Many students are enrolling into schools, and the state Health Department is coordinating immunizations for the children.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, September 16, 2005

BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer

Some have ended up in Rhode Island by pure happenstance, not knowing their destination until the plane's doors closed.

Other evacuees from Hurricane Katrina have found their way here by old connections and loose threads of their former lives.

A family that spent summers in Block Island has fled their Louisiana home for a Rhode Island winter.

A young mother was flown here from Louisiana by her former teachers at the Girls and Boys Town.

Another woman and her family found their way to Pawtucket -- thanks to the generosity of strangers at Joyce's Pub in South Kingstown who heard about her plight from her brother.

They are among the 276 evacuees who, as of yesterday morning, had found shelter and temporary homes in the Ocean State.

According to the American Red Cross of Rhode Island, 99 of the 106 evacuees flown here on Friday have remained in the state. And 177 others have come here on their own, said Red Cross spokeswoman Angie Moncada.

They've scattered across the state -- from Block Island to Pawtucket. While 125 have landed in the military housing at Middletown, with 6 more at hotels paid for by the Red Cross, the others have found homes with family and friends.

Schools are busy enrolling the students into their new schools. By yesterday, there were two students enrolled in schools in Narragansett, one at the Block Island School, two at La Salle Academy in Providence, plus four students at Middletown, said Elliott Krieger, spokesman at the Department of Education. There were three more self-evacuees being enrolled at Middletown, and school officials expected to have five more, Krieger said. There were two families in Pawtucket, but it wasn't known yesterday how many children would be enrolled in the schools, he said.

The state Health Department was coordinating the immunizations for the students, but the belief was that the students would have had the same inoculations for Louisiana schools as they would here, Krieger said.

One eighth-grade boy from Louisiana has landed at the small Block Island School, where he is one of eight students in his class, said Marlee Lacoste, the school building facilitator.

"This is a very familial and warm environment for someone to come to," Lacoste said.

His parents, both lawyers, spent their summers in a house on Block Island, Lacoste said. The family escaped the floodwaters and came back to Rhode Island; they didn't know what had happened to their home, she said.

The patrons and the waitstaff at Joyce's Pub in South Kingstown's Matunuck section raised $4,500 over Labor Day to bring a woman and her children to live with her brother in Pawtucket.

At the same time, a young mother from a town outside New Orleans moved into her new apartment at the military housing in Middletown.

The 21-year-old woman and her 19-month-old daughter were flown here after the storm by Eric Gross, the residential director for the new facility being opened by Boys Town in Portsmouth, and his wife.

They'd known the girl since she was a teenager living on the campus of the Girls and Boys Town in Nebraska, where they had worked, Gross said.

They urged her to come live with them in Portsmouth as soon as they heard about the hurricane. She tried to stay home, but after moving into a small house with other relatives in Arkansas, she accepted their offer of a plane ticket, Gross said.

She had already gotten a job at Roger Williams University working in the food service program, and she was considering a local organization's offer to send her to the Community College of Rhode Island, he said.

His family hopes she'll decide to stay, Gross said.