Support for this program is provided by the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.

Explore Louisiana and learn about its rich culture, history, food, music and art.

Go to CRT, Dot State, dot L.A.

Dot US for more information.

The producers of Cajun Dome City would like to thank the following sponsors whose generous support helped make this project possible.

No one dreamed that a little bit of a hurricane that they had in Florida would do what it did to Louisiana.

And when the busses started coming on that Tuesday, they just kept coming.

They did not stop.

Those busses were on their way here.

The Cajun Dome Arena in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Floodwaters following Hurricane Katrina had forced thousands of weary, overwhelmed New Orleans residents from their homes.

Many found themselves 120 miles west in Lafayette, a city of 115,000 people.

The Cajun Dome, designed to see 12,000 for an event, would soon become home to 18,500 storm victims, a massive influx equal to 16% of the city's population.

At the time, our first evacuees started arriving, there were no supplies.

We didn't have any cots or blankets or pillows.

Dr. Azar served on the occasion of the commission.

So I called him and I told him, I says, Doc, here's what we've got.

We've got a serious medical crisis here of the occasional.

I was expecting the worst, but again, I did not think in my wildest dreams that this thing would grow.

58 days before I knew that it was a bad hurricane, but it looked like it was going to go east of New Orleans.

A perfectly symmetrical storm.

This is now the fourth strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.

Here you're seeing the eye of Hurricane Katrina.

Bear down on Biloxi, Mississippi, and it continues to move to the north at about 15 miles per hour.

And so I didn't think that Louisiana Anna was going to receive the brunt of the hurricane.

We were awaiting the turn of Katrina to the north and all of us from the instep of Florida all the way to the Texas panhandle were trying to determine when it was going to make that right hand turn.

And as we were watching the storm and as it started turning more toward New Orleans, they kind of in the state, our planning got a lot more rapid and a lot more intense as to exactly what we would probably be dealing with going around port, because they got like a little community church around where we go and we play basketball.

That's why I worked before the storm, probably saying it ain't going to come this way because, you know, that's what we used to win the war and say it's going to come, but it always go and not always so.

And everybody has this look of panic on their faces, like, wow, you're still here.

Those were people who lived through Hurricane Betsy.

So those people knew a danger was imminent when it made that last swing and pushed over to the east and New Orleans.

Initially, we thought, great, we've missed it.

We dodged the big bullet because immediately after the hurricane went through, the streets were dry.

There was no problems.

It wasn't until about 8 hours later when the levees broke that we knew how bad this could potentially be.

The day out there was like dry ice.

It wasn't a war.

And then next thing you know, you know, the out he got water, water everywhere.

One of the levees was breached in some areas.

We get reports of 11 feet of standing water, people being forced out onto the roofs of their homes.

Monday morning, the hurricane had passed.

I am on the outside of the building.

We were operating out of our emergency shelter and I'm on my cell phone.

I'm looking at my car and I'm talking to my wife.

She said, What's wrong?

I said, What is coming up the street?

Where we were was the highest part of the post.

It shouldn't be coming up.

Water should be going down.

I said, My car is floating.

I got to go in an hour and a half.

We went from no water to 8 to 10 feet.

It was at home and we normally ride the storms, the hurricanes and then the storms out.

The war hitting with.

After several days, we just pretty much thought about, hey, we need to get out of here.

You couldn't hear a thing.

There wasn't even a cricket nor a light in the whole city of New Orleans.

The only thing we would hear is if something moved the water lapping.

We end up creating a little raft with a piece of fence and a swimming pool.

And we put the babies in there in our little personal items, such as I.D.

So we swim to the bayou.

Once we got to the bayou, we discovered the helicopters taking people away.

We didn't know where we were going.

We just know that they brought us to, I believe it was a causeway where they had a line of busses.

This is not a test.

This is the real deal.

We're seeing gusts of about 100 miles an hour.

It's just so massive and so inspiring.

We are facing a storm that most of us have fear.

If you have a boat, bring it here.

Help us.

These are people who do not have the wherewithal to get out of town.

They stayed in their houses because they had to.

And then the water came up.

We were notified by the governor's office to prepare to receive people from New Orleans to shelter in the Cajun.

I was chosen to be a shelter after Hurricane Katrina because we had been a shelter several times before.

Was maybe looking for something similar to what we had experienced in the past.

A thousand or less people for maybe three or four or five days.

Faith based areas who set up shelters are great.

There is small shelters are great, but they can't accomplish what needed to be accomplished With the numbers that we knew we were going to see, we would get them out of water, get them to temporary high ground, and we would push them forward to high water vehicles.

