Red Cross pressured to man shelters

McALLEN - The Red Cross's decision not to man storm shelters in Hidalgo County irked local officials as Hurricane Dolly bore down on the region Wednesday.

Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas frantically called Gov. Rick Perry's office Wednesday morning to pressure the humanitarian group into taking over the shelters city and county officials set up the previous day.

"Our shelters, they're stretched thin with staff. They don't have any food," county spokeswoman Cari Lambrecht said at about 1 p.m. "The numbers are growing, and the people, they're going to start getting a little angry."

Despite calls from Perry's office and Texas' U.S. senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, though, Red Cross officials refused to man the shelters until Dolly passed.

In June 2007, Red Cross announced it would no longer run shelters in Hidalgo County prior to impending storms because of a report from the International Boundary and Water Commission on the deteriorated state of the levees along the Rio Grande.

"It's a liability issue, which the Red Cross does not want to venture into," said local spokesman Jorge Barrientos.

With the Red Cross refusing to budge, the Texas National Guard ordered 1,200 troops to begin collecting supplies to distribute to shelters around the Rio Grande Valley.

Around 12:30 p.m., 12 guardsmen with the 2nd Regiment out of Gatesville arrived at a shelter set up inside a middle school in Edcouch. Sheriff's deputies and other county employees had been running the shelter until then.

"They seemed to be pretty well organized," said Texas National Guard Maj. Freddy Sustaita. "In case they got rushed with a lot more people, they wanted some extra people on hand to keep things moving smoothly."

From Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon, Hidalgo County residents poured into area shelters. At 3:30 p.m. there were 2,170 people spread across nine shelters - compared to just 200 people the night before - Lambrecht said.

County officials had called for shelter volunteers Tuesday morning, but only about 10 people showed up at an afternoon training session, she said.

"It wasn't nearly as much as we suspected," Lambrecht said. "Most of the people who did show up were city staffers."

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James Osborne covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4428.