Refugee crisis created after city's evacuation

HOUSTON (AP) -- With a shattered New Orleans all but emptied out, an unprecedented refugee crisis unfolded across the country Sunday, as governors and emergency officials struggled to feed, shelter and educate more than a half-million people dispossessed by Hurricane Katrina.
In Texas, where nearly a quarter-million refugees have filled the state's relief centers, Gov. Rick Perry ordered emergency officials to airlift some evacuees to other states willing to take them. Among the states that have offered help are West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania.
Around the country, social service agencies, businesses, volunteer groups, military bases and other refugee shelters rushed to set up procedures to help Katrina's dispossessed obtain their Social Security checks, receive their medicines, get their mail, find missing relatives and pets and enroll their youngsters in school.
In Fort Chaffee, Ark., relief workers turned the post where Elvis Presley entered the Army in 1958 into a processing center for refugees. There, the homeless were registered by the Social Security Administration, checked by doctors and given post office boxes.
Up to 500 evacuees were headed for the Fort Custer Training Center, where volunteer cooks were readying meals at a mess hall normally for National Guard and military personnel from Ohio, Illinois and Indiana.