After that, we wound up people you know, the people want to come and get out.

They rescued us.

And so while have taken a motorcade, motorcade, though, when we finally did get out, we ended up on the I-10 birds around Saint Bernard exit.

You probably stayed on the bridge for about maybe five or 6 hours in the blazing sun.

How do you get out of a city that's under water?

The only high ground on roads were the overpasses, but you can't get to the overpass.

And when the water started rising, a lot of people park their car up on the overpass to save their car.

Well, that then blocks the overpass when the water goes down.

We were then taken to Lafayette, taken to Lafayette, Louisiana.

So when we got to the gate and on, it was kind of a happy feel, but a sad feeling, too, at the same time.

For me, it was the first line that that issue.

Many arrived by bus.

Others made the harrowing journey from New Orleans on their own, stretching the already crowded Cajun dome to near its breaking point.

The first set of evacuees arrived here at Occasional starting the Tuesday after Hurricane Katrina.

By Tuesday at 1:00.

Jill and I were here, if I can speak to personally, setting up the volunteer table registration table, I can speak to personally, setting up the exit plan for the evacuees.

The first day we had a very slow trickle of evacuees.

Whatever the second day was was a lot busier, and the third day was probably the busiest day we had of evacuees arriving.

And it just got crazier and busier as the days went on.

We just got a steady flow in as they were coming in.

We would be waiting for them at the front door and then taking them to where they can settle down for a few days.

And it grew to the point where the needs of the evacuees were far greater than our ability to service those needs.

And then that's when we knew we had a major problem on our hands.

We were just woefully unprepared for this.

Thursday night, we had gotten a call from a state trooper on I-10, and he said that there were about 17 or 18 busses and that they needed to bring the evacuees somewhere that they had gone to other shelters in Louisiana, but none would take them.

And I told them that we had a policy that we would not turn anyone away.

Don't be driven by fear, but by compassion.

That was Greg Davis's mantra, and it set the tone within the Cajun dome and throughout the entire community.

I got a call at one in the morning and it was a director of the Cajun on Greg Davis.

He said, I need your help.

We have 19 or 17 busses that have come in that need to be triaged and sent into the Cajun dome.

I called every medical student after I called the emergency room at UMC and I said semi every available nurse medical student, because I think we're going to have a mass casualty.

And it was a couple of busses.

The busses just kept coming.

The individuals that were on the busses that were coming here, a lot of them were still wet and were hungry and thirsty.

There were.

And how many were still in the same clothes that they had been in on the rules of houses in New Orleans.

We had people that were diabetics that hadn't had their medicine in three days.

Just about anything in medicine that you could imagine was on those busses.

They were also exposed to a variety of things, wading through water as immunocompromised patients.

They had cuts and bruises.

They had all these things that really needed immediate attention that we had to figure out a way to treat pretty quickly and figure out what we need of all the physicians and probably is going to need somebody triaging all these people.

First of all.

I don't even know where that comes from.

I think that would kind of help me decide what's going on.

I have no idea where they are at this point.

They're saying things like they're from the airport.

From the air.

God knows which airport, but it's an airport, you know.

Here.

Here we are now, day seven.

And still the Red Cross has a real problem communicating with evacuees coming in.

There's just the whole communication issue has been has been a real problem.

And some of that and actually a lot of that has to do with the phone lines being down all over the place.

And it just makes it tough for to now we have 117 evacuees scheduled to come here and to be triaged, and we don't know what the plan for them are.

We know this shelter is open, but they don't know whether they're going to be staying here or not.

It's just chaos.

Kind of a kind of an organized chaos, though, because it was it was lines for people to get in and people getting screamed outside, away from the line to congregate.

And people were still kind of taken aback by what was actually going on.

When I got to Lafayette, I had the clothes that I had on my cell phone and my wallet.

That was it.

I didn't have a change of underwear, any of that toothbrush, nothing I can remember having on my gym shorts, flip flops and the gummies were all soaking wet.

I can remember feeling dirty, confused, shocked, scared.

Pretty much everybody pretty much lost everything.

So it was just a lot of us.

And I did what we had on and stuff like that.

So, you know, good thing that people indicated, you know, hey, I saw some stuff that we got, you know, at least aware.

The first person I saw was a young mother who had her baby with her.

And that's about all she had, whether it was just a couple of things.

You can imagine they just were picked up, brought here with a bag, whatever they could grab or whatever they had.

The baby was screaming and crying and she was crying.

And I saw her coming in and I went to and I said, How can I help you?

And she said, My baby's hungry.

