We currently have 300 evacuees living in an old nursing home facility without a cook stove or washers and dryers. I am not sure yet if they even have a refrigerator as most equipment was removed to the new location. Buses are letting them out and moving on and no one here has heard from FEMA yet. We didn't even know that we were on the list until the first people began arriving last night.

Our town is 2100 people large....figure it up, folks. WE are going to take care of these 300 folks somehow, someway. WE the people of this very small, very poor town ARE going to get this done.

These people have nothing and we will be damned if we will wait on the government to help. These people have been through enough. They will be fed and clothed and provided with beds if we have to strip our own homes to do it. We will cook for them in our homes if necessary and take the food to them. We will take them into our homes if it comes to that.

It was "We, the people" in the beginning. It is still "We, the people" when the going gets really tough. Love and hope are not found in government; they are found in the individual human heart.

So, spare a prayer or two for the many smaller communities doing their best to help as much as they can. Our souls ache for these displaced people and there is so little we feel we can do. We lack manpower, resources and money for this job, but we will not fail them.

FEMA could take lessons from Southern folks in how to "get 'er done" in a crisis.