Hurricane Katrina - 2005

When Katrina was approaching the Gulf coast the Red Cross had propositioned people in Montgomery, AL. & Baton Rouge, LA. I flew in to Montgomery on Sunday Aug. 28th. There were about ten of us who came on the same plane. We were told to pickup enough rent rental cars to bring us all to headquarters. After processing in I reported in to Transportation (part of Logistics) where we assign rental cars to people in the different functions that were going out take care of the people who were affected by the storm. After working a half of a day Monday (Katrina was making land fall that night) we were told to pickup a couple of heater meals and water from supply, and go back to our motels and ride out the storm. Although the Gulf coast wasn’t as lucky, in Montgomery all we got was rain and wind gusts when Katrina arrived. In the three weeks that I worked in transportation we assigned 815 car, vans, and trucks to disaster workers.

After spending a month at home I put in to go back to the Gulf in the Communications function. I was assigned to Baton Rouge. When we were flying into Baton Rouge we were diverted to New Orleans because of fog and we were low on fuel. We refueled, and headed to Baton Rouge. The function is actually called RTT (Repair Technology Team), which included computers, communications, networking, & supply. Communications includes phones, cell phones, radios, & satellites. At headquarters they were always changing things around, and we were always moving computers and phones. We also checked on equipment at shelters, and communications satellites a round the state of Louisiana.