She said, We've been on the on the highway for how many of our hours?

And she said, I can't find my momma.

And so I called a friend who had some baby supplies.

And we started bringing things.

People started bringing in things to help take care of those who didn't have anything.

The Red Cross had to provide the bedding, clothing it necessary feed evacuees provide any medical attention that was required.

But very quickly, by that Tuesday night, everyone saw that the Red Cross had a serious problem, did not have the resources, the personnel to meet the needs of the evacuees that were coming in.

We made a call out to our community for them to bring us things that the evacuees needed, and they responded.

Couple of days later, people started to actually come to the Cajuns.

Lines of vehicles like people from Lafayette really taught us a lot of well, we ended up with distribution centers in both buildings, kind of an area in the back portion where you could get to a loading dock and receive all the stuff and then set it up in an area where it's kind like a store and people didn't have to pay for anything.

They just went and picked up what they needed from those supply areas.

Acadiana has always been there.

The hearts have always been open.

They've always been willing to help.

We had a group of ophthalmologists that showed up and said, We've got all these glasses that we'd like to donate right around the same time that we had a group of a couple of school groups that came in with with small children that had lost glasses and lost everything that they had and said, Hey, is there anybody that we can give these to?

We really want to we really want to donate this.

Providing showering facilities was probably one of the biggest challenges at the very beginning because most people coming had not bathed in several days, had been in the elements all of this time.

So we had to provide instant necessities of life.

And the most important from day one was hygiene.

We have about ten showers in our locker rooms for basketball teams and concerts and that kind of stuff.

So there was no way that's going to handle 7000 people at one time or even 3000 people.

Our operations director for our public works department, Joe Maniscalco, and those guys just came up with the idea to basically build and construct the wooden showers.

And within 24 hours they built a magnificent showering facility right behind the occasional aboveground shower system.

There were men stalls and women's stalls and ramps to get up into them, and they built a complete package of showers in the back of the building.

And it provided just one of those important components that made people's lives a little bit better at a time when it was really the worst day of their life.

Everyone, I'm Andre Moreau, and thank you for joining us for this broadcast of Cajun Dome City.

What a documentary this is to see and hear all of the firsthand accounts from people who were in Louisiana during this monumental and devastating event and stories like this that always reinforces how resilient the people of Louisiana are.

And this film will continue to show you that very fact.

If you value documentaries like this, reminder that it is member support your support that makes sharing stories about Louisiana possible.

So we invite you to call us or to text give to eight, eight, eight, seven, six, nine, 5000.

Make your pledge online at LPI dot org or simply scan the QR code on your screen and become a member to thank you.

We have special gifts available during this broadcast and let's take a look at some of those right now.

When you become a member, you help LBB Share important stories about Louisiana as our way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose from these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive The Cajun Dome City combo includes the hardcover books, the Day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible Storms of 2005 Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month receive the day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter about the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

And a DVD of this documentary at either level Receive Visions LP based monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life Magazine and access to LP Passport, the streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

Joining me now is Linda Midgette, executive producer of LTB.

Great to see you, Linda.

Also, Greg Davis, longtime director of the Cajun Dome for many, many years.

Great to have you here also, Linda.

Let me ask you this.

Lvb is known for storytelling and telling the stories of Louisiana.

Why is that so important, especially in a circumstance like this?

Well, I mean, no one has ever accused Louisiana of being a boring place.

There's a lot of there's a lot of stories that need to be told.

And some of them are quite harrowing.

You know, this story is it's it's amazing.

It is just full of drama.

And it's important to show, I think, what people in Louisiana are really made of and amazing how people mobilized at a time when there was not a second to waste.

Greg, if you would, take us back to that night when you first got the phone call, and this is 18 years ago.

Right.

Well, when we first got the phone call, as you know, we were called upon to be a shelter before, but only accommodating maybe a few hundred people.

I had no idea that we were about to be asked to accommodate thousands of people.

But we we geared up and we started getting the busses and the busses kept coming and coming and coming and they would not stop.

And we quickly got to a point where we were at capacity.

So we had to make a decision about receiving more evacuees.

And under the leadership of our mayor, Joe Tyrrell, he and the Cajun on it made a decision that we will not turn anyone away.

So we ended up with about 750 people being accommodated in the parking lot of the occasion because we had nowhere else to put evacuees inside the Cajun on while the convention center and talk about the improvization that was going on throughout all of the entities as Red Cross you guys do, everybody involved in the community we have at the case, you know, we have a very great chef.

His name is Chef Joe Baker.

He's from France.

