwayne Ready said. "We also recognize...

11 News has learned more about an agreement between the mayors of Houston and New Orleans to send back to Louisiana any evacuees who commit serious crimes here. Mayor White hopes the proposal will appease some angry Houstonians. The agreement was first mentioned publicly in a heated meeting Wednesday night on Westside crime. "We want the New Orleans residents to go home," said one frustrated resident. One year after Katrina, Houston's welcome mat appears to be fraying around the edges. "Our taxes are too high to be putting up with this mess," a Westchase resident told Mayor White Wednesday. The...

Katrina fatigue erupted into anger and frustration Wednesday night, as more than 1,700 west Houston residents urged Mayor Bill White to send evacuees home to New Orleans. One year after the city of Houston welcomed at least 250,000 evacuees, more than 100,000 New Orleans natives still remain. West Houston residents who gathered Wednesday at Grace Presbyterian Church to address increases in violent crime over the past year in their community said evacuees are to blame. White and Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt had come to the church to discuss details of a new police division on the west side that...

Palatine Church Wants Woman Out By The End Of The Month (CBS) PALATINE -- In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Chicago area residents opened up their hearts and wallets. Now, nearly a year later, a suburban church is evicting the family it took in. CBS 2's Alita Guillen reports on a single mom who has no place to turn. For the past year, Keisha Moran and her three children have called a three-bedroom Victorian home, but that's about to change. The St. Paul United Church of Christ in Palatine owns the home, and the parish wants them out by...

In a Fox News free "World" video "Stepping In: Hezbollah providing relief to evacuees" Fox News reporter Jonathan Hunt from Beirut, Lebanon says that the refugees arriving in Beirut "don't just support Hezbollah, but they feel they are a part of the organization." Am I wrong in concluding that the Lebanese civilians are terrorists? The U.S. is sending aid to the Lebanese military. It is under the control of the Lebanese Prime Minister Senior Fraud who we've previously heard on Fox passionately mouthing the rhetoric of anti-Israeli terrorists, calling Israel a criminal war machine, murdering women and children, attacking civilian...

by Mark Finkelstein July 20, 2006 - 08:13 Heart-rending images of small children being lifted across a fence. Outraged American/Lebanese evacuees describing indiscriminate Israeli bombing. A Lebanese man with blood on his shirt after his brother was killed by an Israeli bomb. And the only two reporters on the scene reporting from Beirut. That was the way the 'Today' largely saw fit to cover the Middle East conflict this morning. While none of the words or images are necessarily inaccurate [and we were treated to one evacuee heartily thanking Pres. Bush], they utterly fail to tell the whole story. Yes,...

PARIS (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is flying to Cyprus where he intends to take up to 120 evacuees from Lebanon home to Canada on his Canadian Forces plane. Harper announced the surprise side trip on his week-long European diplomatic tour after a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday afternoon. "Because of the seriousness of the situation and our relative proximity to Cyprus, we have decided to take the Canadian Forces aircraft we have been travelling on to help airlift evacuees back home," Harper said in a statement. "The aircraft will be stripped...

6/16/2006 - WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- It's been more than eight months since Hurricane Katrina displaced thousands of people. Veterans who stayed at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., were among those who had to leave. More than 400 of the 600 residents were evacuated to the AFRH here and have been without most of their personal belongings since September. "The only thing I brought with me was three shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shoes and a towel -- that's it," said Leonard Drozal, a World War II Marine Corps veteran. "I miss my computer." Since...

This winter, FEMA put up over 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New York City hotels. Almost all of them have gone back to their lives, their jobs. But not Theon Johnson. He’s currently sprawled out watching Halloween 5 on one of the two full-size beds in his room at the JFK Airport Holiday Inn. He is one of four evacuees still living in a hotel in the city. The others left in February and March, when, after spending more than $500 million, FEMA stopped paying for hotel rooms housing some 40,000 evacuees across the country. That left many scrambling for...

