Yesterday I spent the entire day helping Sugar Land set up its Hurricane Relief Center in the old city hall building on Julie Rivers Street. It is proving to be the perfect facility to handle this type of emergency. We have filled it head to toe with people.
Today, I was at the Astrodome, the Toyota Center, and the GR Brown convention center before heading back to the Sugar Land center until 8 pm.
During the course of the day I ended up meeting Mayor Bill White, County Judge Eckels, Bill Cosby, etc.
The dome was peaceful and operating smoothly; people were sleeping on cots, reading, being helped at stations. I was at the press briefing given by Mayor White and Judge Eckels. It did have some leaks in the basement from 40 year old pipes but it was cool inside and food was being provided.
In comparison, the GRB looked like a First Class hotel with air mattresses instead of cots. Mr. Cosby appeared there. I took his photo with a cell phone. The Toyota center had banks of laptops for people needing jobs or resume help. Mr. Alexander really knows how to do things first class.
People streamed into Sugar Land’s center all day. We got computers up and running and people were working their buns off all day. These are the countless thousands who came over to stay with friends and relatives and now have no home to go to.
The center feels like a war room in a way, but it is helping people instead of killing them. It’s intense because misinformation between the county and feds kept happening. The County was sending people over for food stamps which the Center was not issuing, but we worked them out one at a time. Not a lot of folks are getting much sleep.
I published a detail report on the trip to Baton Rouge in the Global American series,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GlobalAmerican/
article # 103.
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