And so, Joe, their one night came out at 3:00 in the morning and he and his staff made a hot breakfast for about 17 busloads of evacuees that got to us about 3:00 in the morning.

And he fed them hot grits and bacon and eggs and biscuits right there in the parking lot.

Wow.

So we had to do a call out to the people of Lafayette.

We didn't have enough cots, enough sleeping material, enough clothing and the medical care that the evacuees required.

So we made a call out to our community and they responded well in this, you know, we just came out of a line saying this was the worst day of many people's lives.

You took this job probably thinking this is the best day.

People go to the kitchen dome to have, you know, fantastic concerts and a wonderful day.

And here they are on the worst possible.

Yes, indeed.

But, you know, the skill set that exists and facility management of arenas, convention centers really came to the forefront and was able to respond while we were on our feet because there was no manual for us to go to.

We all had to rely on our professional experience, our professional expertise.

And I would say the industry as a whole responded very well.

We've got so much more we're going to talk about with this as we continue with our programing.

I want to remind you now that a member challenge Friends of Lvb board of directors are proud to support Cajun Dome City on Lvb.

And they're challenging all viewers to donate right now.

And we'll match dollar for dollar the first 1500 dollars called in during this program only.

So in effect, it will make your donation worth twice as much to Lvb.

And we certainly want to thank the Louisiana Department of Culture Recreation and Tourism for their support, because without their support, all of this couldn't work.

And it does work very well.

And thank you so.

So I want to ask Mr. Davis, you know, Mr. Rogers always tells people to look for the helpers.

He's famous for saying that.

And you were that helper in this situation and overseeing a team of helpers.

This this had to be truly one of the most defining moments of your life.

Absolutely.

And the biggest challenge was not having enough resources at the at the beginning to accommodate the needs of the evacuees.

Once they were in the occasional, we saw them as residents.

This is their home.

And it was our job to make sure that their needs were being accommodated and they they had needs for proper nutrition.

A lot of them were diabetics.

High blood pressure had not taken their medications in a few days.

A lot of them had been out in the elements suffering from exhaustion, lack of food.

And so lots of needs were necessary when they arrived at the Cajun.

I mean, where not, we got the help from our general community.

And that's that's how we were able to meet and accommodate the residents of the Cajun home city.

You know, as someone who's covered the aftermath of hurricanes, it's always a traumatic experience.

But this was an experience like none other because, first of all, New Orleans started dodged a bullet, but it didn't.

And it was worse than it ever even could have been imagined to be.

Yes.

So you had people camped out on ramps of interstates.

They couldn't get down to their homes, 11 feet of water.

And then you had people pouring into different cities and to the Cajun dome.

And so a decision had to be made the very beginning where that to be driven by compassion or to be driven by fear.

And we made a decision to be driven by compassion.

We saw the evacuees as fellow Louisianians suffering a major tragedy that needed our help.

That's really profound.

And did you ever question, can we do this?

It had to be overwhelming as it was overwhelming.

And yes, we there were times when we were trying to figure out how to meet the needs because it was just an overwhelming demand.

And we got a lot of help from our medical community.

We got people bringing going to Wal-Mart, buying things, bringing clothing, bedding.

So with the help of about 500 plus volunteers per day coming from the city of Lafayette, we were able to meet the needs of our residents.

I can only imagine that you went to bed at night and couldn't get to sleep sometimes with your mind racing.

Was there any sleep that was going well?

The first week you would work 24 plus hours before you would get an opportunity to rest a little bit.

And when you did rise, it was only for a short, a short while Before we go back to our program.

Let's check in on the thank you gifts that are being offered right now.

When you become a member, you help help share important stories about Louisiana as our way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose from these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive the Cajun Dome City combo, including the hardcover books, the Day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible storms of 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus, a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month receive the day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter about the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and a DVD of this documentary.

At either level, receive Visions LP based monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life Magazine and access to LP Passport, the streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

We certainly thank viewers in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi.

And remember, it is you that makes a difference to help.

It is you and your membership that helps make LPI go.

The Cajun Dome shelter was different than any other emergency shelter in US history.

The number of residents and their substantial medical needs overwhelmed the Red Cross.

It seems unbelievable, but no other previous emergency shelter had ever provided extensive medical care.

In fact, it was against the Red Cross rules.

But the Cajun Dome shelter changed those rules.

We started out with a quarantine area that was smaller than the size of this room.

We were going to curtained off a few lower areas, and now we've commandeered a much bigger space.

And that's obviously not going to be big enough.

You know how many physicians we have out here, too?

That's all I have.

We had three.

One was needed down in special needs and he he left.

