[9/14/04]Hotel rooms in Vicksburg and the surrounding area were already booked this morning and preparations continued toward opening a shelter Wednesday for evacuees from Hurricane Ivan.

“Vicksburg is completely booked,” said Emy Wilkinson, executive director of the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We had people waiting when Anchuca opened this morning to get rooms.”

Rooms in the area, including Clinton, Canton, Tunica and Meridian, were also booked, Wilkinson added.

“A few rooms were available for today but not many,” she said of hotels in those cities. “Wednesday is booked. It’s a significant impact,” considering that rooms in cities as far north as Tunica are all reserved for people fleeing the Florida, Mississippi and Alabama coasts, she added.

The first shelter to open here will be at Calvary Baptist Church on Warriors Trail. Beverly Connelly, executive director of the local American Red Cross, said the shelter will be offered starting Wednesday at 10 a.m.

“The volunteers are trained, and they’re on standby,” Connelly said.

If that shelter is open and others are needed, preparations have also been made for additional shelters to be open, said L.W. “Bump” Callaway, director of the Warren County Emergency Management Office.

“We’re prepared to open as many shelter spaces as we need,” Callaway said.

Preparations began Sunday and the National Weather Service in Jackson has been “keeping us apprised throughout the Central Mississippi area, to give us an idea how many people to look for,” he said.

If the storm continues on its predicted path, Warren County may escape major damage from it, Callaway said. The storm is “very, very strong” and “very big,” and it could change course at any time in the approximately two days before it is expected to make landfall, he added.

Vicksburg has about 1,600 commercial hotel and motel rooms plus dozens more at historic tour homes and bed and breakast inns such as Anchuca.

People leaving the coastal areas were reported to be reserving rooms as far west as Dallas.