Internally Displaced People

They squat in abandoned buildings, crash in rickety schoolhouses or sleep under bushes and trees. They stumble into the city wooden-faced and traumatized, children in tow, with little or nothing but the clothes they were wearing when they fled their houses. Tens of thousands of Georgians have been forced from their homes by days of fighting and Russian occupation, leaving this small country suddenly swamped in a major humanitarian crisis.

This overcrowded Darfur displacement camp is preparing for battle. Men have dug trenches and dragged tree trunks across dirt roads. Young lookouts, some armed with sticks and axes, scan the horizon for invaders. Even aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers are increasingly wary of Kalma's besieged and, at times, belligerent population.

A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq, where thousands of people have sought refuge from sectarian violence, is overwhelming hospitals and has killed as many as 10 people, health officials said Friday. The outbreak in Sulaymaniya and Kirkuk is seen as the latest example of the displacement and deterioration of living conditions caused by the Iraqi conflict. The water-borne disease has struck more than 80 people in the two cities, which are about 100 miles apart, said Claire Hajaj of the U.N.

SAN DIEGO -- Just inside the stadium gate Monday, a young bleached-blond woman offered a drink: "Would you care for a Red Bull, sir?" Another hundred feet on, a woman walked by carrying a sign: "Anyone distressed?" She gave directions to a crisis counseling center down the way. There was more food than could be eaten. More help than could be used. San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders guessed there were as many volunteers as victims.

Iraq's displaced population has grown to 2.3 million people, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society said Monday on the heels of a warning by another humanitarian aid group that border tensions are exacerbating the plight of those who fled north to escape sectarian violence. The Red Crescent report says an additional 67,000 families left their homes in September, continuing a pattern that has multiplied the number of displaced people more than fivefold this year.

When Brian Kent's 18-year marriage ended in June, breaking up his family of four children and one grandchild, he thought that would be the most painful experience of his life. Then Hurricane Katrina struck in late August, destroying his New Orleans home, his antique car and the janitorial business he ran for 20 years. He has been living in Carson hotel rooms for more than five months, struggling to get back on his feet.

The clock ran out Monday for about 12,000 families left homeless by last year's hurricanes when a judge agreed to let the federal government cut them from a program that had paid for housing at hotels across the nation. Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that those evacuated after hurricanes Katrina and Rita would continue to get financial aid that could be used to pay for lodging or to repair homes.

It seemed for a while that Hurricane Katrina might give St. Augustine parish -- home to one of the nation's oldest African American Catholic churches -- a reprieve. After years of seeing its attendance drop, the numbers climbed as people pulled together in churches that were spared devastation.

Karen Miller and her husband, left homeless when Hurricane Katrina ravaged their Louisiana home, are not looking forward to Mardi Gras on Feb. 28. It's the day their FEMA emergency rent money runs out and their continued stay in Orange County -- 1,900 miles from home -- becomes a big question mark. "Come March 1, who knows where my husband and I will be," Miller, 46, said in the lobby of Extended Stay America in Anaheim.

She didn't know diaper wipes could freeze so fast. One moment they were a stack of moist towelettes, next they were an icy white brick. Patti Tobias had left her infant's wipes in the back seat of the car on a morning when the temperature dipped to 7 degrees below zero. "Huh," she said, inspecting the block and grinning. Her relatives in New Orleans would get a kick out of this.