01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 11, 2005

Greg Collins, the mayor of Kemah, says his small tourist town on the Galveston coast in Texas reminds him a lot of Wickford.

The population of 3,000 swells during the summer with visitors who stroll the boardwalk in the old fishing village, stay at the bed and breakfasts, shop at the stores or spend a day at the nearby NASA space center.

They come for the cool, southeast breeze off the Gulf of Mexico. They learn Kemah is an old Indian word for wind-in-face.

Collins, 48, a graduate of Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick, says this season had reminded him of his summers on Narragansett Bay -- quiet with plenty of tourists soaking up the sun.

Until Hurricane Katrina swirled into the Gulf.

That's when he noticed all the Louisiana license plates in the parking lots of the local hotels. People were evacuating New Orleans, and driving about 300 miles along the coastal highway until they found vacancies.

Katrina swung well east of Kemah, where the weather stayed sunny and breezy. But the evacuees there from Louisiana watched the television images of the hurricane ripping apart their homes.

The number of victims in Kemah also rose. A quick census by the police found more than 200 had arrived in town, including entire families who came stuffed in cars with what they could carry.

"We sent people out to ask what they needed," Collins said. "Because they had so little, we found out they needed a lot."

They required medicine, blankets, clothes, food and shelter.

"People dug into their pockets," Collins said.

The Elks lodge opened to serve food donated by restaurants. Residents gave clothing and gift cards. Store owners handed out vouchers to the families and toys and games to the kids. Businesspeople lined up rental cars to get some of the evacuees to relatives in Dallas. Homeowners took in people for a few nights.

It was an all-volunteer effort, with no federal or state coordination, said Collins, who receives no salary as a mayor and holds a full-time job as a regional manufacturers' sales representative. He moved to Kemah 14 years ago after working several jobs in Texas and Louisiana, including one on an offshore oil rig.

Collins said a few "ornery, old-timers" in Kemah grumbled about giving money to strangers who disrupted the flow of town life. But, he also learned, "Charity comes from people that you least expect."

Ten days after the hurricane, most of the evacuees had left Kemah. About 40 people stayed behind to look for work or start their kids in school.

Collins said more are coming.

Another 3,500 evacuees are scheduled to be relocated in the cluster of small towns, including Kemah, on the Galveston coast. Collins says they are looking at space in gyms and schools and with assistance from the American Red Cross will do what they can to help out.

But he said the havoc wreaked by Katrina on people and their livelihoods won't end soon.

He said he thinks back to when he was a teenager running a summer camp for kids in Narragansett. During hurricane season, there were always warnings about the big one that always blew out to sea.

There were also warnings in New Orleans about the levees that wouldn't hold up to a fierce hurricane. But they held, year after year, storm after storm, and nobody thought about what would happen if they broke.

Then Katrina hit.

"In Kemah, we've been lucky," Collins says, "but you never know with storms and after this, I realize nobody's lucky forever."