Ham radio operators in Texas, mostly in the affected area and out towards San Antonio and Austin where shelters might be set up, or charging their batteries for their handheld radios and getting their radio gear ready for possible deployment.
In the San Antonio area, the Bexar County ARES group will be coordinating all ham communication deployments at the city counry emergency operations center and the public shelters likely to be set up by the city of San Antonio and the American Red Cross. No shelters were open as of the time I wrote this post. (Aug 24, 2017 at 2100 hours)
Ruth Lewis is the counry EOC for the ham operations and will be working closely with the local city, county, and state officials.
Listen to the 147.18 repeater for manpower updates and the 146.94 repeater for local Skywarn operations as the storm hits town on Saturday.
If the mega shelters are opened in San Antonio, it will probably be for a few days through early next week until they can safely return back to the coast in the flooded areas.
The highways coming from the coast, especially Highway IH-37 from Corpus Christi, is going to have extremely heavy traffic.
I have not yet heard of the state activating the hurricane plan which would turn the various highways into a one-way direction coming from the coast up to San Antonio.
I will post more information as it becomes available to us.
There is no need to self deploy yourself at this time. We need to make sure there’s a place for you to help the cause, rather than causing the problem.
