美国国家公共电台 NPR In Orange, Texas, Neighbors And Strangers Unite To Help Flood Victims

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Now to Houston and the devastation 1 that city is facing due to Hurricane Harvey. Volunteers have come from all over to help - neighbors and strangers working together. NPR's Debbie Elliott takes us now to meet some of the people who have loaded up their boats for rescues and packed trailers full of food and water to aid people who no longer have a home.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE 2: Epi Mungui is overseeing a makeshift distribution center in the middle of a sweltering-hot strip center parking lot in his hometown of Orange, Texas.

EPI MUNGUI: We've got water. People have been bringing canned food. We've got diapers. They keep coming in. they keep going. Baby food - we've got formula.

ELLIOTT: This parking lot is where the National Guard and volunteer rescuers first brought people displaced by floodwaters, a sort of hub for evacuations Mungui says word spread, and donations started pouring in.

MUNGUI: It's heartbreaking. But you know what? It's also amazing to see people come together in a time of distress 3. I wish we could be like this all the time.

ELLIOTT: Orange is near the Louisiana line. And the so-called Cajun Navy has been in full force here, people like Van Lorena.

VAN LORENA: We rescued this neighborhood Wednesday morning. And then after they got all that done, we said, we'll just come back and bring them. So we brought everything from tampons (laughter) to batteries to diapers. You name it.

ELLIOTT: He's from Denham Springs, La., which was devastated 4 by a flood last year. He says it was an easy call to come help Texans in the same fix.

LORENA: Well, you couldn't not. I'm not the kind of guy that can sit there and watch it on the news and not do nothing.

ELLIOTT: More Louisiana folk are in the kitchen - really, just a trailer and a tent stocked with a grill 5, a smoker 6 and a giant gas-fired kettle.

(SOUNDBITE OF SIZZLING)

ELLIOTT: They're making lunch.

RANDY MELERINE: (Singing) Jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo - hey.

Here you go, baby.

ELLIOTT: People are lined up by mid-morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What are we eating today, brother?

MELERINE: Twelve o'clock, we're going to have some jambalaya and pulled pork sandwiches.

ELLIOTT: Randy Melerine hands out cake and fruit until the noon meal is ready.

MELERINE: You want some cake, baby?

ELLIOTT: Rita Deal eats a slice.

RITA DEAL: Got water in my house. So I'm hungry (laughter). I live alone.

ELLIOTT: She's a 70-year-old cancer patient and has been staying in her soaked home with no electricity ever since the water woke her early Wednesday.

DEAL: I heard something go blub, blub, blub, blub at the end of the sewer 7 line. And it was coming up through both commodes.

ELLIOTT: She's weary of the thought of mucking out.

DEAL: I went through Hurricane Rita and lost everything. Here I go again. I'm too old to start again.

ELLIOTT: After lunch, she sorts through boxes, getting a toy for her dogs, some bottled water and packs of crackers 8 to take back home. More supplies are coming, says Gary Hill, the manager of the Market Basket grocery store next door. He's become the unofficial commander of this operation.

GARY HILL: This parking lot has been a control center.

ELLIOTT: Hill's been sleeping on a beanbag chair at the store. A tear rolls down his cheek as he talks about all the officials and volunteers who have come to help in Orange.

HILL: They're taking care of us. Really wonderful people. It's about working together as a team 'cause you know what? We're all the same in the eyes of God.

ELLIOTT: Outside, Troy Hueschen is overseeing the makeshift kitchen staffed by two Catholic men's clubs from Slidell, La., just outside New Orleans.

TROY HUESCHEN: We've been through it with Katrina. So we're here to serve the people, and we all need to stick together. That's what Americans do. That's what we do.

ELLIOTT: Charles Sam is having lunch.

CHARLES SAM: I appreciate it. I appreciate it to the fullest. I mean, you know, you don't find this too many days. You know, most of the time, everybody's is out for themselves.

ELLIOTT: Sam's house flooded, so he stuffed a black, plastic garbage bag with his meds and a few personal belongings 9 and is waiting here in the parking lot to be evacuated 10 to an emergency shelter in Alexandria, La., because, like communities all across southeast Texas, his neighborhood is uninhabitable. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Orange, Texas.