HOUSTON - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin met with his Houston counterpart Wednesday to plan ways to help homesick Hurricane Katrina evacuees - and even some criminals - get back to Louisiana. Nagin and Houston Mayor Bill White said three centers, with information on housing and job opportunities in New Orleans, will open in Houston, and a Return to New Orleans Housing Task Force will be created. Nagin also said he didn't want the "small segment" of evacuees arrested for various crimes to burden the Texas criminal justice system. Authorities are discussing how some evacuees could be moved from jails...

BOWDOINHAM, Maine - A Maine family is in shock after the Bowdoinham house they donated to a family who lost everything to Hurricane Katrina was trashed and abandoned, reported WMTW-TV in Portland. Albert and Nancy Poisson of Dresden decided to let William and Frances Gardner and their two daughters live in the house for a year, free of charge. But last week, the Poissons found some of their appliances gone, their hardwood floor marked up and trash strewn throughout the house. The Poissons found the Gardners through Catholic Charities of Maine and said they had been unable to track the...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Math scores for fifth-grade students displaced to Texas after last year's hurricanes are lagging significantly, mirroring similar low scores in reading. Just 45 percent of the 2,396 fifth-graders who enrolled in Texas schools after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita passed the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, according to the Texas Education Agency. Statewide, 81 percent of Texas fifth-graders passed the April 4 math exam. Students must pass the test before they can advance to sixth grade. Officials blame students' low scores on New Orleans' poor schools, the trauma of being abruptly uprooted from...

Katrina welcome mat threadbare; lawmaker drafting ouster bill: HOUSTON -- The crowd gathered inside a west Houston high school auditorium to hear from their congressman was already aggrieved over issues ranging from illegal immigration to road building when the topic turned, as it often does these days in Houston, to the estimated 150,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina still living in the city. "I am getting fed up with the criminals and troublemakers from New Orleans," Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) told constituents last week. "We're certainly ready for those people to go home as soon as possible." "Send 'em home," echoed...

New Orleans has long been pivotal in the struggle for black voting rights. During the Civil War, free blacks there demanded suffrage; their efforts resulted in Lincoln's first public call for voting rights for some blacks in the final speech of his life. Once these rights were won, New Orleans blacks took an active part in politics, leading to the establishment of the South's only integrated public school system. But rights once gained aren't necessarily secure; after Reconstruction, blacks in New Orleans lost the right to vote. As Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote at the time of the Civil War, "revolutions...

(Katrina Evacuees Board Louisiana-Bound Buses Before Dawn to Vote for New Orleans Mayor...) LAKE CHARLES, La. - Cara Harrison drove 140 miles Monday just to vote for the next mayor of New Orleans, and she wasn't alone. Hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees boarded buses before dawn Monday in Texas and other states for the long trip to Louisiana, where they could cast early ballots starting Monday at 10 satellite voting centers set up across the state to give displaced residents a voice. "We need to be a part of the political process," said Harrison, an evacuee from the flood-devastated Ninth...

To: National Desk Contact: John Yembrick, 713-567-9388; Web: http://www.Usdoj.Gov/Usao/Txs HOUSTON, April 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Edward Good, 41, a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who lived in Conroe, Texas after the storm, was convicted today of conspiring to commit wire fraud based on his scheme to fraudulently obtain Louisiana Department of Labor Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) debit cards. United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Don DeGabrielle announced today that Good pleaded guilty to the federal felony charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Mr. Good's sentencing is scheduled for July 14, 2006. At sentencing, Mr. Good faces a maximum...

NEW ORLEANS -- By Louisiana's latest official count, 1,292 people are known to have died in the state because of Hurricane Katrina. About 1,280 -- the number changes daily -- remain missing. Hundreds of people were sucked into the Gulf of Mexico by Katrina's retreating tsunami-like storm surge and will never be found. But the state-run, federally funded Find Family National Call Center is discovering that hundreds of others have used the storm and the nationwide diaspora it triggered to escape a troubled or painful past. They do not want to be found. The center's 90 or so workers immerse...

