David Harris, the newly-announced candidate for CD06 (whom I met, briefly, along with his wife Michelle and daughter Emma this weekend), has a press release (see it here) announcing that Mission Arlington is working on Katrina relief and has a list of things it needs for evacuees in the Metroplex area.
Scott Chaffin, whom you may recall is looking for RVs to help house evacuees, has also set up a Katrina Emergency Villages wiki in case anyone else has some spare land to offer for that kind of effort.
Do you knit? Christine is collecting knitted goods for the victims of Katrina that are here in Houston. It may be warm now, but folks will still be here when the mercury starts to drop.
Online resources for helping victims and their families find each other are springing up all over. Tom points to this one by the The Librarians’ Index to the Internet. Over at The Jeffersonian, there’s word of the the Katrina “I’m OK” registry, whose purpose is “to assist family and friends searching for news about someone displaced by Hurricane Katrina”. Along similar lines, Dwight notes the Katrina PeopleFinder Project.
Via email from Galveston County Judge Susan Criss:
The Gleaning From the Harvest warehouse is a drop off point for food, hygiene items ( toothbrushes, etc), paper goods, & diapers for Katrina evacuees. The warehouse is located @ 900 53rd St., Galveston. This is right behind Santiago’s Restaurant on Broadway. The warehouse will be open Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm to receive donations.
Contact numbers are 409 939 8064 and 409 770 7204.
Gleanings From The Harvest is a food procurement & distribution network dedicated to seeing that no one goes hungry.
Nathan reminds us that the Houston SPCA is also helping Katrina victims.
Via Metroblogging Houston: a disaster relief benefit concert featuring Paul Van Dyk. Sunday, September 25, at the Meridian, 1503 Chartres, buy tickets here.
Chron society columnist Shelby Hodge notes that Brennan’s Restaurant will have a daylong fundraiser this Friday to benefit “the cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans”.
From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., those donating a minimum $40 will be invited into the restaurant for a glass of wine and hors d’oeuvres, with all monies going to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Disaster Relief Fund. The fund was established by and the benefit is sponsored by the Commander’s Palace Family of Restaurants of which Brennans of Houston is a member.
More info on that here.
PDiddie and Lyn report from the Astrodome. Hope checks in from Austin.
Will Reed of Technology For All was also at the Dome.
Technology For All has been working with FEMA here at the dome to expand their registration process. This is a critical issue now at all sites in addition to assisting with the locator process. TFA has been asked to assist at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center with the development of another CTC there when the Telco orders are processed as well as other efforts including a digital story telling project with the University of Houston.
We will be working with Deaf Link at the dome this morning to operate a hearing impaired intake center. We have also been asked to assist with CTC development programs for San Antonio, Dallas, Ft. Worth as well as various other locations here in Houston. TFA will be working with other CTCs in Houston to expand local efforts at existing CTCs and CTCs we have under development at other relief centers. I thank my friend Gene Crick for his assistance in helping hand off the task of identifying local CTC/community networking point persons in other Texas cities that can help local Evacuee Community efforts there. Each of these sites in Houston and in other cities will need hardware, volunteers and $’s to pull this off. As we know the needs and who the point persons and organizations in other cities are, we will post it.
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There has been overwhelming support in terms of time and resources from our community, business and of course our individual volunteers. The Red Cross database does need more EXPERIENCED volunteers for data entry here at the dome this morning. They are far behind and could use competent volunteer support. If you know interested parties please let us know by making a comment on this blog (click on the # below to make a comment) or send an email to Will.Reed@techforall.org . The ACT Center is located in the Astrodome on the bottom level at the south entrance. We are open this morning at 9AM. Any data entry volunteers can report there and we can get them to the Red Cross. We also continue to need volunteers locally to assist evacuees who are not computer literate to input people locator and FEMA information.
Via Rob Booth.
Anne notes an interview with HISD bus drivers who helped evacuate people from New Orleans. She has some other good links here.
Please feel free to email me (kuff – at – offthekuff – dot – com) if you have any Katrina-related information that I can help disseminate. Thanks!