HOUSTON -- Victims of hurricane-ravaged areas of Louisiana -- including those evacuated from the Superdome in New Orleans, began arriving at their new shelter in the Astrodome today.

Charter buses started showing up at 3 a.m., although one bus commandeered by a young man arrived at 12:30. Buses kept arriving sporadically during the morning, and the evacuation from the Superdome was suspended after violence and gunshots were reported.

By mid-morning, about 3,000 people were reported inside the Astrodome.

Reporters were not permitted inside the Astrodome as officials tried to get the evacuees settled.

Outside the gates, some people who had arrived by bus but had made plans to stay elsewhere in the Houston area were leaving. Others gathered in the 90-degree heat to look for relatives and complained they could find no one at the Astrodome keeping a list of those who had arrived.

Houston police spokesman Anthony Morris said his city had only agreed to take people from the Superdome and others who had arrived by other means were turned away.

One family fortunate enough to make other accommodations was waiting for a ride this morning.

Rebecca Fournier, 14, and her grandfather, Richard Hancock, were in Houston after escaping from their flooded home in Chalmette, just south of New Orleans.

After climbing down from their roof, the two took a small boat to high ground and then got on the back of a tractor. They took a ferry to Algiers, just across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter in New Orleans. There, they boarded a charter bus last night amid people fighting to get on, Fournier said.

While Fournier was confident of a place to stay, she and her grandfather were trying to figure out how to find his 83-year-old mother, who had been taken to Houston over the weekend.