Dallas Prepares To Take In Harvey Evacuees

Tuesday, August 29th 2017, 7:22 am

By: Grant Hermes

Preparations are underway in Dallas to turn the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center into what's being called a mega-shelter for those evacuees from southeastern Texas.

The state of Texas asked the convention center to be converted into a shelter and the city's emergency management office obliged. The office's website says those preparations should be finished Tuesday morning. The center will house up to 5,000 in the parking garage, about 6,500 less than is expected to be on their way to Dallas today.

For scale, that's the entire town of Purcell or Noble being forced to live in a disaster shelter.

Most of those who will receive shelter there are those who did not leave before Harvey made landfall last week. So far, official estimates have the displaced at about 30,000 people, only a fraction of the 450,000 disaster victims expected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Efforts to make the convention center ready are still being coordinated with the city, Red Cross, Salvation Army, several area hospitals, and volunteer groups. That wave of evacuees is supposed to arrive midday today.