Some, like Batres' family, arrived after running out of money for a hotel. Others couldn't find a room or weren't allowed to stay at shelters with their dogs, or in the case of Suzanne Kaksonen, her two cockatoos.
Kaksonen said it already feels like forever since she's been there.
"I just want to go home," she said. "I don't even care if there's no home. I just want to go back to my dirt, you know, and put a trailer up and clean it up and get going. Sooner the better. I don't want to wait six months. That petrifies me."
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Some evacuees helped sort immense piles of donations that have poured in. Racks of used clothes from sweaters to plaid flannel shirts and tables covered with neatly organized pairs of boots, sneakers and shoes competed for space with shopping carts full of clothes, garbage bags stuffed with other donations and boxes of books. Stuffed animals — yellow, purple and green teddy bears and a menagerie of other fuzzy critters — sat on the pavement.
Food trucks offered free meals and a cook flipped burgers on a grill. There were portable toilets, and some people used the Walmart restrooms.
Someone walking through the camp Thursday offered free medical marijuana.
