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 News from Around the Americas | September 2005 
In a Multitude of Forms, the Offers of Help Pour In
 Jodi Wilgoren - NYTimes
| | Medical personnel attend to a man airlifted from New Orleans, Louisiana to Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. Twenty three evacuees were on an Oklahoma Air National Guard C-130 Hercules with more expected to arrive in the coming days.(Photo: Dave Einsel) |
Americans are opening their wallets, homes and hearts to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in an outpouring expected to rival the response to the Asian tsunami and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with donations and pledges from individuals and businesses already nearing $100 million by midday yesterday.
The American Red Cross, which is leading the relief effort, had received $71 million by the end of Wednesday, more than half the $130 million it has promised to raise and two-thirds of the $109 million collected for the four hurricanes that hit Florida last year combined.
The group's Help Now Web site had 150,000 hits, the most for one day in its history, on Wednesday, and has been deluged at its local offices with offers of volunteers, many of whom are being turned away for lack of training.
"It eclipses everything right now," said Ryland Dodge, a Red Cross spokesman.
Television announced plans for several celebrity-studded telethons - tonight on NBC, Tuesday on all major broadcast networks simultaneously and Sept. 10 on MTV - while Jerry Lewis's Labor Day extravaganza for muscular dystrophy has promised $1 million for hurricane victims.
Corporations opened their coffers, led by $10 million from UnitedHealth Group's foundation, and many matched money with material: Kellogg sent seven truckloads of NutriGrain bars, crackers and cookies south, U-Haul offered 30 days of free storage to affected families and Nissan said it would lend 50 full-size trucks for a month. The chief executive of Delta Airlines flew from Atlanta to New Orleans on Wednesday in a 757 stuffed with 20,000 pounds of cots, blankets, food, generators and toilet paper, and returned with 150 stranded employees and passengers.
In Duluth, Minn., the mayor yesterday asked each of the 87,000 residents - and those in surrounding towns - to give $10 each, in hopes of raising $1 million in a week. In Pasadena, Calif., Red Cross volunteers had collected $155,963 from 1,500 cars by noon in a daylong "drive-by fund-raiser" at the Rose Bowl, where one man brought a water-cooler bottle filled with pennies he had saved over 15 years.
In Parkland, Fla., students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have ordered 4,000 strands of Mardi Gras beads they plan to sell for $2 each starting today in hopes of igniting a new fad to rival the ubiquitous yellow rubber "Livestrong" bracelets.
David Grad, the school's student government adviser and athletic director, said, "In light of the devastation, let's stand behind the philosophy of partying and use the concept because we can't have any partying now."
President Bush, who appointed his father and former President Bill Clinton yesterday to lead fund-raising efforts for the hurricane as they did in the aftermath of the tsunami, said in his speech to the nation Wednesday, "At this stage in the recovery efforts, it's important for those who want to contribute to contribute cash."
But many people said that the vastness of the devastation, the fact that many of the victims seemed so desperately poor, and personal connections to New Orleans compelled them to go beyond the instinctive act of writing a check. Memories of honeymoons in the French Quarter, revelry at Mardi Gras parades and even debauched evenings downing the city's signature rum-and-lime-juice cocktail, the Hurricane, have made Hurricane Katrina touch Americans more deeply.
"I've been to New Orleans, I know people who are living there - it seems more personal," said Susie Meredith, 32, a law student in Grosse Pointe, Mich., who posted a message on www.katrinahelp.com offering to make long-distance telephone calls or run errands for displaced people. "It's Americans. It's me."
Thousands of families - from millionaires with mansions in Marin County, Calif., to a machine operator willing to have people pitch tents in his backyard in rural North Carolina - have posted messages on the Internet inviting refugees to stay with them or move permanently to their towns.
Many have offered to drive toward the disaster zone to pick up refugees; Gaea Walters, 28, a systems engineer in Monroe, La., was headed last night to a shelter at the local civic center in search of a three-member family to fill her extra bedroom and bathroom for the foreseeable future.
Ms. Walters said she was once unemployed and on government assistance. "Now I'm in a position where I can help somebody, and I'm just dying to be able to," she said.
On www.nola.com, the Web site for The Times-Picayune, the New Orleans daily, employers offered the newly jobless the next line on their résumés: carpenters and roofers are wanted in Montana, nurses in Virginia, skilled machinists in St. Petersburg, Fla., and a nanny on Staten Island. On craigslist.com, people in Kansas and Texas offered to stable abandoned horses; a certified rescue diver in Florida offered to dive for bodies in the flooded streets of New Orleans; a pilot offered to help with his small plane; and several people offered frequent-flier miles.
A company based in Indianapolis that sells equipment to destroy medical and biological waste, WR2, is ready to adopt a family, promising a $50,000-a-year job, an apartment, new clothes, groceries and a car.
"If 1,000 companies in Indiana alone do this, then 4,000 people can regain hope," said Laurie Farris, executive administrator of the company, where 3 of the 53 employees are New Orleans natives. "If, nationally, 50,000 companies do this, then 200,000 people can begin their life again, and we would then be making a major impact at addressing this problem."
The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper that tracks charitable giving, said contributions exploded late Wednesday and early yesterday, putting the hurricane on pace to equal or exceed the amounts raised for the tsunami and the Sept. 11 attacks.
About a third of the total has come from corporations, which gave 26 percent of the $2.7 billion after the terrorist attacks and 37 percent of the $1.5 billion raised for tsunami relief. Already Chevron, which has extensive operations in the Gulf Coast, has pledged $5 million in cash; Dow Chemical $3 million, including $1 million in products and technology; Wal-Mart and Exxon $2 million each. Mattel announced it would send $100,000 to the Red Cross - plus thousands of toys to hurricane refugees in temporary shelters.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Geraldine Fabrikant, Bill Carter and Denise Grady in New York; Gretchen Ruethling in Chicago; Drew Digby in Duluth, Minn.; and Terry Aguayo in Miami. |
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