Relief Efforts - Hurricane Katrina
"Hands-On Help"

Hurricane Katrina's daylong rampage on August 29, 2005 claimed numerous lives and ravaged property in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Unleashing devastating winds and a massive tidal surge that lay waste to everything in its way, the hurricane left many coastal areas under several feet of water. The surges peaked at 28 feet (8.5 m) in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The Katrina storm surge overflowing the north levee of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet inter-coastal canal, directly under the Paris Road Bridge

(photo taken from Michoud Power Plant by Don McCloskey, New Orleans)

Soon after H. Katrina moved inland and diagonally across Mississippi, a volunteer team from The Hartwell Foundation traveled to Bay Saint Louis in Hancock County, MS, to provide relief assistance to those most affected by the highly destructive eye-wall winds of the catastrophic hurricane.

The Foundation began its relief efforts by purchasing 20 high-end house trailers for the Hancock Medical Center physicians and essential staff that lost their homes. Later, in December, the Foundation provided HMC special Christmas holiday decorations, music, food and toys for all ages. Hundreds of children would wait in anticipation to enter the hospital cafeteria, which was transformed into Santa’s workshop for a day.

Photo courtesy of Hancock Medical Center, Bay Saint Louis, MS

In April 2006, The Hartwell Foundation returned to the medical center in Bay Saint Louis, where volunteers spent a week providing hands-on assistance to hospital maintenance crews to restore water-damaged patient rooms and the hospital's post-partum unit.

Photo courtesy of Hancock Medical Center, Bay Saint Louis, MS

Later, The Hartwell Foundation provided HMC with a video conferencing system to enhance communications.