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NY area pitches in to aid hurricane victims

NY Times:

A woman from Queens has organized a clothing drive that stretches into northern New Jersey. A boy from Port Chester, N.Y., has joined students nationwide in collecting backpacks stuffed with pencils and notebooks, and has received 156. A man from New Jersey has driven to New Orleans in a 24-foot-long truck filled with clothing, sanitary napkins and diapers.

Many of the thousands of New York and New Jersey residents who are donating time, money or items to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina hail from Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi. But many who have never visited the Gulf Coast are driven by the same desire to help, to feel that they are needed, or to give back to those who helped New York City after Sept. 11, 2001.

"New Yorkers know what it's like to wake up and it's like your whole world has ended," Mikki Lanclos, 29, said. "They made it through that, and now they are helping others to show that there is hope - that your world can seem normal again."

But those who want to help have found, at least in the first days after Katrina struck, that helping can be easier said than done. Even now, the means to deliver food, clothing and toiletries to the Gulf Coast remain problematic. Some are so frustrated waiting for overworked relief agencies that they are mailing items themselves, or driving south.

Bill Graves drove to New Orleans with two friends last week in a truck stacked with items donated by residents, stores, churches and mosques in his neighborhood in East Orange, N.J.

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