If only I had talked to 63 year-old Lucille Canty and her family before they evacuated to Alexandria, Louisiana for Hurricane Gustav (see “Mass Evacuation Worked In Rehearsal, But..”).

In 2005, thousands of us Katrina evacuees from New Orleans who were in Lake Charles became Rita evacuees, escorted non-stop by state police through sleepy southwestern Louisiana towns in a special, joyous bus and car caravan.

I would have let the Canty family know a little about what they could possibly face in the Red Cross shelter from hell – a dilapidated, old, musky domed coliseum built in 1965 that eeks of stench after thousands of long-gone fans abandoned it.

“It turned into a horror movie, said Ms Canty. The sewage backed up to where we slept at. It was awful!”

Sure, I would have told Ms. Canty and her family about the moist sleeping arrangements and the humiliation of stepping off a police-escorted evacuation bus and being scanned with metal detectors for weapons, as police dogs stand close by.

But, maybe I could have also told them “good luck” in finding their luggage (scattered on different buses), and warned the ladies not to head for the ladies room expecting a “very nice, very clean” spot to squat, and to watch for stray cats running wild about the complex.

Worse than that, mosquitoes and gnats drawn to bad plumbing that leaks, runs over, and floods the restrooms make it almost unbearable in a complex fit to be used only as a prison camp for work release inmates running a horse stable.

The food served after Katrina and Rita in 2005 wasn’t all that bad, I guess (though I only ate there a couple of times), but the cafeteria building was a seperate disaster, waiting to happen, as it did when Hurricane Gustav blew through, causing power outages and street flooding like they’d probably never seen before in Alexandria.

Oh – and the MREs? Well, you got ‘em! Morning, day, and night – anytime you want ‘em. I prefer to spend my hard-earned cash on something a little more decent – like at least a Big Mac and a Motel 6 if there’s a room, until my last paycheck runs out.

As Hurricane Gustav approached, I was stupid enough to evacuate to Alexandria again, in the hopes I’d find a motel room as comforting as the one I found there for a few of those weeks after Rita. What I went through this time is another story. One thread that binds it together is that I again spent time staying in a car outside the same shelter.

You can bet the Canty family or mine won’t be among the next evacuees sleeping in the shelter from hell!