Residents ready to open their doors to refugees

Near Chewelah, retired Air Force officer Charles Thornton has room in his family’s new home on 20 acres.

In Post Falls, social worker Celia Yates has two spare bedrooms.

On Spokane’s lower South Hill, woodsmith Aaron Mann has the bottom half of his old home ready.

Across the region – and across the country – people appalled at the human suffering from Hurricane Katrina are offering rooms, apartments and other aid to the evacuees thousands of miles away.

“I’ve donated money to causes, but nothing like this,” said Mann, who was stunned at the television images of dehydrated babies and scared children.

In Olympia Tuesday night, Gov. Christine Gregoire said the state is still awaiting word from the federal government on the state’s offer to house up to 2,000 evacuees. She’s one of several governors who will be on a conference call with the federal head of Homeland Security. The state has already dispatched KC-135 jets from Fairchild Air Force Base and is about to send 130 aviation soldiers with up to six Blackhawk helicopters.

If the evacuees come to Washington, the governor said, the tentative plan is for them to fly into McChord Air Force Base, near Tacoma, then to be housed for two to four days at nearby Fort Lewis. After medical screenings at both sites, they would be sent to live in communities.

“We know full well from states that have accepted folks that these are pretty traumatized folks,” Gregoire said. The first batch of evacuees could arrive as early as Thursday, she said.

Meanwhile, offers of help continue to pour in. Washington on Tuesday night was setting up a toll-free hotline for people offering housing, goods or services: (800) 941-2930.

“Some person today called with a warehouse of clothes,” said Gregoire. “But we don’t know what they’ll need when they get here.”

In Idaho, state officials scrambled Tuesday to find nursing home beds for some of the most fragile evacuees. Idaho National Guard cargo planes ferried food and water to the hurricane-damaged region.

Dozens of people in both Eastern Washington and North Idaho have added their names to www.hurricanehousing.org, www.theopenhouseproject.org, www.craigslist.org and other Web sites listing free housing available to evacuees.

“I don’t know if somebody wants to come up this far, but I’m more than willing to offer,” said Thornton, whose listing describes the elk, wild turkeys and scenery from his home. “They’re going to be displaced for a long time, and they can’t afford to stay in hotel rooms for all that time. You have to do something, and my wife said ‘Let’s help.’ “

Many of the Web sites caution that they can’t be responsible for the behavior of people moving into other people’s homes, and some organizations and church groups are reportedly running landlord-style background checks on evacuees. Many of the listings are for women and children.

Thornton said he hadn’t thought about background checks, but that he’d probably require a contract, in case things go awry and he has to get his visitors to leave. Mann said he’d require them to be on a Red Cross list of evacuees.

“There’s so much fraud going on on the Internet; maybe these people wouldn’t even be evacuees,” he said. “You don’t know. There’s people that might just want a free place to live.”

But he also said he has no second thoughts about offering his home to those in need.

“I think you have to set aside some of your fears sometimes, and have some faith about it,” Mann said. “You have to make a decision to trust people.”