Let´s talk about the Astrodome. From what I´ve read the Astrodome is/was a baseball stadium? How are 10,000 or 20,000 people going to live there for weeks? Tents on the baseball field? Toilets? Showers?
Wouldn´t it be easier to just throw gravel (is that the right word?) on a large field. Erect tents (If possible one tent per 1-2 families). Use some of those disaster teams to build/provide fresh water supply, electricity, waste water treatment and toilets/showers. Send an army mobile hospital for health care. Wouldn´that be a better solution than the Astrodome? And you even can "keep track of people" in these temporary camps.
Not to mention that people seriously sick should be in a hospital, not in some emergency shelter.
The one thing the Astrodome has though is air conditioning. Probably needed in Texas. Still, if you´ve got electricity...
Somehow I think the whole rescue and aid effort is horribly disorganized.
Unless they are lying, this is the situation as reported.
In that case I retract all of my earlier statements. :)
I was worried because the American media coverage I could view (using the Internet) did seem to indicate a worrying lack of coordinated aid efforts.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory2/3334317
Incredible!
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12533177.htm About 5,000 refugees made it by bus to Houston's Astrodome, but only 2,000 cots awaited them. Once again, thousands of people were subjected to discomfort and indignity.
If that´s true then it seems like preparations at the Astrodome weren´t as thorough as we would like them to be.