So I need another physician.

Yeah.

I'm trying to round up a few more docs now.

We have lots of people in the occasional and more coming that were in desperate need of medical care.

We also knew that that meant there would be people with chronic conditions and exacerbating chronic conditions because of what they had been through already.

The gentleman arrived and we took a blood sugar on him and it was very hard.

Critically ill. And, you know, I instructed one of the E.R.

doctors.

He said, this guy needs insulin now.

I said, let's give it to him.

Red Cross comes with the basic formulary of maybe Tylenol, Ibuprofen and something for an upset stomach.

They had no doctors aboard to do what we do.

They told me, insisted the Red Cross does not give shots.

The Red Cross has a very specific job and they do a really, really good job.

But doctors and medical clinics have their own specific things they need to do.

We went against the grain of the Red Cross and we opened up our own medical clinic.

That was one of the best things that came out of it, that they backed down and it made them a better Red Cross.

But the initial medical clinic for the Cajun Dome was the closet that the EMTs use for sporting events big enough for one bed tucked down on the bottom floor.

And it wasn't it wasn't going to be adequate for very much.

We help recruit doctors.

We had a pharmacy go in and we started a clinic.

We got the equipment.

We would drain the coffers of the hospitals and the private doctors to get medications and exam tables and lighting.

The Cajun dome was certainly not set up as the ideal place for a medical clinic, but it was amazing how quickly this group came together.

Within 48 hours, we had several hundred thousand dollars of medications that doctors had had donated to the point we had to take an entire separate room and two pharmacists that became full time pharmacists for the for the Cajun Dome Clinic.

What physicians would do is they would take their entire supply closets, clean everything out and just arrive with large bags and say, here, uses for whoever you can use it for.

Physicians and practices showed up and brought with them what they thought would be useful.

I had a backpack with a pulse oximeter, my blood pressure cuff, my stethoscope.

We had at one time 5 to 600 medical volunteers coming in and out.

It really was gratifying to see the number of physicians and non-physician health care providers across the spectrum all showed up to volunteer their services.

However, they could be of use at one point.

When I was working, I had an orthopedist, a dermatologist, a neurosurgeon, and a cardiologist that were all there to volunteer.

I said, I can't get these kind of people in my own emergency room.

It was somewhat of a miracle that we always had staffing there 24/7.

There were other patients that needed more long term care.

They were sicker.

They need to be kept out of the regular population.

And so we expanded again to the second floor of the convention center, to the entire second floor of the convention center, where we are now, became a miniature hospital ward.

And we had patients broken down on beds and on the floor just getting routine medical care in an area.

We could concentrate health care providers and not have to walk through the cage and not have to have them exposed to general population.

It's good that we're paranoid about what might break out because our goal is to get out of this without being without a major public health disaster right here.

In short, I think the two biggest things to worry about would be Norwalk robot, norovirus and shigella.

I think those would be the two scariest things in place.

Ladies.

I think they could rip through something like this in a hurry.

You've got up to 8000 people in here.

You're doing pretty, pretty well with that right now.

You get your job done.

You've taken care of the hygiene issues.

You're really moving a lot of people in and out.

So I would say that at this point, if you can keep that up, it's certainly helpful.

I mean, the question then becomes King has staff sustain this for I don't know how much longer?

Aside from hygiene, which was one of the first things we dealt with, medication was the next and 6000 people who were not able to evacuate from New Orleans and the surrounding area.

Suddenly, their pharmacy's not available.

Those prescriptions are not available.

And I remember Buddy Azar look in the sheriff and the mayor in the eye and telling people, if we don't do something about it now, people are going to die and we do not want people dying on our watch.

And we've discussed this two or three times before, but we said we would only take care of the people, the 6000 in the dome.

There's still hundreds of people out there that need only prescription refills.

All right.

I thought I had was maybe we could set up a little independent place somewhere as a prescription refills only and let the people who are staying with friends and relatives and what have you come in and just get a prescription refill.

That's all they need.

When we coordinate that to the parish noticeboard and the Red Cross, we can do that.

That's not a difficult thing for the town.

We're looking for a way to distribute medications to and fill prescriptions for the folks that are not housed here.

And we're standing in front of the the ticket windows going, we need a place with where we can put a barrier and deal with the public on the outside meeting prescriptions and be in a secure environment on the inside.

As we're standing in front of a ticket office, we kind of turn around and we look, well, look at that window.

So then we started staffing physicians in the box office to give prescriptions out to somebody who just came in and said, Look, I lost everything in the water.

Can you can you give me a refill for these prescription?

