Dianne Kelly's joy at finally finding her family -- feared lost in Hurricane Katrina -- is still fresh in her mind, even 2 ½ years later.

Now a bracelet could save another family from those long days of not knowing.

“The ability to do disaster welfare inquiries and locate where's mommy is an incredible piece to this,” said Terry Moore of the Houston Office of Emergency Management.

The City of Houston learned a lot from Katrina and Rita.

One of the problems was that people who needed the government's help getting out of New Orleans later had trouble reuniting with their loved ones.

“We were very new at the tracking process,” Moore said.

Next time, it could be different.

The city just bought 50,000 bar-coded bracelets and the computer system to scan and track them as a person moves from place to place.

Just like at the airport, their luggage -- even a pet's collar -- would be tagged too.

"So there's a record connecting the person to the animal or the item and nothing gets separated,” said Moore.

Ninety-seven hospitals in our area and all the big evacuation hubs would be able to check those barcodes and then put names and locations on a Web site.

The hope is that the braclets would replace the kind of hand-written signs that were common in the Astrodome and other evacuation centers during the Katrina crisis.