Five years after Hurricane Katrina

Lola Freeman, who lost her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, touring her new apartment in Atlanta with IRC caseworkers in fall 2005.

Photo: Jim Stawniak

After Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005,  the International Rescue Committee extended aid to families displaced by the storm.  IRC staff members —  many of them former refugees who came to the U.S. with the IRC's help —   worked one-on-one with evacuee families to help them start over in cities around the country.

"There is no cookie cutter response to a disaster like Katrina," said Christine Petrie, then the IRC's national resettlement director.  "In order to bring order to the chaos there has to be an individual family approach."

Because it would be a long time before many of the families could return home, the IRC  helped them find and furnish new homes, stock their pantries with food, get new jobs, enroll their children in school, and get comfortable in their new communities.

Atlanta was among the U.S. cities most affected by the arrival of evacuees from the Gulf Coast.  During 18 months of operation, the Atlanta program distributed $350,000 in direct assistance to 1,300 evacuees and matched volunteer mentors with over 200 affected families.

Photographer Jim Stawniak was on hand in the fall of 2005 when two families who lost homes to Hurricane Katrina - Lola Freeman's from New Orleans and Vu Lam's from Biloxi, Mississippi - moved into the new apartments the IRC found for them in Atlanta.  He took these photos.  

Check back for more stories and updates from the IRC's Katrina response in the coming days.