Evacuees Find Open Doors in California

Elaine West savored them both Sunday as she helped lead the first trickle of what could become a wave of survivors of Hurricane Katrina into California.

"I think I might stay here," said the grateful 52-year-old former candy maker as she surveyed Los Angeles from a hilltop next to the Hollywood Freeway.

She quietly told of being driven out of her Uptown New Orleans home, not by rising floodwaters but by vandals who looted her neighborhood and by gunfire that killed two of her neighbors.

"I don't see myself ever going back to New Orleans again," she said. "Even to visit."

West was among 10 evacuees who arrived early Sunday at the Dream Center, a church-sponsored outreach and rehabilitation facility based at the former Queen of Angels Hospital near Echo Park. They were among the first of what could be thousands of hurricane victims headed for California.

Elsewhere in the state, 80 survivors from the Gulf states arrived in San Diego late Sunday on a jet provided by a local businessman and were taken temporarily to Kearny High School. An additional 300 were reportedly headed to San Francisco for short-term stays at St. Mary's Cathedral.

San Jose agreed to take in 100 evacuees after being asked by the state Office of Emergency Services, said Tom Manheim, a spokesman for the city.

Rob Gandy, a spokesman for the Office of Emergency Services, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had asked that all counties in the state be surveyed to see how many victims they might be able to shelter.

Gandy could not provide any figures for how many survivors California might take in or how many counties had agreed to be hosts.

Los Angeles County and city officials said they were still trying to determine how many evacuees they could take in, based on available shelters, and hoped to have an estimate by Tuesday.

Red Cross officials in Los Angeles scrambled to find temporary housing of at least two weeks in local hotels and longer-term shelter in corporate housing or at empty military bases and other government facilities.

"To have people have to sleep in the Forum or in the Sports Arena for six or eight months isn't acceptable," said local Red Cross spokesman Nicholas Samaniego. "All of the Southern California Red Cross chapters are trying to see what we can come up with."