Right now it is 10:54 and I am at my high school. We have been host to over 500 hurricane Rita refugees. The picture I thought was funny. The Red Cross declared us an evacuation site and gave us a few forms. Then we were responsible for staffing it, getting food, donations and everything else. This necesitated an "incident command post."
posted by kukailimoku at 11:52 PM
3 Comments:
Wow- What, exactly, does it mean that your school has taken in refugees? Are they staying at the school? Are regular classes happening for you today? What is the mood like in your area? Was Austin affected directly by Rita? When I heard about it- I looked up a map of Texas... it looked like Austin was close (but not in) to the action.
10:20 AM
That means that an hour before they arrived, the Red Cross told the school that like 600 people would be arriving. We held them in the two gyms and used the schools lockerooms, showers and cafeteria. Yes, we did have classes on Friday. It was a bit crazy. Then, we scheduled staff and students to be present on rotation 24 hours a day. We were not given any real instruction on what to do. We just had to come up with it on our own. We negotiated donations, developed rules, did things with kids. I translated a bunch of stuff and helped communicated to the mostly hispanic refugee population. Many area high schools were used.
We were not directly affected by Rita. All we got was a little wind - no rain and certainly not damage. The mood is good, I guess. The hurricane was not nearly as bad as the news media said (wanted?) it to be. Everyone was anxious to get back to Houston right away since there wasn't much damage even there. The governor asked them to wait, but they didn't, thus cramming the freeways with 5 million cars again.
12:02 PM
Thanks Ben!
I actually read the information to my government classes- we all found it very interesting.
3:01 PM
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