After hosting thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the past two weeks, things should be getting closer to normal by the end of this weekend, said Leroy Shafer, chief operating officer of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, which calls Houston's Reliant Park home.

The Astrodome and Reliant Center have been temporary homes to up to 25,000 evacuees, but numbers were down to about 2,700 on Thursday. Plans were to try to get everyone out by the end of the weekend, Shafer said Wednesday. Additional evacuees were being moved into Reliant Center and also Reliant Arena on Thursday in a move to clear the Astrodome.

The Houston Texans, which have called Reliant Stadium home since 2002, will have their season opener on Sunday, which prompted the decision to move evacuees out of the Astrodome.

The Astrodome, the park's retired sports facility that was replaced with Reliant Stadium, needed some work to make it a more comfortable facility for the evacuees, who started arriving two weeks ago.

"We got the AV system working in the Astrodome in 20 hours, so people could see the news," Shafer said. "Some had been stranded for five days and had no idea what was going on."

Reliant Park, along with Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center, became the nation's primary evacuee centers when Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked Houston's mayor to help in the relief effort, Shafer said.

The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo probably will not be reimbursed for any of the help provided by staff and volunteers that have pitched in, but Shafer said he expects the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay for some hard costs for SMG and Reliant Park employees.

"I did see an article that said the park cannot and will not ask for lost business revenues, and that's very significant," Shafer said.

SMG-Reliant Park employees provided a list of conventions that were to be held at the facility through September, all of which were canceled. Events that were canceled or at least not held at Reliant Park included the Labor Day Classic between Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M, a Keith Sweat concert as well as a job fair, a couple auto shows, and "Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover." In all, 25 events were affected.

But Nina Jackson, director of marketing and public relations, said it would be impossible to provide a dollar amount of lost business from those conventions or for a similar time period last year.

"With everything going on, we can't do that now," she said. "This is such a crazy time."

Shafer said that many rodeo volunteers have given their time, and sponsors have pitched in with in-kind goods, such as Ford, which provided vans that ran between the Astrodome and the convention center.

"They're also furnishing the gas for the vehicles," Shafer said. "We will not be asking for any reimbursement."

Reliant Center, the building that houses administrative offices for Reliant Park and the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, also has been turned into a command post, Shafer said, with the entire second floor filled with members of the U.S. Coast Guard and Army, city police, county sheriff's officials, Red Cross, FEMA and Salvation Army workers.

After the stories about lawlessness at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, security was been a problem at the facility, said Shafer, who likened incidents to ones that would be seen at a football game.

"Most of it was minor altercations and possessions of some substances," he said.

Reliant Park also was the scene of an Oprah Winfrey special filmed live from the Astrodome, which utilized the facility's in-house AV system, Shafer said.

A lockdown last week made the news, but Shafer said that was only to keep people from getting in when debit cards and other relief was being passed out. "The evacuees were not locked in," he said.