Austin opens its arms

Over the next couple days Austin expects to get 5000+ evacuees. It looks like they've got everything pretty well organized. People are showing up with just the clothes on their backs. They get a decontamination shower, medical assistance, and hot food. Some haven't eaten in 5 days and most are dehydrated. Austin is preparing to house these people for at least three months. I don't know what can really be done in three months with a city that's still underwater. I would expect they'll be here for much longer.

The nice thing is that if these people have pets with them the Austin Humane Society is setting up a shelter and foster homes for these pets. So it's one less thing for the evacuees to worry about. I'm not sure how many pets we are expecting. But, if a person has held on to their animals this long, they are probably very important to them. The volunteer coordinator has been sending out emails about it, and I'll be helping out tomorrow. This morning we had the New Volunteer Orientation (25 people for the cats!) and a bunch of people brought pet food and animal crates. It's great how quickly people can mobilize. One kind of 'bad' thought is that it's probably a really good thing we had our Annual Telethon LAST weekend because if it had been this weekend we would have been screwed!