Thursday, Sept. 15, 2005 | 11:22 a.m.
After spreading the word for more than a week that Gulf Coast victims arriving in the valley should seek help at the Fertitta Community Assistance Center at Catholic Charities, the county is now saying that the center is proving too small and that the operation needs to be moved.
As of this morning, however, county officials hadn't found a new location for the relief effort, so it remains at the center.
The announcement came about the same time that the effort ran out of federally-funded housing. So officials are also searching for new sources of housing.
Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said moving the operation is necessary because survivors are continuing to come to Southern Nevada and because the Fertitta center and the rest of Catholic Charities must return to serving its core population, the homeless and low-income residents of the valley.
Monsignor Patrick Leary, executive director of the nonprofit organization, said, "It's too big of a project for Catholic Charities."
When the county first started the operation at Fertitta last week, Leary expressed concerns about expectations that the number of people needing help could rise from an original estimate of 100 to about 2,000, and that the center and Catholic Charities in general would prove unable to handle the load.
"I don't have a crystal ball, but my guess turned out to be right," he said this morning. He also said all those working at the center had been working long hours to help the rising numbers of Katrina survivors hitting the valley.
More than 200 people from the Gulf Coast arrived at the Fertitta center Wednesday, bringing the total number processed there to more than 1,800, according to the county.
Stacey Welling, spokeswoman for the county, said that the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, working with local housing authorities, had placed people in 254 apartments by the end of Tuesday -- or as many apartments as they had available.
From Wednesday on, she said, HUD has been trying to maintain lists of apartment owners who were willing to waive certain fees.
All the Gulf Coast survivors have come to Southern Nevada on their own with help from family or non-governmental support, the county stated. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has not flown any of them here, the county said.
Reilly said the county is working with FEMA officials to locate a new facility and hopes to have a location by next week. He said the county is looking into several locations, including warehouses in Southern Nevada that could be outfitted with appropriate facilities.
FEMA will reimburse the county for the new facility, Reilly said, and the county said that FEMA would operate the center once the county set it up.
The county is searching for a "disaster recovery center" of at least 25,000 square feet located on a major street near the center of the town with sufficient parking for staff and evacuees, the county stated.
Leary suggested more than a week ago that Cashman Center, which is used for a yearly event that serves about 2,000 homeless people, would be a good site for the effort.
Reilly said at that time that Fertitta needed to be tried first and if a larger site was needed a move would be made.
Currently, Katrina survivors at the Fertitta center have a one-stop center where they could receive immunizations, medical attention and access basic services, Reilly said.
Although he described the site as the "ideal set up," he said FEMA, the county, state and other agencies agreed to move the assistance operation from the center so the staff at the center can start using it again for its primary mission -- helping the valley's homeless and low-income people.
One site that the county will not send people to is the Cambridge Recreation Center, which was to be used as a recovery center for people who were to be airlifted from the Gulf Coast by FEMA, Reilly said.
The Cambridge Recreation Center, which was closed in preparation for the event, was never used because FEMA did not fly people to Southern Nevada and because it did not want to "displace the programs" that the Cambridge Recreation center was providing to southern Nevada residents, he said.
Although the people who normally use Fertitta were displaced by the hurricane victims, Fertitta was a logical choice for the emergency relief effort because the center already had in place the agencies and expertise to provide many of the needed services.
Unlike some cities such as Houston, which utilized the Astrodome to accept more than 15,000 evacuees, the county will not attempt to use a stadium-setting such as the Thomas & Mack Center for the recovery center, Reilly said.
Reilly said that stadiums are not the idea situations to house evacuees, and they did not work out well in other cities.
Houston needed to use the Astrodome because of the overwhelming number of evacuees transported to the city, but southern Nevada was not facing such a huge number of people, he said.
Plus, the county "didn't want to place people on cots," Reilly said.
Erik Pappa, spokesman for the county, said a number of different agencies will be asked to use their Web sites to inform that the Fertitta center will not take more people fleeing the Gulf Coast. The county will also attempt to spread the word through the media, he said.
Pappa said that the crux of the problem is that large numbers of Katrina survivors have been coming to Southern Nevada.
"We are being hit harder than places like Denver and Phoenix, and the numbers coming here haven't been letting up. We have no idea how long this is going to continue."
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