Hurricane Katrina was marked by intense grief and loss for those on the Gulf Coast, but just as potent was a feeling of frustration toward authority.
It was a time of institutional failure. After the storm, state and federal groups like FEMA were painfully slow to respond.
LSU, however, met the moment by mounting perhaps the state’s most robust disaster relief effort to date.
“The university was transformed in a way that was mind blowing, and, honestly, very impressive on such short notice,” said Marissa DeCuir, an LSU sophomore and writer with The Daily Reveille at the time.
The Superdome in New Orleans became the image of Katrina. But it was another arena 73 miles northwest, the PMAC in Baton Rouge, that transformed into what was the largest acute care field hospital in U.S. history.
21,000 evacuees went through it in two weeks, with 6,000 treated there and 15,000 triaged and then referred to other facilities. A staff made up of 1,700 volunteer medical personnel and 3,000 volunteer citizens, many of them LSU students, worked tirelessly.
The inflow of evacuees to treat didn’t let up. Helicopters kept arriving, landing on the grounds of the Bernie Moore Track Stadium that was used as a helipad and filling the air with a relentless chopping sound.
The PMAC wasn’t the only historic relief center on LSU’s campus. The John M. Parker Agricultural Coliseum was the site of the largest pet rescue in U.S. history, as evacuees dropped off pets that they couldn’t take care of in the short-term or permanently in some cases. 2,300 total pets passed through.
Clearly, LSU had set a precedent. Recognizing that, the university afterwards published a book titled “LSU in the Eye of the Storm: A University Model for Disaster Response” and mailed it to schools around the country. It documented how LSU prepared for and attacked Katrina’s aftermath in the hopes that other schools might use it as a reference.
Presiding over the relief effort was university Chancellor Sean O’Keefe. His hiring in February of that year was criticized by many because of his lack of experience in higher education. One thing he certainly had experience in, though, was crisis.
O’Keefe previously served as the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under George H. W. Bush and NASA administrator under George W. Bush. He’d stood on landing strips as Navy planes crashed, was in the West Wing on 9/11 and oversaw the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.
“I’ve made enough mistakes to fill three volumes,” O’Keefe said. “To at least be around that and engage with that made a difference, at least in terms of how to start.”
So why was LSU the site for this historic effort? For one, it had power — it generated its own on campus.
But also, O’Keefe felt, it had a “public service obligation” to lead the way.
Maybe the largest administrative burden was the huge influx of displaced New Orleans university students that LSU opened its doors to offer them a sense of normalcy.
There were 3,285 displaced students admitted and approximately 2,800 enrolled.
“During the normal admissions process, it takes us about a year to admit and register approximately 5,000 new students,” LSU’s vice provost for academic affairs said at the time. “We did 60 percent of that number in 10 days.”
Many of the students did not have proof of enrollment, having lost documents in the storm. The general policy on LSU’s end was leniency.
To accommodate the new enrollees, LSU added 80 new class sections and took in volunteer instructors, including some who were previously working at New Orleans universities.
There were unsavory, unimaginable parts of Katrina encroaching on LSU’s campus, like the designation of an on-campus morgue.
But the takeaway was resilience, generosity and, above all, remarkable efficiency. It took city-wide contributions to help take in a region that was “on its knees,” said Kyle Whitfield, then a freshman and now the vice president of consumer revenue at The Advocate | Times-Picayune.
“LSU, the city of Baton Rouge… I’m no historian, but really, [Katrina] was probably one of their finest hours as institutions and as cities,” Whitfield said.
