BAY St. LOUIS | Residents improvise unsanctioned shelters

KRT Wire | 09/09/2005 | BAY St. LOUIS | Residents improvise unsanctioned shelters:

"With no official shelters in town, local people say they're doing the best they can.

"'The authorities are saying that things can't be willy-nilly -- that they didn't want church groups and other folks coming in and doing things,' said waitress [Tricia] Bliler.

"'But it's got to be willy-nilly -- it's all we have.'"

Hundreds of persons had taken shelter in the local high school, but the Red Cross refused to organize it as an official shelter - its in a flood plain. The result was that portable toilets overflowed, school property was damaged and eventually the school board had to order the people out. That impromptu shelter held over a thousand persons at its peak, some from as far away as New Orleans.

There is a Red Cross shelter in a school 15 miles north of Bay St. Louis if you can arrange your own transport to get there. It has a shrinking population, now only 85, but is rated for only 300 people so it couldn't handle all the folks from Bay St. Louis if they could get there.

The bureaucratic mentality at work - letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.