Marco Perez GM of Kiefer University of New Orleans

  
We keep looking, desperately hoping to see something different, but the images continue repeating the story over and over. Hurricane Katrina, announcing herself days in advance while churning over the Gulf of Mexico, makes landfall three times over Louisiana and Mississippi, and the horrific aftermath is the loss of hundreds of lives, and more who are displaced and a swath of physical property devastation and destruction.

Most facility managers accept and even embrace that their venues often represent a shelter for citizens in their communities to escape the fury packed in tornados and hurricanes. But few, if any, managers can fathom the magnitude of what took place beginning the morning of August 29 in New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport, Mobile and smaller towns along the Gulf of Mexico.

We watch as first residents are trapped in their very own homes and unable to escape. Then, in disbelief, we watch as that most magnificent of domes, the Superdome, becomes its own death trap both inside and outside the venue. We watch the aerial shots that reveal a less-than-super dome with strips of the roof peeled back or simply blown away. In that instant, we too are blown away by the stark realization that the Big One has belted the Big Easy.

As preparations were being made to house thousands in the Superdome, facility General Manager Doug Thornton was quoted as saying that handling 70,000 for four hours for a game was basically no problem, but handling a few thousands for a few days would present a different set of problems. It is not likely that Thornton knew just how prophetic his words would be.

To the east in Biloxi, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Coliseum was taking its own pounding. On one evening news program, venue director and long-time IAAM member Bill Holmes was seen exhorting his staff to not panic, even in the midst of rising floodwaters in the coliseum. After Katrina left, the facility was even sharing its parking lot with a casino that had been uprooted and laid to rest on the asphalt.

It is difficult to find good out of this type of carnage, but we must. If they never knew the depth of it before, members and industry veterans like Thornton and Holmes and many, many others in the afflicted areas now know the outpouring of concern, thoughts, wishes and prayers that their colleagues expressed for them.

Facilities from coast to coast have answered the call to house thousands of evacuees from the hurricane. Numerous conventions have been canceled in order for facilities to continue meeting the needs of their shaken and homeless guests. Many facilities have offered their venues as immediate homes for many of the sports teams in the battered area that now have no place to play upcoming football and basketball games.

Under the guidance of IAAM President David Ross, CFE, the Association has set up links on its web site to help members and facilities connect and exchange information relating to needs and resources.

“Throughout this horrible tragedy, I have never been prouder to call public assembly facility management my profession,” said Ross. “Facilities throughout this great nation of ours have opened their doors to thousands of evacuees who otherwise would have no place to go. This outpouring of support to those in need is what truly makes our livelihoods such a special calling."

Indeed, facilities from Raleigh, North Carolina all the way across the country to Tucson, Arizona, and all points in between, have opened their venues as shelters.

“Few of us in this business ever imagine that we might be called upon as those managers along the Gulf Coast were,” added Ross. “But they answered the call to do all they could within their powers to keep a community safe and girded from nature’s fury, and for that we all have to say ‘thank you.’

“We also offer thanks to those still housing refugees. The theme for my year as IAAM president is ‘Making A Difference,’ and we see that played out over and over from community to community. Please know that you are making a difference in the greatest way possible: saving people’s lives.”

(Editor's Note: IAAM member Marco Perez is general manager of the Kiefer University of New Orleans Lakefront Arena. He offered the following comments from a relative's house in Houston, TX.)

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