Reporter asked to leave Texas shelter

A Galveston reporter who evacuated the city in the face of Hurricane Ike was asked to leave an Austin shelter Sunday, she wrote in a blog for The Galveston County Daily News, as the staff said it made them "very uncomfortable for a reporter to be inside."

“At first, the Red Cross wasn’t quite sure what to do about me, as both an evacuee and a member of the media,” Sara Foley wrote. Other reporters were set up outside the Austin, Tex., shelter and barred from interviewing anyone inside, she said, but at first the staff told Foley she could stay because she was wearing an evacuee wristband.

After some back and forth between the police officers and the volunteers at the shelter, though, Foley said, the Red Cross and the Austin school district issued "an official order" that she would have to leave the shelter, which was set up at a local high school.

While she was still inside, apparently interviewing police officers and evacuees and handing out her phone number for follow-up, Foley said she observed frustration and a shortage of supplies.