Communication lifeline in Louisiana: a newly formed clearinghouse helped legislators respond after the hurricanes--and is a model for the future.

• Author: Perkins, Jay

Without communication there is confusion and consternation. That wasn't a fortune cookie saying for Louisiana legislators in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That was reality.

National television was showing images of people sitting on their rooftops across New Orleans and refugees pleading for help inside the Superdome. But communication inside New Orleans was almost non-existent. Land line phones and switching stations were under as much as 10 feet of water. Cell phone reception was sporadic at best. The city's media were evacuated to Baton Rouge, 80 miles northwest, and the audience was scattered to the four winds.

Upwards of a million people had been uprooted, families split apart, and governmental resources shut down. Volunteers and donations were piling up in Baton Rouge and other nearby cities, but no one knew where to send the people and the supplies.

That's why state legislative leaders decided, three clays after the levees gave way in New Orleans, to invent the Legislative Resource Center. Its mother was necessity. Its father was frustration. And its arrival was attended by a medical doctor.

A WAY TO COORDINATE

Eric Baumgartner never thought that early morning cup of coffee would turn into weeks of work. It was a Friday morning, four days after Katrina blew through Louisiana and Mississippi and three days after the levees that protected New Orleans were breached, and he was having breakfast with Representative Ken Odinet.

Odinet was frustrated. His district in St. Bernard Parish, just south of New Orleans, was flooded. His people were dying. And he wasn't getting any answers when he asked questions. Katrina's 145 mile-per-hour winds had blown through Mississippi and Louisiana on Monday, Aug. 29. The levee breaches occurred on Tuesday. Now it was Sept. 2 and things weren't looking any better. Television was showing people trapped on rooftops and reporting that evacuation of hospitals was hampered by snipers and rioting. The refugee-filled Superdome looked like a dam aged feudal castle surrounded by a massive moat, and reported conditions were certainly medieval.

Odinet was heading to an emergency meeting called by the legislative leadership. He asked Baumgartner to go with him.

Baumgartner, a medical doctor, was no newcomer to disasters or to government. He had helped during a disaster in Hawaii and had extensive background in public health issues in Louisiana, Mississippi, Hawaii and Texas. He also had been director of policy and...