My sister drove 3 hours from her temporary home -- a ramshackle, 240 year-old plantation house -- to the Red Cross branch office in Alexandria, LA. She was denied assistance because she had to go to the main office -- branch offices were not processing applications for aid. Funny how there's a huge blurb in the center of the Red Cross regional office website all about how many people they are helping and how great they are.
Read it and laugh here. So all of the displaced people in Lousiana and wherever the heck else they escaped to have to somehow get back to the main office and stand in line for hours upon hours to get assistance. My sister also tried the "toll-free" number to register for assistance by phone -- she paid for 30 minutes of being on hold on her cell phone. Her house in the middle of the bayou won't be able to get telephone lines run until January, the phone company said, and I'm sure alot of other people don't have access to telephones. So will all the evacuees be flocking to pay phones around the region and camping out in their sleeping bags, just waiting for someone at the Red Cross to answer their call? All the money they've been given by people around the country, and they can't take aid applications at the Central Louisiana Chapter of the Red Cross? All that money and people willing to volunteer, and they can't get enough people to handle the call volume from victims needing help? Red Cross, Schmed Cross. Don't mess with my family.
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