FOR WORTH (1080 KRLD) - Tarrant County is preparing to receive people who are being evacuated from the Gulf Coast as Categort 4 Hurricane Laura approaches.
The county and the City of Fort Worth have activated the Joint Emergency Operations Center to handle the influx of evacuees.
"We would normally have put them in a shelter, and they would have been sleeping on cots," says Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley. "But obviously with COVID, that's not going to be something we would want to do."
Instead, the evacuees are being put up in hotels.
"we've got, as I understand it about 150 rooms that will be set aside for that," says Judge Whitley.
The city and county are not disclosing which hotels they are being taken to.
It's unknown how long the evacuees will be in Tarrant County before they can return home.
"If I were one of the folks who had been evacuated, I would want to be as close to home as I could be," Judge WHitley says; "so that as soon as Laura has passed, we could begin to get back home and clean up any damage that has occurred."