"Thousands of evacuees could be coming to Bay Area" - Oakland Red Cross Office

Evacuees slowly pour into Oakland
Red Cross aids victims, predicts thousands may come from Gulf Coast
By Jason Dearen, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND — On Monday when Hurricane Katrina began drowning the Gulf Coast, New Orleans-area resident Maeceil Silliker and her twin sister, Lucille Hagstette, were celebrating their 74th birthdays.

Friday afternoon, Maeceil Silliker was sitting in the Oakland office of the American Red Cross with son Frank Silliker Jr., exhausted from the events of the past week.

No one has heard from Lucille, who lives in Chalmette, La., a suburb just down the Mississippi River from New Orleans.

"We can't find our Dad either, Frank Silliker Sr.," said Frank Jr., his face ashen from a week of driving, flying and worrying about his family. "He was in an assisted living facility in New Orleans' Jefferson Parish."

The Sillikers are two of thousands of evacuees who have managed to escape Katrina's carnage. The Oakland Red Cross office has already helped 15 to 20 Katrina evacuees who have family in the Bay Area. It is also home to one of 11 national call centers, where headset-wearing volunteers Friday took call after call from victims.

Nationwide there are about 75,000 hurricane evacuees in Red Cross shelters. "This is the largest Red Cross response to a natural disaster in our 125-year history," said Gregory Smith, chief public support officer for the Red Cross.

The 20 or so evacuees helped by the Oakland Red Cross are just the tip of the iceberg, agency workers said.

"This crowd is swelling ...they're flooding in," said Monte Churchill, head of family services at the Oakland office. "It is not unreasonable to think that in the end, thousands of evacuees could be coming."