Venturing onto the parking apron south of Hangar 26 at the Chase Field Industrial Airport Complex could have been dangerous last week.

The large concrete-paved area was choked with hundreds of vehicles stopping briefly for assignment to other parts of the Texas Gulf Coast as Hurricane Ike approached land.

Bee Development Authority Joe B. Montez said he was contacted early in the week as the storm approached and asked if evacuation vehicles could be parked at the former naval air station until they could be sent to other locations.

Among the first of the agencies to start bringing in buses was the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. More than 100 of the agency’s traditional white school buses used by the state prison system were lined up just east of the Raul R. “Rudy” Garza East Unit and stationed there until TDCJ officials could determine if they would be needed to evacuate prisoners from the path of the approaching storm.

Then FEMA and the DPS started bringing in buses chartered from all over this part of the country.

“First there were 200, then 300, then 400,” Montez said of the buses as he reported the activity to BDA board members during a meeting Monday evening.

“Then there’s ambulances and then there’s soldiers,” Montez said.

Dozens of ambulances and emergency medical crews arrived at the parking apron, stayed until they had orders and then left.

Buses arrived and left on a regular basis, Montez said. Most of the vehicles were being sent to nursing homes and other facilities where special needs citizens needed to be evacuated.

At one point, troops with the Texas National Guard arrived and the managers of the Sikorsky Support Services operation at Chase Field allowed them to stay in the fire station near their hangar operations.

By the end of the day there were more than 100 National Guard troops at the fire station. Many of them ended up sleeping in their vehicles because the fire station could not hold all of them.

“We probably had, like, 700 people out here,” Montez said. Local businesses and the Salvation Army provided food, water and ice for the visitors from time to time,” Montez said.

“There were no accidents, the county cleaned up as soon as they left,” Montez reported, and no local public funds were spent. “We got through it pretty well.”

“So FEMA knows where we are now?” BDA board member Duwayne Dumas asked.

“Oh, yes,” Montez responded.