Hurricane evacuees eager to return home

Published: 2005-09-22

NATCHEZ, Miss. (CNS) -- Full of praise for the care they received in the shelter at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Natchez, Ruby Bullock and her husband, Ernice Sullivan, nonetheless cannot wait to go home again. "We hope they let us stay here until we can go home again," said Bullock. "It's clean, we get three meals a day, there's a washer and dryer and showers are available. We are hoping to go home in the next month, maybe before then if we can." Home is Algiers, La., which the couple fled Aug. 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast and caused the flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans. Algiers, a suburb of New Orleans that sits on the west bank of the Mississippi River overlooking the French Quarter, experienced some flooding. Some residents were allowed to return beginning Sept. 19, but by Sept. 22 police and city officials told people in the New Orleans area, including the recently returned Katrina victims, to leave because of the potential flooding that could follow Hurricane Rita, headed for landfall Sept. 24.

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