United States

Background
Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history. It hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005 and caused severe and catastrophic damage all along the coast, devastating the cities of Mobile, Alabama; Waveland and Biloxi/Gulfport, Mississippi; New Orleans; and a number of other towns in Louisiana. Levees separating Lake Pontchartrain and several canals from New Orleans were breached by the storm surge, and subsequent flooding damaged 80 percent of the city and neighboring parishes.

At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, while another 700 remain missing. Estimates put the number of displaced people at 2.5 million. The storm is estimated to have caused $200 billion in damage, making it the nation’s costliest natural disaster. Hurricane Rita followed close on its heels and caused further damage to the devastated Gulf Coast. Criticism of the federal, state, and local governments' reaction to the storms was widespread and resulted in an investigation by the United States Congress and the resignation of the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Recovery is now underway, but will take years, if not decades, to restore the Gulf Coast to pre-hurricane standards.

What IMC Is Doing
Before Hurricane Katrina struck, IMC had never responded to a domestic crisis in its 21-year history. But as the disaster unfolded, it became clear there was a need for IMC’s knowledge and expertise gained from two decades of relief work in more than 40 countries around the world. Within days of the hurricane, IMC dispatched disaster response teams to Louisiana and Mississippi to assess conditions and to identify critical gaps in medical care for hurricane survivors. IMC soon was entrenched in a host of emergency response activities, assisting Americans who suddenly found themselves without shelter, food, or healthcare.

IMC utilized its experience working with the kinds of public health problems commonly associated with this type of natural disaster—water-borne diseases, respiratory infection, tetanus, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, West Nile Virus, and malaria—to provide the victims of Hurricane Katrina with targeted, high-quality primary and mental health care, assessments, and comprehensive programs to restore public health infrastructure in the Gulf.

To facilitate recovery, IMC established formal partnerships with a variety of health care professionals and organizations to bring relief and training to the Gulf Coast. Some of these collaborations include:

• Working with the U.S. Public Health Service and American Red Cross to conduct assessments and provide direct health care at shelters;
• Providing a revolving staff of primary health care physicians and nurses to St. Charles Community Health Center in Luling, Louisiana, serving more than 20,000 evacuees through static and mobile clinics;
• Training school-based staff and administrators empowering participants to cope with their own grief and loss, and recognize, understand, and address the needs of adversely affected students.
• Establishing a small grants initiative awarding almost $1 million in cash grants and food and medical supplies to local community-based nonprofit organizations in the greater New Orleans area.
• Developing structured psychosocial activities for internally displaced children and adolescents at a commercial travel trailer park hosting approximately 1,000 evacuees living in nearly 200 FEMA travel trailers in rural Mississippi.

IMC continues to work on Gulf Coast recovery. Among other initiatives, IMC has conducted a sweeping assessment of health and basic needs in the FEMA-established trailer parks in Louisiana and Mississippi, where tens of thousands of the displaced still reside.

IMC’s study: “Displaced in America: Health status among Internally Displaced Persons in Louisiana and Mississippi Travel Trailer Parks; A Global Perspective,” for the first time provided specific, evidence-based recommendations regarding the needs and vulnerabilities of IDPs living in trailer parks in Louisiana and Mississippi. These recommendations focus on: basic needs, morbidity and mortality, healthcare needs and access (especially reproductive health), mental health, gender-based violence issues, and security. This study is unique in that IMC used a global humanitarian aid perspective to inform recovery efforts in the United States. Its findings will be published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine and is already being utilized by federal and local officials to help mold future policy and planning for domestic disaster response and management. Download the full report "Displaced in America" (6MB PDF)

Much work remains if the Gulf Coast is to rebuild successfully. IMC is committed to helping its residents, and ensuring that affected communities recover from Katrina and Rita.