Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

7 P.M. CENTRAL TIME -- We're heading back to the hotel for the night. We will return to the Red Cross center around 8 a.m. for tomorrow's assignment.

Today turned out to be a very good, productive day. The line we helped set up in the morning got going and people were getting forms to receive debit cards. We went back into the Astrodome and were walking around just seeing what we could do to help out. One woman who lives in Houston was looking for her cousin, who lived in New Orleans. I led her to a computer lab set up in the dome; evacuees can use it to check e-mail or use the internet, but there's also a database set up for people looking for friends and relatives. We were there for about 20 minutes before I had to leave, but she had already found several postings about her cousin.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

The hallway of the Reliant Center

12:45 P.M. CENTRAL TIME -- Secret Service officers are here prepping the Reliant Center for Vice President Dick Cheney to visit tomorrow.

I spoke with a man in his early 20s who took refuge with his girlfriend in the Superdome when New Orleans flooded. The couple eventually left on foot, walking along an interstate highway until they were picked up and taken to Houston's Reliant Center. He hasn't spoken with his mother since New Orleans flooded and has no idea where she is or whether she's alive. He asked if he should get in line to receive a Red Cross voucher, because his girlfriend had walked across the street to a store and got locked out of the complex this morning. She has with her their paperwork that qualifies them for vouchers.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

11:45 A.M. CENTRAL TIME -- We made it inside the Reliant Center with a Mexican paramedic team from Jalisco.

Now we're setting up garbage cans as guides for people to line up against as they wait for their $200 Red Cross vouchers. Tomorrow, the $2,000 FEMA housing vouchers are supposed to be released.

We heard there apparently was a small riot here earlier and that's why the center was on lockdown. There's a lot of media here right now.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

11 A.M. CENTRAL TIME -- It's crazy here right now. We got up and were in the hotel lobby by 7:30 a.m. We got tired of waiting around so we made our way to the Red Cross center around 9. They had us waiting around there and we got so frustrated that we hopped in a cab and came to the Astrodome to see if we could do something.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

10 P.M. CENTRAL TIME -- We just got done touring the Reliant Center and Astrodome; it's just like you'd see on television or imagine. There are rows and rows of people everywhere and many of them have started little family groups with their cots pushed together. Some were sweeping their areas with brooms and tidying up. "We're clean people and this is our home now," one person said. I got scolded by my supervisor for trying to take a picture; apparently it violates confidentiality rights.

The ground level and the hallways around the stadium where the concession areas are are filled with people and cots. In the upper decks, the televisions mounted to show sporting event replays are each showing different things: baseball games, CNN, local news, cartoons, movies.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

8 P.M. CENTRAL TIME -- We just arrived outside the Houston Astrodome and Reliant Stadium for a tour of where we will begin working Thursday. Our supervisor, a Red Cross worker from Maryland, will show us where 10,000 to 15,000 people have been living for the past week. Already, we see throngs of people in the parking lots. There are kids here with no parents, and parents who don't know where their kids are.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

4:15 P.M. CENTRAL TIME -- The atmosphere here at the Houston Red Cross center is electric. People are buzzing when they get in. Every five minutes there's a new group of people; they fly in, they drive over, they get processed and they head out. Most of the people here now also are from California. Everyone here has been really good.

We've been given our assignment for now: We will provide mental health services for other volunteers at the Houston Astrodome, who also are trying to deal with what they've been thrust into. But that could change by tomorrow; it could change tonight. That "be flexible" mantra the Red Cross was drilling into us during orientation wasn't a joke.

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, left September 6 to spend two weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, helping to provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

We landed in Houston this morning at 1:30 after a layover in Phoenix. Our first extended contact with a local came during a 30-minute cab ride with the most opinionated taxi driver ever. He wanted to bomb New Orleans because of the infection and disease that was left behind. And, he asked, "What kind of idiot builds a city in a bowl, anyway?"

Fresno native Brian Van Anne, director of Genesis Family Center's foster care program, volunteered through the Red Cross to help provide mental health services to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Tonight, he leaves for a two-week stint. He will share his experiences each day with Bee readers.

Friday morning I was checking e-mails at work when I came across one from the Red Cross requesting help from social workers willing to provide mental health services.

My wife and I had been following the news stories at night before we went to bed. We were interested in helping out, but weren't sure what the best way would be. Most likely we were just going to send a check and, of course, keep praying for the victims.

When I read that e-mail on Friday morning, I made a quick phone call to the Red Cross before our weekly staff meeting and started to carry on with the rest of my day. Around lunchtime I got a call back asking if I was really interested in volunteering my time. I was. After checking with my supervisor, I signed up for the Red Cross' disaster class. Word got around of what I had done and within about half an hour my supervisor, Carol Dela Torre, CEO Elaine Bernard and one of our social workers, Michelle Molina, joined me in signing up for this two-week assignment.

Two articles in today's Bee address the latest advances on the downtown front. Reporter John Ellis looks at the Fresno Redevelopment Agency's hopes to expand its ability to condemn properties downtown. Meanwhile, Russell Clemings reports on talks of converting the rooms of the old downtown Hilton into condos.

Fresno's retail revolution continues. In case you missed it, in Thursday's Business section, reporter Bethany Clough told us that Fresno is finally getting a Banana Republic, as well as a J.JillRumors of the Fig Banana have been around for a while, but now we've got a tentative date. Expect the store to open at Fig Garden Village in early June 2006. And if Banana Republic is too rich for your blood, a BR outlet store should be coming to Tulare in the first quarter of '06.

In July, The Bee invited a group of local bloggers to talk to its employees about blogs. Bee copy editor Will Albritton put together this video on some of the lessons he learned and points he's pondering after watching the panel. You can also watch more video of paleoblogger Chris Pirillo giving his thoughts on blogging, as well as additional footage from the panel. (Free RealPlayer plug-in required.)