Seeing children play lets Capt. Robin Hackbarth know the evacuees from Gulf Coast hurricanes are going to be all right.

Hackbarth of the Muskogee Salvation Army has been deployed to help with hurricane relief.

Hackbarth received a phone call from her divisional headquarters in Oklahoma City this week and left Wednesday for Fort Chaffee, Ark.

“There are a lot of children here,” she said. “We gave them toys to play with, and now that it’s sunny outside they can play. It’s real sweet to see that the kids are OK.”

This isn’t the first time she has helped with hurricane relief.

“My parents were Salvation Army officers in Houma, La., when Hurricane Andrew went through there, and I helped with that when I was young,” she said.

Hackbarth sees her work as an opportunity to do a good deed for others that she has seen others do.

“I’m from the South, and I’ve been through hurricanes,” she said. “Now I’m able to help people in a similar situation. My family was in Mississippi when Katrina went through. So many people helped them; it’s good to be able to give back.”

Hackbarth is responsible for coordinating volunteers and delivering meals to people who can’t get to the dining hall because they are sick or handicapped.

“I get the names of people coming in, and I try to recruit through other agencies,” she said. “The volunteers are from both inside Arkansas and outside the state. Some of them are church groups, and some are from other organizations. Some are just people who wanted to help. I let the people in charge know who they have available.”

The evacuees seem to be doing fairly well, Hackbarth said.

“I think most people are in good spirits,” she said. “Of course, they want to go home. But for being away from home, they’re doing well.”

Capt. John Robbins with the Salvation Army at Fort Chaffee said there are approximately 2,274 evacuees housed there.

“The majority are from New Orleans and areas around it,” he said. “The volunteers here are helping to load and unload trucks with food and helping clean the dining halls.”

Jimmy Moore, director of City of Muskogee Emergency Management, said cooperation is essential in any natural disaster.

“Not one group is going to be able to handle everything,” he said. “It’s more than just us; it’s the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and the Baptist Men’s Association. They take care of the needs of all these folks. Our EMS and health department also play a big part.”

Moore said there may be other people from Muskogee called out to help as tropical storms continue to hammer the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.

“We don’t know that we’re out of the woods yet,” he said. “We don’t know yet what these other storms are going to do.”

On a related note, four volunteers are driving two Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles to Orlando, Fla., in preparation for hurricanes Hanna and Ike.

The volunteers and vehicles are used primarily to deliver food, water and cleanup supplies to residents as they clean up their neighborhoods after a disaster, said Hope Margarit, director of the local Red Cross.