MANILA, Philippines? After some confusion arising from the Palace?s own announcement, President Macapagal-Arroyo has given the green light for Malacañang to open its doors to poor folks who escaped flood and fire in a slum area in Quezon City.

If necessary, even the Ceremonial Hall at the Palace, where the President hosts receptions for foreign dignitaries, will be open to the evacuees if only to unclog crowded evacuation centers elsewhere.

"All of us are not prepared for this. Everything was done in a scramble,'' Press Secretary Cerge Remonde told reporters about the change of plans.? It was a work in progress. We adjust as we go along.''

Officials announced Monday that Malacañang would serve as an evacuation and relief operations center for flood victims from communities around the Palace. But shocked by the long queues of evacuees from other places as well on the following day, officials declared the Palace grounds would be used only to repack relief goods for distribution to evacuation centers.

But Ms Arroyo apparently had a change of heart.

In a visit to the Diosdado Macapagal Elementary School in Barangay Tatalon in Quezon City Tuesday night, she coaxed the flood and fire victims to leave the crowded evacuation center and take shelter in Malacañang.

So beginning after midnight Tuesday, busloads of 17 families or 103 individuals from Tatalon occupied the ground and second floors of the Mabini Hall, which houses the Office of the Executive Secretary.

On Wednesday morning, the weary, sleepless evacuees lay huddled against the wall in opposite wings of the building, mostly catching sleep and fielding questions from volunteer students, unmindful of the fact that they were in Malacañang.

"The idea is to reduce the crowd in the evacuation center and prevent diseases,'' social welfare officer Cindy Calma said, explaining why the five-story Mabini Hall was turned into an evacuation center.

The elementary school in Tatalon was teeming with 700 families who were forced to flee their homes Saturday due to rising floodwaters and a fire, according to social workers.

Malacañang hopes to accommodate at least 100 homeless families or 500 individuals from Tatalon, or Pasig City in and out of the Mabini Hall, according to Secretary Hermogenes Esperon of the Presidential Management Staff.

"We are addressing the overflow evacuees from evacuation centers,'' he told reporters.

But if necessary, the carpeted Ceremonial Hall would also be open to 10 families, Esperon said.

"I think we can accommodate about 50 persons or 10 (families) in the Ceremonial Hall,'' he said, pointing out that their stay in Malacañang would depend on how soon the situation would normalize and evacuees start returning to their homes.

At the Mabini Hall, the evacuees were supplied with clean beddings and mattresses, used clothes, and a regular supply of meals and bottled water, a far cry from the dire conditions in evacuation centers, where the crowds slept on cardboard and jostled for bags of relief goods.

"We had fried chicken for dinner and breakfast. Here, the grace comes to us,'' housewife Jessica Regoro, mother of four girls, aged 1 to 14, said in an interview, her eyes lighting up.

Jessica and her husband Edgar, a delivery boy at an auto supply shop in Binondo, Manila, and their children had narrowly escaped death as storm "Ondoy'' cut a wide swath of destruction around Metro Manila and nearby provinces last Saturday.

As floodwaters engulfed the first floor of their homes in Tatalon, they climbed to the second floor and holed up there, waiting for the waters to recede. But at nightfall, a fire broke out in their neighborhood, forcing them to climb to their rooftop and escaped by hopping onto neighbors' rooftops.

"It was really a tragedy. We're lucky to be alive,'' said the 38-year-old Regoro, who said they failed to salvage anything from their home.

It's their first trip to Malacañang, no thanks to the storm, but they weren't too thrilled to go around.

"We'd rather stay here. We're ashamed to roam around. That's what we miss most about the evacuation center. There we can go around, and go home, and come back,'' the housewife said.

At the nearby Kalayaan Hall, over a hundred student volunteers, including Indian students from the University of Perpetual Help in Las Piñas, stuffed bread and bottled water into bags, and placed them in cartons that were later transported by Army trucks to various evacuation centers.

The President's daughter, Ma. Evangeline Lourdes "Luli'' Arroyo-Bernas, clad in a black shirt, shorts and slippers, was on top of the situation, occasionally giving orders through a megaphone.

"We have so far dispatched close to 15,000 individual packs. But the priority destinations are those where we have evacuees in evacuation centers especially in Marikina, Pasig, Taytay, Cainta where some of our countrymen haven't eaten for two days,'' Esperon said.

According to PMS Director Cookie Aydinan, there's a high demand for bottled water, canned goods, personal hygiene products, and baby milk in most evacuation centers.