FERRIDAY &045;&045; After more than a month of serving evacuees of two hurricanes, the Concordia Parish Community Center shelter will close its doors Friday.

&uot;They are welcome to spend the night Thursday if they need to, and then we’ll close up in the morning,&uot; shelter manager Viki Mason said.

The Red Cross is working to consolidate evacuees into fewer shelters, and Concordia Parish Sheriff Randy Maxwell asked the Red Cross to close the shelter, Mason said.

Red Cross volunteers at the shelter have been working to place evacuees from the shelter at other shelters in the area, Mason said.

&uot;We’ve been working to find places for all these people. I found some shelters for them, and we’re getting them to go there,&uot; Mason said.

Those places included shelters in Natchez, Jonesville, La., and Winnsboro, La.

The community center shelter had about 35 people Monday night, some of whom had already left by Tuesday afternoon, Mason said.

With Hurricane Rita hitting the Gulf Coast over the weekend, the shelter had more than 150 people and sent overflow, some 81 more, to the First Baptist Church in Ferriday.

Before Rita, about 60 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina had been in the shelter.

First Baptist closed down after many of the Rita evacuees went back to southwest Louisiana.