Reflections on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - from Jamey Boudreaux, Executive Director for the Louisiana-Mississippi Hospice & Palliative Care Organization

Reflections on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - from Jamey Boudreaux, Executive Director for the Louisiana-Mississippi Hospice & Palliative Care Organization
Special Guest Reflections for Hospice & Palliative Care Today; by Jamey Boudreaux; 8/28/25

As I think back to the horror of Katrina - 20 years ago – I remember the eerie silence of a dead city, mostly evacuated – a neighborhood with no cityscape background noise, no sounds of birds chirping or people talking, no music nor even the hum of powerlines or cars. 

That silence still haunts me to this day but what I remember most are the folks who helped us put this region of the country back together! In short:

• I’m grateful to all the first responders, especially the Coast Guard teams that recused over 7,200 people from the rooftops of businesses and homes in the immediate aftermath of the storm surge and levee breach. 
• I’m grateful to the hundreds of church communities and volunteers who came from the four corners of the country to help us gut and salvage over 200,000 homes.
• I’m grateful for the 250 donations we received from folks across the country, allowing us to distribute $100,000 between 191 identified hospice staff members and patients who lost everything in Katrina. 
• I’m grateful to the 10,000 immigrants who traveled to this region of country to re-build our homes and communities. 
• I’m constantly inspired by the courage of so many hospice professionals, who returned to their flooded and damaged homes, to care for their patients and families who also braved the journey back to their flood and damaged homes, to begin the process of recovery. 
• I’m grateful for the expansion of a healthcare support networks in this region – palliative care, pharmacies and DME suppliers - who provided hospice agencies with the resources they needed to care for their patients and families. 
• I’m grateful to healthcare software engineers who over the past 20 years have created greater access to medical records, especially new tools to ensure greater patient safety during emergencies, such as the At -Risk Registry that now connects hospice/homecare patients in need of assistance with evacuation directly to their local emergency managers.
• I’m grateful to more than 2000 hospice and palliative practitioners in Louisiana and Mississippi who care for over 12,000 hospice patients each and every day, helping them also plan for emergency situations.

I know we can’t prevent disaster from striking our community, but we can learn great lessons from tragedies that inspire compassion and kindness along the way. 
Jamey Boudreaux, MSW, M Div, Executive Director, LMHPCO.org