Hurricane Isaac affects life in Fort Wayne

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Hurricane Isaac made landfall in Louisiana early Tuesday evening, almost exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina. Even though the eye of the storm is hundreds of miles away, some places here in Fort Wayne are feeling the effects.

Cars lined the parking lot of the Kroger gas station on West State Street early Tuesday evening waiting for their chance at the pump.

"Well, when I was at work they were telling me that they were going to go up, so I needed to get to the gas station, and I didn’t know they were going to go up that much," said Myika Gilbert, who was getting gas.

The nearly 20 cent increase people might have seen at gas stations Tuesday could be directly related to fears that the hurricane will affect refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I didn’t think that it would affect all the way up here, but I guess it affects everyone," Gilbert said.

But, gas isn’t the only thing being rattled by the hurricane. The American Red Cross of Northeastern Indiana, whose main branch is in Fort Wayne, is sending volunteers to Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

"Those few individuals will assist with bulk distribution," said Katherine Mac Aulay, the Chief Operations Officer at the Fort Wayne Red Cross. "There will be large warehouses that are opened, and they will assist with getting the products from the warehouse out to the shelters or on to the emergency response vehicles for the feeding that we do."

However, when natural disasters like this happen, it also takes away from the help they have here in Fort Wayne when assistance is needed in cases like the Albion house fire.

"As volunteers are deployed from our local area that decreases the number of volunteers that we have available here for our everyday response," Mac Aulay said.

The Red Cross says they are always accepting volunteers. If people would like to help with relief efforts, they can donate at http://www.redcrossofnei.org/.