Only days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed a swath of the Gulf Coast, the International Rescue Committee dispatched an emergency team of relief experts to Louisiana. For the first time in its 73-year history, the organization responded to a humanitarian crisis in the United States.
“Normally, we respond to international crises caused by humans, not natural disasters in this country,” says George Rupp, the IRC’s president. “But when we received an urgent plea for help from people in Louisiana, we decided we had to act.”
After Katrina hit, officials from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Louisiana’s largest community foundation, spent a futile 24 hours trying to contact federal and state officials for advice on how to cope with the growing number of people driven from their homes by the storm. They decided to call the IRC, says John Davies, the foundation’s president, because of its experience with similar situations around the world. “This was a Banda Aceh-type crisis,” Davies says. “We went and found the guys that did Banda Aceh.”
What the IRC team found in Louisiana might have reminded them of Banda Aceh after the tsunami: mile after mile of devastated coastline, abandoned and destroyed homes, a breakdown in public order and health care. The team’s specialists, all of whom had worked in war zones or disaster areas, carried out a rapid assessment of the crisis and advised local officials on restoring critical services such as sanitation, water and emergency medical care.
Meanwhile, as thousands of displaced hurricane victims began to overwhelm local authorities, the IRC stepped into the breach. Across the country, IRC resettlement offices,which have long assisted refugees from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe rebuild their lives, extended aid to families displaced by Katrina, helping people find food,housing, clothing, counseling—and each other, through a system that registered and tracked people uprooted by the storm.
“The IRC has the capacity and the expertise to bring order and stability back to people’s lives,” says Bob Carey, the IRC’s vice president of resettlement. “From our experience aiding people suffering from conflict and upheaval, we know that integration into a community and the opportunity to be independent and self-sufficient is important.”
The IRC also offered some Katrina victims the opportunity to relocate to another city. Michael and Temika Parker and their four girls met members of the IRC’s emergency team outside their emergency shelter in Baton Rouge. The family had been evacuated from Orleans Parish but hadn’t found housing. When the IRC offered to relocate the family to Georgia, they jumped at the chance.
Two weeks after Katrina had destroyed their Louisiana home, the Parkers and their children stepped off a bus in Atlanta. They were met by IRC caseworker Elhamija Kadic. Kadic knew all too well what it’s like to be uprooted. As a refugee from the war in Bosnia,she resettled in America eight years ago with the IRC’s help. Ever since, she’s been working for the IRC, helping other refugees from war-torn countries adjust and integrate.
When she heard that Katrina evacuees were coming to Atlanta, Kadic saw an opportunity to repay the kindnesses extended to her as a refugee. “It felt great. It made me feel satisfied,” she says. “I’m so happy to be able to help displaced people in this country.”
Kadic moved the Parkers into an apartment donated by the Unitarian Church, arranged for public benefits and enrolled the children in school. Zeinab Afrah, an IRC job placement specialist and a refugee from Somalia, arranged for job interviews for the couple with an Atlanta hotel.
“I never expected this kind of help, not at all,” says Temika.
By November 2005, Kadic, Afrah and their colleagues in Atlanta had helped 469 Katrina evacuees find housing, jobs, schools and employment. IRC resettlement offices in Dallas, Miami, Boston and Seattle also provided assistance. By the end of the year, the IRC had resettled some 1,500 evacuees in new communities.
