The sound of wailing rose up from a corner of the packed former Levi Strauss building Saturday as emergency personnel covered the body of a woman with a sheet.
As the woman's daughter screamed, Red Cross volunteer Jacinda Andre grabbed her brother and hugged him tight as he sobbed.
For days, the woman and her children had managed to survive the fury of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. Now safe, finally, and settling into the former sewing factory, she died quietly on a cot.
Her death sent ripples of unease through this factory turned village, one of three communities for the displaced that have sprung up practically overnight in San Antonio.
At about the same time Saturday morning, a few miles away, another evacuee, an 18-year-old past her due date, gave birth to a healthy baby girl at University Hospital.
Life and death continue even for those who've already survived horrific tragedy. Dramas great and small will play out inside these makeshift shelters that have become, for the foreseeable future, home for more than 13,000 people.
Living inches apart, they have to figure out how to rebuild their lives, but today all they wanted was to enjoy, at last, a few comforts.
No relief effort of this magnitude ever has been done.
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Life and death for 13,000 evacuees in San Antonio
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