TEMA says no more evacuees expected for shelters

Shelters from Clarksville to Kingsport that had geared up to take in planeloads of evacuees are shutting down after seeing only some of the numbers expected.

Two of three shelters set up in Northeast Tennessee, the Civic Auditorium in Kingsport and the National Guard/Reserve Armory in Gray, weren’t used at all.

“It is no longer necessary to keep unoccupied shelters on standby,” Elgan Usrey of TEMA said Monday in a statement to the Red Cross. “The occupied shelters have adequate space to absorb any small evacuation or walk-up clients.”

The agency estimates there are 589 evacuees in TEMA-run shelters, with an estimated 2,500 in shelters across the state run by other organizations.

But emergency service coordinators said evacuees are actually leaving the state’s shelters at a rate of about a hundred a day. They said many of them are traveling to be with family members in other states.

Officials with TEMA said on Saturday that 7,882 people or families registered as evacuees with the Federal Emergency Management Agency although TEMA estimates over 15,000 evacuees have sought shelter in Tennessee through National Guard Reserve evacuations or on their own.

“For the small groups remaining in our shelters, our focus has moved to helping them find permanent housing and jobs,” TEMA Director Gen. James Bassham said in a statement. “The shelters served to stabilize people and help them begin to deal with what’s happened in their lives, and many of them were able to reconnect with their families outside Tennessee.”