August 2005: Caring for Veterans Following Huricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana area in August 2005, leaving Houma Louisiana without electrical power and trees and other debris blocking roads. Following Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, the New Orleans VA Medical Center was forced to close due to be flooded with twelve feet of water in the hospital.

The result of the closing of the New Orleans VA Medical Center left the veterans in the Greater New Orleans area without veteran healthcare. Valor immediately took on the burden of caring for these veterans. The morning following Hurricane Katrina, we opened our VA Clinic in Houma using emergency generators and laptop computers. The radio stations broadcasted for us that we were open and willing to care for all veterans. We were the only VA facility open for the first week caring for veterans in the Greater New Orleans area. Although Houma is 45 miles south of New Orleans, veterans traveled by the hundreds from the surrounding areas to the Houma VA Clinic.

Our usual patient workload in primary care is 50 patients per day. For the month following Hurricane Katrina, we were seeing over 300 patients on some days. We treated 3,500 patients during the month. Many of the veterans evacuated from the flooding waters of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes had lost their VA medications and medical supplies. Our medical providers provided over $500,000 in emergency medications to all veterans during the two weeks following the hurricane. Even once the VA was able to get some mobile satellite VA Clinics open, the burden of caring for the majority of veterans remained with the staff of the Houma VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic.

Valor and our Houma VA Clinic staff were honored by the community veteran leaders for our support of the veterans following Hurricane Katrina.