Aiding the elderly: Churches again shelter nursing home evacuees

Published: 2005-09-06

BATON ROUGE, La. (CNS) -- John Tieperman, executive director of Chateau de Notre Dame nursing home in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, was about 15 minutes away from going home Aug. 26 to enjoy his weekend when he got an ominous call from his wife. "Have you seen the TV?" she asked. "You'd better turn it on." With little warning, meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center radically changed the projected landfall of Hurricane Katrina westward from the Florida panhandle to the southeast Louisiana coast. "I grabbed my staff and we were there until 8 o'clock planning what might happen," Tieperman said. What happened the next day was a meticulously choreographed evacuation of about 300 seniors -- many in extremely fragile health -- to temporary shelters at St. George and St. Thomas More churches in Baton Rouge. Tieperman said the same two parishes greeted the residents last year during the evacuation from Hurricane Ivan.

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