I took a few more [crappy] pictures with my cameraphone over the weekend, and they’ll serve as my latest update entry as I don’t have the energy to write it all out. I’m planning to go back later this week, but the weekend wore me out.

On a personal note, I went down to Freeport (right on the Gulf) to collect some fish for someone’s new aquarium. Lotsa fun was had. Must repeat.

This first picture was taken at 7:30am on Saturday morning, as I was drove into the Astrodome/Reliant areas.

What non-Houstonians may not realize is that the Astrodome and the Reliant Arena areas share the same lot….so, when you hear about people staying in the Astrodome or Reliant Arena, it’s separate buildings, but all in the same parking lot.

The domed building straight ahead is the Astrodome. The one-story building to the left is Reliant Arena, Hall D - which is where the medical clinic and additional sleeping quarters are located. The structure to the left of the Astrodome (and sticking up above the Reliant Arena Hall) is the Reliant Stadium - the official “replacement” of the Astrodome.

This is a shot inside the health clinic. I’m standing in the middle of the main “hallway” that runs from the triage/registration area all the way back to the pediatric unit. It’s a relatively calm period - the days I was there, it would get busy in waves, and the hallway would be crammed full of health providers, evacuees and volunteers.

Behind the plastic sheets are different medical areas, each designated by their names scribbled on notebook paper and taped up at eye-level. Behind me is pediatrics and the pharmacy. To my immediate right are the psychiatric unit and grief/counseling. To the left is general medical care, and then closer to the front was where they were giving immunizations and tetanus shots. If you keep walking forward, you’ll eventually pass registration and then the triage area. On Saturday, evacuees had started standing by the entrance to the clinic area, holding cardboard signs with the names of missing people.

Here’s a shot of the nursery next to the triage area I worked on Saturday. As you can see, it’s chaos and pandemonium inside - but good chaos and pandemonium. You can’t see them very clearly, but the yellow sheets of paper hanging from the barricades on the far end of the nursery are finger paintings done by the kids. These pictures line 90% of the barricade. As far as I could tell, none of the pictures featured anything other than your typical stick figures and abstract colorful scribbles.

If you look carefully, you can see some of the toddlers asleep on the floor (we were amazed they could sleep through the commotion). The people standing up are nurses and volunteers.

And finally, here’s a shot of the pharmacy. It’s located near the back of the clinic, and is the only “open area” health unit.

The two white tub/table looking things in the lower right corner are sinks. They’re 2 of maybe 10-15 sinks set up in a row, next to rows of hand soap pumps and paper towel dispensers. The area is meant for medical professionals to wash/santize their hands, but everyone ended up using them.

You can’t see them in this picture, but at the back and to the left of the pharmacy was where all the bins containing the medications were. The line of people to the right are waiting to drop off their prescriptions to be filled. People could get prescriptions filled if: 1. they had a prescription written by a doctor on site or 2. they had their actual medication bottles with them, with the names/dosage/instructions printed on the labels.

Behind the curtain at the back of the pharmacy is the rest of the “warehouse” that constitutes the Reliant Arena. If you walk back there, you’ll see a bank of ambulances ready to transport any evacuees needing to be admitted to any one of the 17 hospitals less than 2 miles away in the Texas Medical Center (the Texas Med Center rocks, yo). This was also where several huge truck trailers were set up, housing a diagnostic laboratory (i.e., to check blood glucose levels), a pharmacy and other on-site needs. And faaaaaaar back was where a break station for the volunteers was set up.

In the meantime, Vatsana from our sister office in New Orleans has set up a blog for HIV+ evacuees from the New Orleans area. Vatsana spent a few days in Houston before driving over to Atlanta. Her blog is http://notitlei.blogspot.com/ (notitlei = New Orleans Title I).