Urgent Weather Message from NWS New Orleans

[尼古拉前执事]

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[尼古拉前执事]

Charleston Daily Mail
Seven children found wandering together
Six-year-old in charge;
group later reunited
with parents

By The Associated Press

Monday September 05, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La. -- In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans. In the Baton Rouge headquarters of the rescue operation, paramedics tried to coax their names out of them; nurses who examined them stayed up that night, brooding.

Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.

"It goes back to the same thing," he said. "How did a 6-year-old end up being in charge of six babies?"

So far, parents displaced by flooding have reported 220 children missing, but that number is expected to rise, said Mike Kenner of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which will help reunite families. With crowds churning at evacuation points, many children were parted from their parents accidentally; one woman handed her baby up onto a bus, turned around to pick up her suitcase and turned back to find that the bus had left.

At the rescue headquarters, a cool tile-floored building swarming with firefighters and paramedics, the children ate cafeteria food and fell into a deep sleep. Deamonte volunteered his vital statistics. He said his father was tall and his mother was short. He gave his address, his phone number and the name of his elementary school.

He said the 5-month-old was his brother, Darynael, and that two others were his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria. The other three lived in his apartment building.

The children were clean and healthy -- downright plump in the case of the infant, said Joyce Miller, a nurse who examined them. It was clear, she said, that "time had been taken with those kids." The baby was "fat and happy."

"This baby child was terrified," he said. "After she relaxed, it was gobble, gobble, gobble."

As grim dispatches came in from the field, one woman in the office burst into tears at the thought that the children had been abandoned in New Orleans, said Sharon Howard, assistant secretary of the office of public health.

Late the same night, they got an encouraging report: A woman in a shelter in Thibodeaux was searching for seven children. People in the building started clapping at the news. But when they got the mother on the phone, it became clear that she was looking for a different group of seven children, Howard said.

"What that made me understand was that this was happening across the state," she said. "That kind of frightened me."

The children were transferred to a shelter operated by the Department of Social Services, rooms full of toys and cribs where mentors from the Big Buddy Program were on hand day and night. For the next two days, the staff did detective work.

Deamonte began to give more details to Derrick Robertson, a 27-year-old Big Buddy mentor: How he saw his mother cry when he was loaded onto the helicopter. How he promised her he'd take care of his little brother.

Late Saturday night, they found Deamonte's mother, who was in a shelter in San Antonio along with the four mothers of the other five children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her children's pictures on a web site set up over the weekend by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight was waiting to take the children to Texas.

In a phone interview, Williams said she is the kind of mother who doesn't let her children out of her sight. What happened the Thursday after the hurricane, she said, was that her family, trapped in an apartment building on the 3200 block of Third Street in New Orleans, began to feel desperate.

The water wasn't going down and they had been living without light, food or air conditioning for four days. The baby needed milk and the milk was gone. So she decided they would evacuate by helicopter. When a helicopter arrived to pick them up they were told to send the children first and that the helicopter would be back in 25 minutes. She and her neighbors had to make a quick decision.

It was a wrenching moment. Williams' father, Adrian Love, told her to send the children ahead.

"I told them to go ahead and give them up, because me, I would give my life for my kids. They should feel the same way," said Love, 48. "They were shedding tears. I said,

[尼古拉前执事]

8:28 A.M. - (AP) -- Offers of help keep pouring in from countries all around the world, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Greece says it's offered the U.S. the use of two cruise ships "for several months" to help house thousands made homeless by the storm.

Greece is also offering relief supplies and emergency crews. Greece is experienced in rescuing victims of earthquakes and other natural disasters. Spanish officials say they can help too. They say they've received a laundry list of needs from the U-S ambassador that include oil, canned food and medical equipment. The ambassador also highlighted the need for logistics specialists.

[Ekaterina]

Statement by His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus

During these days, as we mourn over the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, I call upon all to raise their prayers for the dead and the suffering, their relatives, the rescuers and others who lend their help and support.

I pray before the Kurk-Root Icon of the Mother of God, the main holy icon of our Church, with the hope that the Most-Blessed Virgin will strengthen and console everyone, including Priest Alexander Logunov and the parishioners of St John of Shanghai Community in Mobile, Alabama, whose church suffered damage.

The Gospel shows us that the Mother of God possessed true humility. She always accepted the will of God, subjecting and submitting herself totally to it, remembering that everything

[spiridon]

That was nice of him,but is it something that he had to make public..maybe a better way to express this was for him to actually visit his parishes in The U.S. atleast 1 every 2-3 years and quit spending so much time in moscow,instead.................What do you guys think?

[John Haluska]

Vladyka Laurus said,

"I call upon all to raise their prayers for the dead and the suffering, their relatives, the rescuers and others who lend their help and support."

We should all do this...

Prayer is what is most important now, especially to the Theotokos, in their time of need.

John Haluska

[Ekaterina]

Anyone wishing to send aid, can send to the following address:

St John the Wonderworker Church
2000 Riverside Dr
Mobile, AL 36605

Katya