A week after cities across Pennsylvania braced to receive hundreds of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Ed Rendell announced yesterday that the state is unlikely to receive any evacuees through official channels.

	Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Ronald Lane, of New Orleans, gets a massage from Brenda Schuck at the Pittsburgh Project on the North Side yesterday. Lane, a jeweler from the French Quarter, has relocated to the area with help from friends he met from craft shows in the past. Click photo for larger image.

Rendell said the state will continue to assist the families who arrive in Pennsylvania.

As of Sunday, 1,063 people had registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency using Pennsylvania mailing addresses, and were being housed in 19 counties throughout the state.

Despite the absence of a large-scale movement of families, Pittsburgh's service center for evacuees has been buzzing since it opened on Monday, serving people who somehow ended up here of their own accord.

Some of those 250 evacuees are starting to re-establish their lives in Pittsburgh, some are waiting for word that they can return to their homes and some are too shell-shocked to figure out what to do next.

State and county representatives are helping them with everything from contacting parole officers back in Louisiana to applying for food stamps and cash assistance.

"It's a fluid situation," said Marc Cherna, director of Allegheny County's Department of Human Services, which helped coordinate the center. "Whatever comes, we're ready."

Cherna said that even if the county does not formally receive evacuees through FEMA, he expects more people to visit the facility in coming days. Philadelphia's center, which was set up before the one here, has served more and more evacuees as they heard about it through word of mouth.

Booths set up in the room of the large North Side facility offer help with a variety of services, some of which at first glance seem unnecessary for evacuees -- like providing bus schedules or banking services. But each booth is testament to how many facets of their lives people from the Gulf Coast have to rearrange.

About 30 people have applied for cash assistance, food stamps or medical assistance through the state Department of Public Welfare's booth since yesterday, said site manager Ray Miller. The guidelines for who can receive assistance have been modified, he said, and the department is trying to provide benefits for evacuees within 24 hours of their applications.

"Most everybody that's come here has no income or resources," he said. "Pretty much everybody has been eligible for cash assistance."

A family of four could receive up to $497 a month in cash assistance, and $497 in food stamps, Miller said. These benefits are distributed in the form of EBT cards that can be used at ATMs and supermarkets.

The state's Bureau of Vital Statistics booth has helped more than 30 people in Pittsburgh apply for birth certificates, including a few who did not have valid photo IDs, said Janice Marks-Tummavichakul, who was staffing the booth.

About 15 families checked in with the county bar association, asking what to do about pending civil cases, postponing mortgage payments, and in one case, contacting a parole officer. Ten people enrolled in CareerLink's job search system, deciding to look for a job and start anew in Pittsburgh.

While many of the evacuees were thankful that they could take care of all their business in one place, and were grateful to the county and its residents for their help, some were having difficulties getting things done back home.

Lisa Winterburn, of Kenner, La., drove here with her fiance after evacuating from New Orleans before the storm and is staying with her father. Her Louisiana home is waterlogged and has a hole in the roof, and she was trying yesterday to work with federal officials here and in Louisiana to get a blue tarp put over it to prevent further rain damage.

FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers are installing tarps up and down the coast, but Winterburn was told she needed to be at her house to get the tarp installed. She's stuck now in a Catch-22 -- she's not allowed to get a tarp installed unless she's at home, but the president of Jefferson Parish, where she lives, has forbidden residents to return there.

"They want me to drive 1,000 miles to sign a form," she said. "But we've been told not to go back."

Winterburn, a school teacher, was told by her school to seek employment elsewhere, and hopes to return to Louisiana and find a job teaching in Baton Rouge. The whole ordeal has been terrible, she said, as she struggled not to break down. But the kindness of strangers has made it bearable.

"Everybody here has been so helpful," she said, "and so incredibly kind."