Crime is up. Schools are overcrowded. Hospitals are jammed. Houston welcomed a flood of hurricane evacuees with open arms. But now the city is suffering from a case of 'compassion fatigue.' In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Houston earned a loving moniker among many of the evacuees who sought refuge there: the Big Heart. This, after all, was the city that housed, fed and mended more than 150,000 survivors in a herculean effort that won national acclaim. Houston officials mounted what is believed to be the biggest shelter operation in the country's history, including MASH-like megaclinics that took on problems...

Hurricanes sparked a tragic migration from the Gulf Coast, and changed the state forever Craig Schneider, Anna Varela - Staff Sunday, February 26, 2006 It's taken a lot of helping hands to prop up Connie McDowell's life. After Hurricane Katrina wrecked her home near New Orleans, she moved to Cobb County, three children in tow, no job in sight, and a lifetime of possessions washed away. She needed help. Crosspoint Presbyterian Church off South Cobb Drive provided clothes and meals. The Latin American Association helped pay the deposit on an apartment. The federal government provided some money. And Homestretch, a...

WORK! Stop the presses!Someone finally said what needed to be said…publicly. During some government meeting in Houston, three New Orleans council members (guests?) said to “evacuees� what was on so many people’s minds: Get off your duffs and work. New Orleans doesn’t want its poorest residents back — unless they agree to work.That was the message from three New Orleans City Council members who said government programs have “pampered� the city’s residents for too long. (Source) Houston transplants who want to return to New Orleans got a dose of tough love. “We don’t need soap opera watchers right now,� said...

body, table {font:normal 12px verdana,sans-serif;margin:10px;} /*.RelatedBox {display:none;}*/ Click2Houston.com FBI Launches Web Site To Track Evacuee Crimes POSTED: 9:26 am CST February 20, 2006UPDATED: 9:29 am CST February 20, 2006HOUSTON -- The FBI launched a new Web site to help officers communicate with each other about crimes involving hurricane evacuees.Police say since Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans gang members have moved into other cities and caused the crime rates to increase.Houston police officers are working closely with evacuees to help stop violent crimes as well as frauds targeted toward evacuees.For more information on the FBI's Web site, visit www.fbi.gov/Katrina.htm.

On Feb. 13, the federal government stopped paying hotel bills for roughly 12,000 families nationwide who lost their homes to damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Once as high as 85,000, the number of hotel rooms being paid for by FEMA is down to 8,000. By March 6, FEMA says the hotel subsidies will be completely cut off. At the Country Hearth Inn & Suites near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, people carted their belongings through the lobby and into the cars of family members and friends. Some were headed to new FEMA-subsidized apartments or trailers. But a few lagged behind,...

Managers at one motel in Baton Rouge are trying to evict evacuees staying in 30 rooms, even though the Federal Emergency Management Agency is still paying for their stay. The owners of Pines Motel said the evacuees have trashed the rooms of their motel, and they need to leave. Managers Brent and Dana Servario went to door-to-door on Tuesday to tell evacuees the time had come for them to leave. Many of the evacuees have FEMA codes allowing them to stay until March 1, but managers called FEMA and were told if the evacuees are damaging the rooms they had...

The government squandered millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid, including handing $2,000 debit cards to people who gave phony Social Security numbers and used the money for such items as a $450 tattoo, auditors said Monday. Federal money also paid for $375-a-day beachfront condos and 10,777 trailers that were stuck in mud and unusable. Overcharges, poor accounting and abuses will take "months or years" to rectify, the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general concluded in preliminary reports on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money is being spent. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes it...

Monday was supposed to be the big FEMA deadline when the feds would stop paying for hotel rooms to house hurricane evacuees. However, it appears many of those evacuees have received extensions until March 1, the day after Mardi Gras. But not all. 9 News caught up with a man who was losing his FEMA payments Monday, and said he didn't have anywhere to go. FEMA did not grant Troy Forest an extension to pay for his hotel room at the Pines Motel on Airline Highway. "There ain't no more assistance," said Forest. "None. I'm just... outdoors." Forest has called...

