HOUSTON (AP) — The scene in a city-owned building may look like a hurricane has swept through Houston: Nurses giving vaccine shots, people scurrying around with files and papers and officials leaning over computers helping bleary-eyed parents fill out forms as their children munch on free pretzels.

But this is no hurricane. Instead, it is Houston's offensive to reach more than 1 million people across 600 square miles who don't have health insurance and connect them with the new federal health insurance program that began accepting applications this month. The push is happening in one of the nation's reddest states, an example of the gap between the vitriolic political opposition to President Barack Obama's signature initiative in some conservative bastions and the actual response to it by local officials.

"This is the same strategy we use to respond to hurricanes and public health disasters," said Stephen Williams, director of Houston's Department of Health and Human Services, who has organized an effort to sign up as many uninsured people as possible.