As the emergency evacuees stream up the road from the coast, the Red Cross is urgently looking for volunteers to operate the increasing number of emergency shelters that are opening in Bexar County, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Training will take place over the noon hour today at the Red Cross building on East Houston Street. No previous experience is needed.
Even though Corpus Christi itself has not issued a mandatory evacuation, there are mandatory evacuation orders in place in more than twenty coastal communities, from Refugio to Brazoria to Port Aransas.
People who want to evacuate are being asked to go to the Borchard Fairgrounds in Corpus Christi, where lines of buses, many of them from VIA Transit in San Antonio, are waiting to take them to San Antonio.
Once they arrive, and when people who drive in their own cars arrive, they are first instructed to go to a processing center on Genbler Road, just off I-35 near the AT&T Center.
Then they are assigned to a shelter.
They aren't giving out the locations of the shelters to protect their privacy. 1200 WOAI news was allowed to go into a shelter on the condition that we didn't name anybody, or say where it is located.
Employees were busy putting together all of the equipment needed to operate, from food service to facilities for children to basic services like electricity.
"We have gotten a backup generator," one shelter volunteer told us. "In case we lose power due to the rain, its going to get hot in the building, and we want to make sure it's nice and cool."
One man in the shelter, who is from the Corpus Christi area, said staying with his home won't do much good if the massive storm surge that is predicted arrives."Its not necessary to stay if something happens," he said. "Things can change, and I err on the side of caution."