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St. Paul, Minn. — (AP) Almost a week after losing her home and business to Hurricane Katrina, Minnesota native Rachael Van't Hull finally arrived at her sister's Brooklyn Center home.
"We felt pretty fortunate we were able to get out alive and save ourselves and our cats," said Van't Hull, who is three months pregnant and had spent the past week on her friends' farm and in a pickup truck as she headed toward her home state. Traveling with her were three other people - her younger brother, her fiance and his 5-year-old daughter.
Van't Hull's group joins thousands of Katrina victims Minnesota expects to see in the aftermath of the disaster. Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced Saturday that the state is preparing to host as many as 5,000 evacuees for a year or longer.
The Camp Ripley military compound will serve as the primary receiving point because of its existing housing quarters and medical facilities. But the governor hopes to move people into longer-term housing within 45 days of their arrival.
Van't Hull, 28, who does not plan to spend spent more than a few weeks in Minnesota, said she lost her home, restaurant and most of her possessions to the hurricane. A friend told her that the restaurant, which just opened in January, 19 blocks away from the French Quarter, was looted and under water. The door was kicked open and everything in the restaurant - from alcohol to food to computers - was gone, Van't Hull said.
"But we are grateful we are alive," she said. "All the other stuff is stuff."
The reunion with her sister and other siblings were emotional. After a week of what her sister, Rebecca Enck, called "frantic and sporadic" communication between the two, Enck was relieved to see Van't Hull at her front door.
"I was terribly worried," Enck, 26, said. "I didn't get the first phone call until Thursday. we were getting phone calls from everyone they know asking about them and we didn't have a lot of information. It was really scary."
Van't Hull and her relatives stayed up until 1 a.m. Sunday to share her stories. And Sunday afternoon, she was eager to go to the Minnesota State Fair - for some cheese curds.
"They don't make them anywhere else as they do in the Minnesota State Fair," Van't Hull said.
Van't Hull, who has lived in New Orleans for the past five years, doesn't have concrete plans on how to rebuild her life. She considered traveling the country to find her friends who were displaced by the hurricane. She said she had already received many donations of clothes, which she wants to pass on to others. Her family plans a fundraiser for her, and a relief fund was set up for her through U.S. Bank.
There are a lot of uncertainties as to when Van't Hull and her group will be able to go back to New Orleans, but she knows they are going back for sure.
"Everybody that lives there truly loves the city," she said.
Also on Sunday, a convoy of eight advanced life support ambulances set off from Faribault on a convoy to Baton Rouge, La., in response to a call by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for 220 ambulances.
The North Memorial and Gold Cross services sent four ambulances and eight crew members apiece, said Dave Augustine, manager of North Memorial's ambulance services in the Faribault region.
They will be assisting Acadian Ambulance, the primary ambulance provider in southern Louisiana, he said. North Memorial's rigs were sent from Alexandria, Brainerd, Faribault and Spooner-Shell Lake, Wis., he said
The crews will be rotated after a week, but the ambulances are committed to FEMA for 30 days, he said.
Four people from the Minneapolis-based American Refugee Committee were due to leave Monday for Baton Rougue to help survivors and conduct a rapid needs assessment. They include Huy Pham, director of ARC's international operations, who had led relief missions in Darfur, Sudan; Sri Lanka; and Liberia. Joining them Tuesday will be Dr. Walt Franz of the Mayo Clinic, a colonel in the Army Reserve who recently led a civil affairs public health team in Iraq.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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