Lull

LSU-A Megashelter
Alexandria, LA

It seems like weeks since we landed in Baton Rouge to start work for the Red Cross. It has been only five days, however, and they have been eventful. Our first night was spent in a church hall without power (thus no A/C or hot water). The humidity and heat inside the tightly packed hall was bad enough that I set my cot up on the patio under the night sky. Thanks to the power outage, I was treated to one of the most spectacular displays of stars I have ever seen. The next morning, we made the 5-mile trip to the Red Cross headquarters on Airline Highway (which, thanks to the lack of working traffic lights, took about an hour) and was sucked into the disaster-standard procedure of 'hurry up and wait'. Between our arrival at 9 AM and around 2 that afternoon, we underwent a brief (and pointless) training session and sat there waiting for something to do.

A few of us were given the task of driving 'communications equipment' (which consisted of: a single laptop, a phone and a charger) up to Alexandria, about two hours north of Baton Rouge. Upon arrival we found what might be one of the coolest facilities I've ever seen. Known as the Megashelter, it is a massive building with roughly the same floor space as the David Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh. Completed earlier this year, it is the first purpose-built hurricane shelter of its size in the country (Author's Note: hurricane shelters are almost always set up in gymnasiums, churches, schools, etc...structures with lots of floor space, but otherwise poorly suited to accommodate hundreds of displaced people). This megashelter is specifically built as a hurricane shelter. It can withstand a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane,
and house over 5000 clients (the Red Cross' preferred term for storm victims)
with enough bathrooms and showers (always a major problem for shelters) for both them and the staff. They have a dedicated medical wing staffed by officers of the US Public Health Service, separate living space for Red Cross, EMT and other staffers, a large cafeteria, and the loading docks and storage spaces to deal with the massive amount of supplies that so many people need to operate.

At the moment my team and the 50-odd Red Cross staffers are sitting tight. We finished cleaning up after the Gustav evacuees a day or so ago, and are now just manning the shelter and preparing for the potential clients that will be coming our way to avoid Hurricane Ike. It's quite uneventful for now. The calm before the storm, so to speak.