City of Tulsa monitoring hurricane refugee situation

Friday, September 2nd 2005, 2:17 pm

By: News On 6

No large numbers of hurricane refugees are heading to Tulsa. Tulsa mayor Bill LaFortune says the city of Tulsa will not be housing a mass number of Hurricane Katrina refugees at this time.

Tulsa is taking its cues from the state and Tulsa leaders from law enforcement, the fire department, emergency management and health officials have begun working together to come up with a plan.

During a Friday afternoon news conference, the mayor says he thinks the city could shelter anywhere from several hundred to up to 2,000 people. If 2,000 refugees arrived in the city, the mayor says they would not be housed in one place. "You would not want that type of number in any one location. We would look to disperse them at different locations and theyâ€™ve advised us that some of the events they've seen at the superdome and astrodome are events they would never participate in.â€

The mayor says if the refugees started to pour in, the city would set up a central location where they can be assessed and dispersed to several different shelter sites. Those potential sites are still being discussed.

Representatives of the American Red Cross, the City and County of Tulsa, the Tulsa Area Emergency Management Agency, the Tulsa Fire Department, EMSA, the Tulsa County Sheriffs Office, the Tulsa Police Department and other agencies will continue to monitor developments throughout the weekend.