I do recall an orthopedic physician that I know saying, well, hell, this is why I went to medical school to help the people.

So put me in a window and sure enough, I recognized a number of physicians in that.

I think we had four windows go in at one time, and a word got around and a line formed outside.

Those doctors examined people on site, validated and verified prescriptions where they could with the area pharmacies and when they where they couldn't made diagnoses, kept medical records and provided the prescriptions that people needed to sustain themselves.

But fortunately, we made the right decisions.

We did not compromise medical care.

And a lot of us look back on that memory very fondly that that we're very proud of of the experience that we had.

I just didn't see a bunch of people come in that we couldn't see.

And that really worried me.

But we did it.

Nobody died.

Hi, everyone, and welcome back.

I'm Andre Moore, a friend of B joining you for Cajun Dome City, Hurricane Katrina and America's first mega shelter.

We're going to introduce you to another special guest in just a moment and who you heard from in the film.

But first, now is the time to show us stories like this matter to you by supporting V with your membership.

Membership in the fact makes you a co-producer and what you see on air and becoming a member during this broadcast shows us that you would like to see LPI be present.

More meaningful stories like this and this is about as meaningful as it gets.

Call us or text give to 888769 5000 pledge online at LPI board or you can scan the QR code on your screen with your smart device.

Let's hear once again about the thank you gifts we've chosen so you can show your support for LPI right now.

When you become a member, you help LBB share important stories about Louisiana as our way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose from these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive the Cajun Dome City combo, including the hardcover books, the Day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible storms of 2005 Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month receive the day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter about the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and a DVD of this documentary at either level Receive Visions LP based monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life Magazine and access to LP Passport, The streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

We are joined once again by executive producer of LBB, Linda Midgette.

Great to see you again.

And also Dr. Paul Azar, volunteer medical director at the Cajun Dome and executive producer of this film.

Let me ask you first what a powerful and moving thing to be able to say in the film that no one died.

Dr. Isaac Well, absolutely true, because the story of the 17 busses was something that really historical.

It's what a difference a day makes.

I got a call from Greg Davis on Monday morning saying that we're supposed to have seven helicopters, Sikorsky said, bringing evacuees.

So in an ambulance, send out as many as they could.

Well, we're there 4:00, 8:00.

Nobody showed.

We checked the radar.

We checked everything.

There was no communication with New Orleans.

So it was called off.

Well, 12 men that he calls me get, Dr. Hays or he has a very distinctive voice.

I said, Oh, my God, We have 17 busses here with residents.

Evacuees need to be screened.

So I put my scrubs on my medical bag and I went down there and that started the medical clinic right there.

I mean, I have to ask you, you had to I've seen a real gamut of medical crises coming in.

Well, absolutely.

I was in the National Guard doing Hurricane Georges, so I was on the floor of the Superdome during that disaster.

And I learned a lot from there because, as you know, the breaking machines were unable to really do a lot there.

So I learned a lot of lessons.

Plus, I had an experience with the National Guard, so I knew how to treat or sort patients that weren't ill and it was a task.

What sort of conditions did you see people coming in with?

Anything in them, anything in an emergency room or hospital environment that you might see from sore throats to earaches to asthma to shortness of breath, dehydration, heat exhaustion?

Yeah, absolutely.

And and then just pure infections, broken legs, kids.

We had two bursts in there, a but it was medical practice at its highest level because we didn't have to charge anything.

And I think all the year all the 58 days we had $4 million worth of charges.

No one had to pay a penny.

That was great.

We didn't have to worry about anything.

And it's stories like this.

This is one of the reasons we tune to help, because this is where you hear stories like this.

Member support is the foundation and the Friends of Board of Directors have a member challenge.

When I tell you about Proud to support Cajun Dome City on LP and challenging all viewers to donate right now and they will match dollar for dollar the first 1500 dollars called in during this program only.

So in effect, this will make your donation worth twice as much to help.

Also want to make sure that we think the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism for their support.

And let's take one more look at some of the gifts that are being given.

When you become a member, you help.

LBB share important stories about Louisiana as our way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose from these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive the Cajun Dome City combo, including the hardcover books, the Day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible Storms of 2005 Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month Receive the Day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter about the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

And a DVD of this documentary at either level, receive Visions LP based monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life Magazine and access to LP Passport, the streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

Dr. Azar, you lined up an actual medical clinic.

It's almost an understatement to say that right?

A medical world at Cajun Dome and so many volunteers and doctors and nurses and any kind of medical personnel that you needed.

We saw 5000 patients in 58 days with about 500 volunteers.

