From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CROSS COUNTRY
Huckabee's Ark
Arkansas welcomes refugees from Katrina, and soon Rita.
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark.--They started arriving before Katrina and they are still coming today. Hurricane refugees first headed to places like the Red Cross shelter downwind from the livestock barn at the Arkansas state fairgrounds. They wouldn't stay long--just a few days till the hurricane blew over, past, or around New Orleans, as all hurricanes seemed to do.
Then Katrina hit. The levees gave way. All hell broke loose on the Gulf Coast, and evacuees sought a little piece of heaven in Arkansas. Or at least a little peace of mind.
But the surest sign of trouble was when FEMA called. Two days after the water started rising on the bayou, with Arkansas playing host to tens of thousands of refugees, an official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency phoned Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's office. Mr. FEMA asked a member of the governor's staff if, oh, by chance, his state had taken in any folks from the storm.
Huh? Hel-lo? Ever thought of picking up a paper or turning on the TV? Or reading your email?
"I called the folks at the White House and said, 'This is insane,'" Gov. Huckabee said. "'You guys sent tens of thousands of people here, airlifted them out of New Orleans to Arkansas.' . . . I knew then we were pretty much on our own."
Luckily, Arkansas wasn't counting on anybody but Arkansas. Within a day of Katrina's landfall, Gov. Huckabee organized state agencies into one all-purpose disaster-assistance team, set up a command center next to his office, and enlisted the state's countless churches to do what churches do--take care of the least fortunate among us. The governor learned that most of the churches were already on the case well ahead of the state.
That first week after Hurricane Katrina, somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 evacuees arrived here, most on their own, staying with family, friends or in hotels. More than 9,000 evacuees landed at Fort Chaffee in west Arkansas. But not for long. The governor worried about turning individuals into a faceless tribe sharing discomforts and nursing anger in a cavernous fort, convention center or stadium. That way lay trouble. (See Superdome.)
Enter the churches and Scout camps. Camping season had just ended at church camps across the state. "They had showers, cots, recreation facilities--everything we needed," the governor said. "The people get more personal attention. When people have been through a dehumanizing experience like they had, they need to be called by name, given an identity, a personhood. . . . We almost had a 1-to-1 volunteer-to-evacuee ratio. In essence, we created mini-communities all around the state."
Dozens of camps in small towns like Cass, Damascus and Butterfield absorbed newcomers. The country town of Imboden, Ark., took in 300 evacuees, roughly half its population. Almost overnight, Arkansas's population increased by 2.5%.
How have our guests been treated? Arkansas has done herself proud. And so has Gov. Huckabee, who had begun to seem like an absentee governor in the late-'80s style of Bill Clinton, crisscrossing the country to test the presidential waters.
Even the Arkansas Times, a liberal weekly and no friend of the governor, had an I-heart-Huckabee moment: "He didn't wait, thank goodness, for guidance from FEMA." The paper praised the governor for helping first, and worrying about funding second. "May we say, for once, in unambiguous terms, that Mike Huckabee is absolutely, 100% and admirably right."
What prepared the Huckabee administration to handle this crisis in such an efficient, humane, un-FEMA-like way? Three things: (1) Gov. Huckabee's been in office for nine years now, so he knows the lay of the government land. (2) A Southern Baptist preacher, in times of crisis the minister in the Guv emerges first. (3) our state is all too accustomed to dealing with disasters, from tornadoes to sudden ice storms.
To be sure, Arkansas's governor didn't face a catastrophic natural disaster--just a sudden population boom. Mike Huckabee can be a notorious publicity hound, and the cynic might wonder if all his high-profile leadership and camera-time after Katrina has anything to do with his presidential ambitions. But the important thing is that the hurricane victims are getting what they need in Arkansas. And promptly.
Back in 1997, a particularly ghastly tornado mauled Arkansas, killing 25 people. The tornado destroyed 60 city blocks in the little city of Arkadelphia. Gov. Huckabee formed Trace--Tornado Recovery and Community Enhancement--as a kind of one-stop shop for tornado victims.
This time, the governor's office established KARE--Katrina Assistance Relief Effort. (This governor likes his acronyms.) Among other things, the KARE program connects evacuees looking for work with local employers.
As many as half the evacuees from Katrina and Rita are expected to stay in Arkansas. They're welcome here. Arkansans have a thing about being good neighbors. This is a place where the Golden Rule is considered more than a suggestion. As for the money to pay for all this help, well, there's a state budget surplus the governor and others have hinted at tapping, and there's the hope that the feds will pitch in. But money is not the issue.
It's a good thing Arkansas hasn't dismantled its KARE force because the influx isn't over. As Rita bears down on the Texas coast, evacuees from Katrina who relocated to Houston are heading here. All told, the state expects another 4,000 evacuees from Texas and Louisiana. They started arriving at Fort Smith airport Tuesday, and the flights continued hourly yesterday until after dark. There's room at the church and scout camps--many were closing as Katrina evacuees have already found permanent places to live.
A week ago Sunday, the governor and his wife visited the Arkansas Baptist Assembly Camp in Siloam Springs, where dozens of refugees were stranded. During the church service, a collection plate was on the altar. What Mike Huckabee witnessed next left our garrulous governor almost speechless. Row after row of evacuees went up to the plate and emptied their pockets. "They wanted to help," he said. "They felt like they'd been blessed."
Mr. Webb is deputy editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
