BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana doesn’t yet have enough shelter space lined up for people who may be fleeing storms in the hurricane season that begins June 1, Social Services Secretary Kristy Nichols said Tuesday.The shelter shortage and the annual wrangling to locate evacuee space in neighboring states has Nichols, who oversees emergency sheltering in the state, suggesting a plan to upgrade Louisiana’s public buildings to double as emergency shelters when needed.But that plan would require a new law, money and planning time and couldn’t be in place for the upcoming storm season. For now, Nichols said she is looking to other states and the Red Cross for shelter assistance.Nichols said her department has identified 15,400 certain shelter spots for the next hurricane season through a state-built shelter in central Louisiana, leased shelter space in north Louisiana and other arrangements.That’s not enough to house the 37,000 people who evacuated to state-run shelters last fall for Hurricane Gustav, and that’s less than a third of the 50,000 shelter spots called for in the state’s emergency plan, she said.”We have a deficit of shelter capacity if we were to do a full coastal evacuation,” Nichols told the House and Senate homeland security committees.The social services chief said she hopes to use Red Cross resources and to get assistance from other states to fill the gaps before an evacuation is needed.A plan for a formal agreement to send as many as 10,000 evacuees to Alabama in advance of a storm — as was done during Gustav — fell through Monday night because of that state’s concerns that it could need space to house its own evacuees during a storm, Nichols said.Long-term, lawmakers on the committee said they liked the Florida model that Nichols proposed for Louisiana.Nichols said a 1992 Florida law mandated the use of public facilities for shelters during disasters. She said Florida spent $50 million over a decade to retrofit those facilities to be used as shelter sites so the state doesn’t bus its evacuees around the country when a hurricane threatens.Two north Louisiana senators — Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe, and Sen. Francis Thompson, D-Delhi — both offered to sponsor similar legislation in the upcoming regular session that begins April 27.Lawmakers are closely monitoring the shelter situation. Nichols was appointed secretary after her predecessor resigned amid heavy criticism of the Department of Social Services’ handling of state-run shelters during Gustav.Nichols said she didn’t know how much it would cost to upgrade enough public buildings to meet the state’s planning for 50,000 hurricane evacuees. She said the state could tap into federal hazard mitigation dollars available to Louisiana after Gustav and Hurricane Ike.If the idea gets the backing of the Legislature, Nichols said the state would need to inventory its public buildings and determine which could be used for shelters, adopt a law mandating their use in a disaster and then improve the buildings so they meet the Red Cross sheltering standards.Thompson said public schools, extra dormitories on college campuses and vacant prisons all could make adequate shelters for hurricanes.Rep. Karen St. Germain, D-Plaquemine, said sheltering evacuees in-state, rather than sending them several states away, could persuade more people willing to leave home when a storm threatens.—–Contact The Daily Reveille news staff at [email protected]