We operate 24 seven every day of the week.

And was medical medicine at its purest.

We occupy the second floor of the Cajun home, which is big hall, about 2000 square feet.

And we had everything available, even the little minor surgeries and even the eye exams, which my specialty.

Right.

Right.

But tremendous operation home pharmacy and really it's a credit to the medical profession.

They just poured out their hearts and we had a pharmacy that would match Wal Mart, I think probably bigger all by donation from the hospitals, the doctors and I even bought a bunch of eye drops there.

So I'm very, very, very happy with the donations and the volunteers.

Not we didn't buy any medicine.

It was all given to us.

Wow.

Amazing.

That is amazing.

I mean, and all of this was done makeshift on the fly in real time, including the security at the Cajun Dome.

So I'm curious, how did that work?

Well, it worked great.

In fact, I brought my card.

This is my.

This allowed you to get in and out.

Right.

So we had to have it right.

I had to have it.

So one day I brought it.

I went to the clinic and I was at the front door, a National Guard and stop.

And he says, Who are you?

Some doctor is a medical director.

You can't come in because you don't have a bed.

I said, okay, I won't get your back.

So that's what I had.

My goodness.

So it worked for you and against you.

But this was really the key.

And that echoed the medical records and everything we had to do.

We did it by the book.

Doctor, these are before we get back to our program, I want to mention the Friends of L.P., Board of directors and member challenged Proud to support Cajun Dome City on LP and are challenging all viewers to donate right now and match dollar for dollar the first 1500 dollars called earned during this program only.

In effect, this makes your donation worth twice as much to LBB.

And our thanks also to the Louisiana Department of Tourism, Culture, Recreation, all that they do for the state of Louisiana.

It is your gifts to help that make us have programing like this on our air to be able to provide it to you.

So continue to give.

It's important.

It keeps stories like this alive and keeps the stories of Louisiana alive for you.

But it wasn't just medical care evacuees needed.

It was everything from food and clothing to everyday necessities we all take for granted.

24 hours a day for weeks on end, the federal government was delayed in getting response and very woefully unprepared for this it would not be for the local effort.

There had been a catastrophe.

Many people would have died.

Many people would not have get rescued.

Many people would not have had the care and the caring that they got in the cage and home in Lafayette area and many other areas.

We met today with the president and first lady and other cabinet secretaries, as well as with FEMA, to emphasize that the burden has been borne by local communities in the relief effort.

And we can't sustain it for long because we don't have the resources and we're going to need federal help.

The federal government, you know, it was kind of funny.

They were overwhelmed.

They had never dealt with this kind of thing before.

The first person that showed up with a FEMA shirt was a young person who was contracted three weeks after a FEMA guy comes in with his FEMA shirt.

I'm from FEMA and I happened to see I said I wouldn't wear that shirt.

And this poor young man, I think he had a guy with him.

They were just overwhelmed with the size of what had to happen and the number of questions people had for them.

You know, when you say FEMA has arrived, well, that one person was not FEMA.

It was going to take a lot more ramping up for that group to get ready.

But initially, it was about the local people providing all of the services and supplies that were needed because that help was not forthcoming from the federal government or state government because they were just and soon overwhelmed with the magnitude of this problem.

Volunteerism was a big thing.

Without it, nothing would have happened per day.

We needed about 3 to 500 people to run this shelter, and we had no problem getting that number and more from the people of Lafayette, the local people, Lafayette, to just hard work and get down to business and take care what needs to be taken care of.

We don't wait for somebody else who can help us out.

The volunteers showed up every morning.

You know, they were basically spontaneous.

They were not necessarily affiliated with any organization.

United Way was a great help in that because our volunteer center helped coordinate the volunteers.

There were people who allowed folks to stay in vacant apartments and rental property for free until they could get on their feet and get leases signed and convert that into a paying lease.

There were many apartment complexes that provided shelter and space to people and didn't charge for it.

Getting jobs temporary that potentially turned into permanent jobs.

The professional community rolling out conference rooms and empty offices at their own law firms and doctor's offices and other places for those professionals to be able to resurrect their lives in that part of their business.

As hard as the whole event was on everybody who experienced it.

It showed the strength of this community and in the people of Acadiana and how giving they are.

Of course, there wasn't enough staff to deal with what we dealt with.

We typically run three hour events.

You know, when you come to the event, you come for 3 hours.

You use the restroom.

Once you you you know, you don't brush your teeth there.

You don't change clothes.

You just go in and out.

Mr. Davis decided that we would start hiring some of the resident to help keep the Cajun dome looking good and clean.

