As Dallas gets ready to welcome thousands more Houston-area residents displaced by Harvey, the City Council today unanimously approved $8 million, to eventually be reimbursed by the state, in emergency spending on relief efforts.

As of Wednesday morning, the city was housing about 860 evacuees, 250 at the downtown convention center, where an air-conditioned garage has been transformed into a “mega shelter” that can house up to 5,000 people. That number is expected to rise steeply in the coming days, with roads finally clearing and allowing for safe transportation from southeast Texas.

Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune, cautioning that estimates remained fluid, told city council members to expect as many as 20 to 30,000 evacuees arriving in North Texas. City officials are reaching out to other North Texas cities about the possibility of opening up other “mega shelters” in the region, Fortune said.

Most of the $8 million approved today will go toward keeping the shelters open. The city is now spending about $100,000 a day on the four that have already accepted evacuees, Elizabeth Reich, the city’s chief financial officer, told council members. Volunteers, attorneys, doctors, and nurses have been stationed at the shelters, while Dallas ISD has opened its doors to children displaced by the storm. The shelters are open to anyone fleeing the Houston area. Mayor Mike Rawlings tweeted this morning that officials will not be asking any evacuees at the shelters about their immigration status, dispelling a rumor that also merited addressing at Houston shelters.

An unprecedented catastrophe is unfolding in southeast Texas, one we’re only now beginning to learn the full scale of, and city officials on Wednesday hesitated to draw too many comparisons to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when Dallas became a home to about 26,000 evacuees. The city certainly learned some lessons from 2005. But the situation is evolving, and in that case, Houston itself became one of the largest cities to accept New Orleans residents fleeing the destruction. Dallas may have to step into a similar role for Houston now.

Fortune described “an all hands process” as the city will work with state and federal agencies to find long-term housing and jobs for evacuees who don’t have homes to return to — those people that will need Dallas the most.

That work is just getting started, and our new neighbors need all the help they can get.