In the dorm that reporters were allowed to visit, there were only a handful of evacuees. Many of the others were elsewhere filling out paperwork or taking a walk. Some were trying to call relatives.

Still, the Simon sisters — Clayesha, 11, Corniesha, 12, and Theosha, 9 — giggled as they talked to a reporter. Their brother, Larrie, 5, played on the white-and-blue tiled floor. Mom Karen was thumbing through a magazine. She has kept them all together against long odds, shepherding them from a boat to a bridge where they slept one night before walking miles to the convention center in New Orleans.

She doesn't know where the rest of her family is; she thinks her mom and sisters and their children may have been sent to San Antonio. That's where she thought she was going with her family, too. Utah was a surprise. She's sure, though, "that they all got out OK." And she's willing to stay and see what happens in Utah, since there's nothing left in New Orleans, where she worked in a market.

Her children will get a measure of normalcy soon, starting school. But where is a question yet to be answered. Organizers of the temporary shelter would like to use classrooms at Camp Williams so that children can stay close to family members and each other. Jordan School District would oversee education there.

But there's a problem, according to Atkinson. State education officials say that the McKinley-Ventra Act won't let them segregate homeless children, and those who survived Katrina are, at this moment, homeless. They're working with the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to get an exemption from the U.S. Department of Education.

"My feeling is, they've gone through so much, if we start busing them off base we'll increase the trauma," Atkinson said.

Darnell Burrows was reading her Bible, and she smiled and said there was just something different about Katrina from the beginning. She's lived through four hurricanes in New Orleans, where she's spent her whole life, and this was the first time she ever left home and looked for shelter. With her twin, Lionel, and another brother, she walked to the Superdome late Sunday night.

The shelter, she said, was as shocking as the storm. They saw shooting and dying and it was a "war area, just crazy. No bathrooms, no water, the lights out." She and Lionel ventured out to see how far they could get but were afraid to be out after the 6 p.m. curfew. They finally made it to the convention center and from there to Utah.

She's studying to be a minister, and when she packed her small bag, she brought the well-worn Bible she's been reading, her sermon paper and a roll of toilet paper. She wants to bloom where God plants her, she said. "I'll stay here and do some things. If it's OK here, I'll stay here."

A few buildings west across the sprawling campus, the Southern Baptist Convention volunteers were busy cooking. McDonald's has stepped in to provide enough food to feed 1,000 Sunday night, and the aroma of Quarter Pounders filled the air. Owners of the local McDonald's franchises were helping cook. McDonald's Barbara Schmiett said supper was going to be burgers, apple dippers, chocolate or regular milk, juices and more.

Will McDonald's provide other meals later?

That elicits the same answer as most questions asked of officials.

"We're playing it all by ear like everybody else," Schmiett said.

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E-mail: lois@desnews.com