Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

A post from Above Top Secret has been showing up on a lot of blogs throughout the nation -- from Boing Boing and Culture Kitchen to, closer to home, Okiedoke and Existential Ramble -- and it begs some clarification.

Like all states providing housing, medical care and other assistance for evacuees from the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast, Oklahomans deserve credit for their commitment to helping people whose lives have been ripped apart by this disaster. And that includes the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma for answering the call to open its southern Oklahoma campground, Falls Creek, up to some 3,000 storm victims.

One falsehood from the ATS blog is as follows:

"The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and 'a sum of money' and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months."

Wrong. If Falls Creek had actually been utilized for housing refugees (more on that in a second), evacuees would have been allowed to leave, but they would not have been allowed to return. News reports indicated that the problem would have been security personnel reprocessing them back into the facility. Don't forget that a major U.S. city and its surrounding environs were evacuated completely. That means inviting people of all walks of life, and that means taking sensible precautions. While the vast majority of evacuees are law-abiding people who have been through an unfathomable ordeal, a small number are not so nice. As news reports have pointed out, a number of hurricane victims placed at Camp Gruber in northeastern Oklahoma included several gangbangers and convicted sex offenders.

Moreover, Falls Creek volunteers did not plan to keep hurricane victims for five months; they wanted to be able to accommodate for up to five months -- if necessary.

It was no detainment camp. A coordinated effort among state authorities and the faith-based community resulted in Falls Creek receiving more than 1,200 volunteers, from medical professionals to Oklahoma Baptists who traveled across the state to help folks in desperate need. Compared to the nightmarish Superdome and the Tom DeLay-sanctioned camping hijinks of the Astrodome, Falls Creek promised to be ideal for long-term housing of hurricane victims.

It should go without saying, then, that FEMA's infinite wisdom eventually rejected using it as a housing section for evacuees. Apparently, the agency felt it made more sense to ship the city's poor and infirm -- many of whom had never been out of Bayou Country -- to such comparatively exotic locales as Utah and Rhode Island. The lights remained off at Falls Creek.

The author of the blog, evidently a volunteer from one of the Baptist churches with a cabin at Falls Creek, expresses dismay that highway patrol troopers and ambulances were so prevalent in the area. What would she expect? Again, the post-hurricane lawlessness that terrorized New Orleans speaks to the importance of ensuring public safety and security. As for the ambulances? Well, that would be to take refugees needing medical attention to area hospitals. Some 80 evacuees who were brought to Camp Gruber required immediate medical care.

Criminy.

As someone decidedly ambivalent about religion, I'm not used to coming to the defense of the faith-based crowd, but c'mon: Lumping relief workers in with the federal incompetents does a disservice to everyone. And it plays right into the hands of Bush apologists who would like to dismiss all carping and criticism as partisan rancor.

Don't give them that chance.