Today, all day, we've been down at the Reunion Arena in Downtown Dallas, working to help set up a VPN connection so that the various mobile medical centers (basically RV's made into doctor offices) will have a way to send medical information between there and their respective hospitals, and to each other as well.

One of my bosses and some of our friends have had it harder than me, actually - I was out there from this morning on, but they've been out there for 2 days now, dawn to dusk. Setting up a wireless network can be a cantankerous process. We (when I say "we", I mean "they", I just carried laptops to and fro) grappled with poor signal strength from various locations in this large structure. We're nearly done setting up, after we resolve a couple of hardware issues with the routers.

As I wandered throughout the building, trying to find "hot spots" that might win us some more bars of connection quality, I of course took in the environment. Firstly, I want to say that I don't like the word "refugee". These weren't refugees. These were people - tax-paying citzenry of a city that, for the moment, no longer exists. Hundreds filed by during the day, although Reunion, now mainly an initial processing station for registry and medical aid, is no longer the main housing as the Convention Center has taken the brunt of the influx of displaced hurricane victims. Nearly everyone had a plastic garbage bag slung over their shoulder - no doubt many of them were carrying all they had in the world.

People were friendly, but there was no laughing. Voices remained muted, which is odd in such large crowds. But these were not the lawless and desperate souls the media has seen fit to show more of in the evacuation. These were quiet families, with children, and old women. Some carry cardboard signs with names, clearly seeking a disconnected relative or friend. These were the mirrors of how I might very well be, in the same situation. Silent, searching, waiting, hoping, surviving.

You can certainly see there is wave of help to match the wave of helpless. The Red Cross, along with FEMA, and the National Guard, were clearly in charge. However, I'd say with all the help, they are still trying to figure out what to do. One of the major tasks is identifying everyone that comes into the center, collecting precious vital data not only to help survivors find one another, but to help with special medical needs, or to ensure the safety and security of the center. I saw a lot of 3-ring binders, scrap pieces of paper with names and numbers, sticky notes, a mountain of temporary information loosely bound and in danger of being misplaced or thrown away. They are working to transfer the information onto their web portal for safe-keeping, but the process seems so tenuous, especially when you consider many of them don't even have computers. Just people with clipboards and pencils, trying to organize a massive impromptu census of what is, essentially, a large town, and doing so on the fly, in a matter of days.

As I went down to the arena floor, where as a kid I used to watch the occasional concert or the Dallas Mavericks play, I could see now the reason for the hush that permeates the atmosphere. Rows of beds, laid out from basket to basket, from visitor's side to home. I would have taken a couple of pictures, but then as I wandered around with my laptop testing the air for Wi-Fi signal, I felt very much to be an intruder. I kept my head down, searching my screen, to give these people just some semblance of privacy. There are no partitions, just cots, and tables, and their life's possesions strewn haphazardly on the floor between each living space. I was walking through an immense dorm room now, not a public building, and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the way.

Plenty of food was on hand today - hot dogs, juice, cookies of every kind, coffee, tea, sodas, hamburgers. Plenty of people were on hand to distribute them. What these people need is not just food, or people. They need normalcy. They need organization. They need their home back, but that won't happen any time soon, if ever. They need hope.

I'll write more later. We go out tomorrow hopefully again to tackle our own oddly incongruous technological contribution to what is, at its heart, a problem with people, and their lost way of life.

DM out

(...continued in Reunion Part II: A Bridge Over Troubled Water)