Vegans seek ways to help families fleeing the South

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, Sept. 9, 2005 | 9:53 a.m.

Hurricane Katrina's slap continued to be felt in the Las Vegas Valley on Thursday, with the total number of people filing through a one-stop center approaching 1,000 in its second day, even while the federal government announced that up to 500 more survivors would be arriving Monday.

A town meeting was held Thursday night at Nevada Partners, a nonprofit organization located on in West Las Vegas, a traditionally black neighborhood where many residents have relatives on the Gulf Coast.

At the meeting, dozens of speakers in a crowd of about 350 anxiously sought ways to help families fleeing the South, whether it be "holding a baby," as Relina Whitney, a self-described "retired person" put it, or opening the doors of a house.

State Sen. Steve Horsford, D-North Las Vegas and president of Nevada Partners, said the offers of help may have to be brokered between local residents and Katrina survivors, without government intervention.

"At some point, we may have to cut through the bureaucracy," Horsford said.

Horsford's organization will be preparing a database today, he said, of the dozens of services people at the meeting indicated they could offer arriving families.

Then further meetings will be held to coordinate the delivery of those services, whether it be braiding children's hair before they set off to their new schools in Las Vegas, or hooking up with a local company that needs employees.

Several hours earlier, Monsignor Patrick Leary, executive director of Catholic Charities, site of the one-stop center where Katrina survivors have been seeking services, said that about 500 people had been seen Thursday -- up from the the 350 seen Wednesday, the first day the center was up and running.

"A week ago, we thought this would be an operation helping 100 people," Leary said.

Kenneth LoBene, head of the local office of the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, said he had already assigned most of the 210 housing units his agency had been able to find working with the valley's three housing authorities.

"We're close to the limit, and that's without a plane landing," he said.

Frank Siracusa, chief of the state Emergency Management Division, said the federal government had told him Thursday morning that the much-anticipated plane or planes -- with up to 500 Katrina survivors arriving in Southern Nevada, and another 300 in Reno -- would hit the tarmac Monday.

But he wasn't told at what hour.

"We're trying to pin things down further," Siracusa said, echoing the sentiments of many around the valley Thursday when it came to preparing for the ripples Katrina continued sending to the Silver State.