Day One at the Astrodome
From Peter:
My wife, Topaz, and I were the first volunteers from The Family International to have access to the evacuees at the Astrodome. We entered the Astrodome on the 4th floor and we looked down and all we could see was a sea of green cots with people on them — many, many people milling around. At that time there were about 12,000 people there and they were coming in as fast as the buses could unload them. So we went down to the floor and most of the people hadn’t showered or changed clothes since the hurricane had hit — so they were mostly in pretty bad way. The first thing we did was we helped the new arrivals by finding a spot for them, setting up cots, getting them blankets and whatever else we could do.
We did that for a while but I had an accident with my finger while setting up a cot so I had to go to the medical area to get it taken care of.
While we were in the medical area we saw there was a need for some counselling. We were only there a few minutes when a couple other volunteers came up who had found an 89 year old lady who was pretty crippled, she couldn’t stand up on her own. She was lying on a cot — she had a wheelchair there as well — but she was lying on this cot all alone and she didn’t have anyone to help her get to the toilet or get food for her or anything, and she had the same clothes she’d had on since the hurricane had happened, and she smelled pretty bad. She had a lot of medical problems as well — so we got about 5 people and we finally got her into a wheelchair, and we took her to the medical center. At that time the people were having to wait about 9 hours to get medical attention.
While we were at the medical center a woman who came looking for her baby. She had delivered a premature baby the day of the hurricane, but when they evacuated the hospital they evacuated the baby in one direction and the mother in another. We were able to pray with this mother — we prayed with about 5 people. We helped another woman whose legs were cracking and swollen and gray from being in the contaminated water in New Orleans. We prayed with a lot of people that first day, and finally left for home about 10:30.
