MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. Now, your responses to yesterday's program.
BLOCK: I spoke with Wayne Ross, who evacuated New Orleans on Saturday, before Hurricane Gustav. He's been staying at a state-run shelter in Shreveport, an old Sam's Club warehouse, and he described the conditions there as so poor, with no running water, that he would rather have stayed home.
Mr. WAYNE ROSS (Evacuee): We don't even have facilities to take a shower. You have to use a sink to wash off. And if you can imagine 2,600 people with four sinks, two a bathroom, and the for the majority the - all the toilets are outside. It's unbearable.
NORRIS: Well, Kathy Wade(ph) from Del City, Oklahoma, heard our interview and wrote to us about a different scene.
I live in the Oklahoma City area, where about 1,800 evacuees were housed in a vacant Lucent Technology building. It was a brilliant, inspiring collaboration of Red Cross volunteers, police, state emergency services and Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers. Cots, hot meals, shower facilities, Internet service, and protection by our police were all provided. Wade continues, the story about Shreveport's facilities is a heart-breaking one, but just know there was an area of the country that got it right when it needed to be right.
BLOCK: Well, after I spoke with Mr. Ross, we reached out to the Louisiana Department of Social Services for a response. We got a call last night, after our program had gone off the air, from the department secretary, Ann Silverberg Williamson.
NORRIS: She acknowledged there were not enough bathrooms at the Sam's Club shelter, but she said that a truck with portable showers did arrive midday yesterday. She expressed sympathy for evacuees eager to get home, and said the shelter, quote, didn't have all the comforts of home. But she added that in a large-scale natural disaster, the first priority must be safety.
BLOCK: We appreciate your comments. You can send them to us by going to our Web site, npr.org. Click on Contact Us at the top of the page. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.