Thousands of applicants for federal emergency relief money after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita used duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers or bogus addresses, suggesting that the $2.3 billion program was a victim of extensive fraud, a Congressional auditor will report Monday. The examination of the so-called Expedited Assistance program determined that the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to take even the most basic steps to confirm the identifies of about 1.4 million people who sought expedited cash assistance, leaving the program vulnerable to the "significant fraud and abuse," the Government Accountability Office intends to report. The auditors did not try...

HOUSTON -- The southwest corner of this city is one sprawling low-rise apartment complex after the next, once-hot real estate area that died with the 1980s oil bust only to be reborn in the '90s as a low-income, high-crime neighborhood. Now it's Katrina turf. New Tony's Express, neighborhood convenience store, is sold out of T-shirts and caps stenciled with the numbers 504, 985 and 337 -- the area codes for New Orleans and southern Louisiana. The emergency room of West Houston Medical Center is so busy treating Hurricane Katrina evacuees the staff jokingly calls itself "Charity West," a reference to...

LAKE CHARLES, La. -- The city of Lake Charles will open the Civic Center as an emergency shelter if the Federal Emergency Management Agency puts out hundreds of Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims from area hotels and motels by a Feb. 13 deadline. FEMA extended the deadline for evacuees to be out of their rooms by six days, from Feb. 7 to Feb. 13. Those who wanted to remain after Feb. 7 had to call FEMA by Jan. 30 to receive an authorization code that would extend their stay. FEMA has said it won't pay for rooms after Feb. 13....

(AP) A group of Hurricane Katrina evacuees staying at a Queens hotel want it to contribute $2,500 to each family as an incentive to move, but the hotel's owners are questioning their obligation to pay. Charlie King, a lawyer and a Democratic candidate for New York attorney general who was involved in a meeting this week on the proposal between hotel management and community leaders, told The New York Times in Saturday's editions that the money also would help cover costs for families seeking permanent housing. The owners of the hotel, Radisson J.F.K. Airport, are expected to meet with the...

Investigators Say Suspects Were Recently Kicked Out Of Hotel: HOUSTON -- Officers said a pair of Hurricane Katrina evacuees kicked out of a southwest Houston hotel room came back for revenge and shot a security guard Friday morning, KPRC Local 2 reported. Investigators said the two suspects had been asked to leave the American Inn on Highway 59 near Beltway 8 a couple of days ago. However, police said the suspects returned Friday morning and shot a security guard inside the hotel's lobby shortly before 3 a.m. A security guard at a neighboring business heard the event unfold. "I couldn't...

You may have heard a neighbor say that crime seems to be up and word is it's Katrina evacuees who are responsible. But is that true? In southwest Houston there is block after block of big apartment complexes. They house the city's highest concentration of Katrina evacuees, and they are ground zero for a rise in violent crime. Southwest Houston has a large concentration of Katrina evacuees. "Things have gotten pretty bad out here," said city councilmember M.J. Khan. Long-time residents say its gotten scary. The residents were terrified, but the interviews we have were done back in June of...

Houston police have arrested eight of 11 people believed to be involved in nine homicides in the city's southwest side and two others in Pasadena since last November. The arrests come just a few weeks after HPD acknowledged the surge in violent crime last year was linked to evacuees relocating here after Hurricane Katrina. Police said the arrests were part of an initiative recently launched to investigate homicides believed related to gang activity. In analyzing some recent cases in the southwest Houston area, police said today that several involved Louisiana suspects who relocated to Houston following Hurricane Katrina. Police today...

At the start of the new year, months after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita swept the Gulf Coast, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was still paying for 119 evacuees to live in McLennan County hotel rooms. But who those evacuees are, where they are staying and why they haven't found permanent housing is a mystery. When the Tribune-Herald contacted local hotels and motels by phone this month, all said they did not currently have evacuees as guests. In fact, the vast majority said they had not had any evacuees since the days right after last summer's storms. Susan Solomon, a...

