Fil-Am doctors help hurricane victims

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of Filipino-Americans were among the more than two million people ordered to leave the coasts of south Texas and Louisiana in a two-day mass evacuation before Hurricane "Rita" slammed into the Gulf coast, community leaders said.

But many Filipino doctors and nurses who lived in the oil city of Beaumont, Texas and knew they were in for a direct hit ignored evacuation orders and remained behind to help survivors.

"I don’t know exactly how many of the 500 Filipinos in Beaumont stayed back but many in the medical field did so they could be on hand to help," said Vice Consul Eduardo Yulo of the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, which handles Texas affairs.

"It is ironic that less than a month ago we were helping Filipino-Americans who had fled to Houston to escape the ravages of Hurricane "Katrina" in New Orleans. Now we are the ones in the eye of the storm," said lawyer and community leader Arlene Machetta in a telephone interview with The STAR from her flooded home in Houston.

Hurricane Rita pounded the Texas-Louisiana border early Saturday with 120 miles-per-hour winds, but then degraded into a storm. Authorities said damage did not appear to be as severe as expected.

However, vast scores of neighborhoods were under water and power supplies to many localities were down.

Rita was the second powerful hurricane to strike the Gulf Coast in less than a month, following Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, killing more than 1,000 people.

Many Filipino permanent residents and Filipino-Americans who fled to Houston from New Orleans, Louisiana to escape Katrina’s wrath were again forced to flee inland to Dallas, Austin or San Antonio in Texas to escape Rita, said Machetta, Southwest Region chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA).

Luckily, Houston — where a sizeable Filipino medical community lives — was spared a direct hit by Rita.

"It was a very stressful time for many of us. Thank God Rita did not turn out to be a monster we all thought it was going to be," Machetta said.

She and Yulo said they have received no reports of any Filipino casualties.

Yulo said he said he did not know how many of the estimated 70,000 Filipinos or Filipino-Americans in Texas lived in areas placed under forcible evacuation orders but Machetta who is with a disaster relief task force formed to help Filipino victims of Katrina, said it was in the tens of thousands.

She said the task force would now use all its resources to help victims of Rita.

Machetta said people who left Houston at the last moment had to turn back because the freeways were clogged shut.

"It was unbearable. It took 12 to 14 hours to move just a few miles," she said.

Authorities have urged people who fled Rita in one of the largest relocations in US peacetime history not to return home yet to avoid another massive tie-up in the freeways.