By Jennifer Zaino

June 23, 2008—Texas is no stranger to deadly storms, including the Galveston Hurricane that killed more than 6,000 people in that city in September 1900. No other single hurricane has been as fatal—in Texas, or in the entire United States—but plenty of other hurricanes have struck the Gulf Coast in the intervening years, killing hundreds and causing billions of dollars worth of damages.

The Galveston-Houston area, in fact, was ranked among the top-ten U.S. mainland areas most vulnerable to hurricanes in 2006 by the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University in Miami. Just one year earlier, half the residents in the Houston area fled during the approach of Hurricane Rita, the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. That late September hurricane came on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, so thousands of Louisiana residents who had been evacuated to facilities near the Texas coast also had to flee from the danger.

Upon arrival at a shelter, an individual passed through an RFID portal that's lightweight and designed to be set up in minutes.

As Rita bore down, state officials and emergency workers tried to manually track all the evacuees, but the situation was chaotic. Many Louisiana residents had arrived in Texas without personal identification or medical records, and with various medical complications. They and Texas special-needs residents (individuals lacking the means to evacuate themselves) were moved by bus to inland shelters, but those facilities soon became overwhelmed. When the storm shifted east, evacuees from areas near the Louisiana border, such as Beaumont and Port Arthur, were diverted four or five times before they could be accommodated.