Musician Tom Washington is playing a new tune in a new city. When Hurricane Katrina threatened his home in New Orleans, Washington packed up his family and his piano and headed to Baton Rouge. Washington said his life looked pretty bleak about five months ago -- he lost everything after the storm, but now he's trying to begin a new life in a new place. "We've lost a lot," Washington said. "I lost my mom the night before the storm, so that was a great loss." Things started to change for the displaced musician when he met with Pastor Shelton...

An impending deadline for residents to get out of hotel rooms has some residents in New Orleans hotels wondering where they will go. Yuri Clark said she'll have nowhere to go if FEMA puts her out of her hotel room. FEMA is asking every evacuee in a hotel room to get an authorization code from FEMA or to pay their own hotel bills beginning in early February. The agency is seeking to get people to sign up so that they can get them money for a more permanent solution like a trailer, home or apartment to rent, but officials have...

Victim turns gun on man trying to rob himBy MÓNICA GUZMÁN Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle A man who tried to rob a Katrina evacuee of his FEMA money early today by pointing a gun at him and throwing his daughter down a flight of stairs was killed when the evacuee managed to wrestle the gun away from him, police said. The gunman, who has not been identified, was one of three men who came to the door of 23-year-old Christopher Joseph Norris's apartment on the 6200 block of West Tidwell about 12:30 a.m. Norris, a Katrina evacuee, knew two of...

The assistant manager of a Baton Rouge hotel says some of the hurricane evacuees staying there are destroying the place. The comments come as evacuees complain about some phone restrictions put on them because of the alleged bad behavior of others. As of today, evacuees occupy 47 out of 82 rooms at the Microtel Hotel and Suites on Plaza Americana off Airline. The hotel says they're trying to stop some of the problems at the hotel, but evacuees say it's at their expense. Alice Williams moved into the hotel two days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her Lower Ninth Ward house....

ATLANTA, Jan. 21 - The 15,000-square-foot grand ballroom at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Atlanta was mostly empty on Saturday but for laminated posters emblazoned with the slogan: "Louisiana speaks: Our voice. Our plan. Our future," and a small army of helpful, eager-looking people in suits who seemed ready to pounce on anyone who set foot in the door. But they had few takers. Although it was the first time the thousands of Katrina evacuees living in Atlanta had been given the opportunity to share their views on rebuilding with Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, by noon, barely two...

ATLANTA -- Hurricane evacuees from Louisiana told federal and state officials at forums across the South on Saturday that what they want most when their state is rebuilt are affordable housing, better schools and stronger levees. Some evacuees at the "Louisiana Speaks" forums also worried that officials have no real plans to restore certain areas, such as New Orleans' impoverished Lower 9th Ward. "This (forum) is a good idea," Tereece Johnson, 40, whose mother and aunt lived in the 9th Ward and want to return there, said at the event held in Atlanta. "But is it going to accomplish something?...

HOUSTON -- A Houston couple fed up with crime has asked the Guardian Angels to help make the Bayou City a safer place, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday. Jeff and Christine Schmidt, Sharpstown residents, called the grass-roots anti-crime group after they got fed up about hearing gunshots in their neighborhood. "It's like a bad war zone. That's the only way I can describe it -- constant bullets," Christine Schmidt said.

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- Four months after fleeing Hurricane Katrina's winds and waters in New Orleans, Denise Gilmore had found a job at an area motel and a home for her four children in a Little Rock apartment complex. But on Tuesday the single mother found herself homeless and without belongings for the second time. A fire claimed the family's new residence. "We keep saying it's a dream," Gilmore said, standing outside Apartment 91 at the Rosewood Apartments. Hers was among two units destroyed in Monday's blaze - the other belonged to Latasha Patton, another Katrina refugee. Other apartments were...

On the heels of Hurricane Katrina, more than 100,000 evacuees landed in Houston. Now officials there say the city has found itself under the gun, with an escalating murder rate and population bursting at the seams. The murder rate is up 25 percent since last year and up 70 percent in December alone, with 14 more murders this month compared with the same time period last year. Although the connection between evacuees and the surge in violence is statistically tenuous, with only nine of the city's 122 post-Katrina homicides involving someone, either as suspect or victim, who evacuated there, city...