The Lousiville-area command of the Salvation Army is in the middle of accepting applications for holiday assistance. Officials are seeing application numbers similar to last year.Angel Tree coordinator Madelyn Anetrella says they took 800 applications the first day, and had to close their doors early that day to recover from the influx. She believes the heavy initial response was the result of the charity truncating its application time period from three weeks to two.She says they anticipated an increase in applications this year, but the numbers have leveled off.“We were looking forward to a ten to fifteen percent increase in need," says Anetrella, "and we really won’t know until this end of this week if we are going to have that or not.”Anetrella says so far they’ve signed up more than 2,800 families for assistance, including 6,600 children.They’re accepting applications through the 31st.