And he thought it was best that the resident do it because they were staying here.

So they wanted to be in a clean place.

I remember the second day I was here walking across the arena floor.

I saw a guy with a Superdome shirt on and I said, You worked for the Superdome?

He said, Yes.

I said, Now you work for me.

And so I put the guy on the payroll.

Within a couple of hours, he was working for us.

He was a security guard named ten day New Orleans.

Super, super guy, has family here.

He didn't have anything with him because I didn't realize until after like months after and still having friendships with some of the people who worked in a cardinal and they were still working there.

I'm like, you know, I hate Katrina.

Bring you to the occasional how you end up working.

I've been working, too.

You just have to kind of just, you know, came everybody came in like all the workers came in.

We had volunteers came in and just tried to make the best of the situation.

We went from having a 30 person post-event cleanup up staff to having 60, 70 people working in 24 hour shifts to keep the building clean throughout the whole process.

We have a great group of employees here.

I Can say that because I am the H.R.

director and I know them, but they were very, very willing to help.

It was very long hours, some very trying times.

Some individuals, mornings and nights didn't end.

They ran into each other.

The days were long.

Not all the news.

Always good.

You worked hours and hours and hours to try to accomplish something that didn't happen.

We worked crazy hours we've always had, you know, we're just not 8 to 5 business at all.

It wasn't unusual to have a long day.

What was incredibly unusual was to have long days back to back nonstop.

Greg Davis, the the head of the Cajun dome, he was just phenomenal in every sense of the word.

His decision to provide some sense of dignity to the people who were here as residents and not as evacuees or refugees or anything else really set the tone for for how we all looked at what was occurring.

These were people simply trying to survive a tragedy and shame on us if we felt Louisianians were going to treat them as refugees.

And then once they were registered into the shelter, the occasional shelter, they were called residents shelter residents, because he said that tone in it was pervasive throughout the whole time.

They were all treated as welcome guests into our community.

And I think that a lot of that is attributed to the tone that Greg set for events.

A person takes up about two and a half square feet when they're standing.

They'll take up about four square feet sitting and taking up space, maybe five or six.

You know, you want to set up a building that's doing an event for about seven square feet per person is the average space.

It's huge, a lot.

When you have a place to sleep and a place to find for your space and a cot, it's about 100 square feet per person.

And so in a 500,000 square foot facility, you know, you set up to handle 12,000 people when you're doing sheltering the 1200 thousand square feet of facility becomes really, really crowded.

The residents slept everywhere.

The fire marshal by the Thursday has serious problems with how we had set up the shelter because we had a policy that we were not going to turn anyone away.

But they worked with us very closely.

They showed a lot of flexibility under the circumstances, and so we were able to accommodate people everywhere.

The indication on where someone could set up bedding for their family and shelter an extended period of time.

Many were locked into the television and looking and identifying all the water in their neighborhoods.

And there was a lot of unknowns.

And I don't think that they realized initially that they weren't going back home any time really soon.

It was hard to wrap your brain around that.

The first few days with the evacuees, you could see the shock.

Most people were just in shock.

When you see 3400 people with about maybe ten or 15 walking around and you see everybody sleeping.

You realize there's a very basic human need to sleep.

When you see people sleep, you see your family, but you don't watch people sleep.

And so when that happened that night, I was just it was a very surreal moment.

Once we got to the kids dorm, I could just think of like a roof.

It was warm and I just wanted to go to sleep.

I just wanted to was exhausted.

We wanted families not to be separated.

It's bad enough that they had to be separated from their homes, but if they came with an individual, we wanted to see that they remained with an individual.

If you and your wife or you and your parents and you and your brother were together in the same room basically for 24 hours a day, for a long time, there's going to be tension there.

That's just natural as it relates to human nature.

You pour on top of that the emotions of losing your house, of not knowing where family members are, of learning that you have lost family members.

It was an incredibly difficult dynamic emotionally inside that facility.

We tried to make it as much a home to them as we could.

We had religious services.

There was entertainment.

There were even newspapers which are movies.

We had entertainers come through.

They were able to receive mail.

We came up with the idea as part of our daily meetings that we really needed to where we could get people, where it was appropriate out into the community, but they didn't have transportation.

So the first thing we did was issue vouchers to where they could ride a city bus anywhere they wanted to ride.

But we also developed a cab voucher system that we ran for a certain time.

But I think it came at it at an integral time when things inside the dome were were very difficult for the people who were there and the people who who are managing them most of the time, while I was advocating do not always be either cutting hair or standing next to her, I could hear it pretty much all day.

A lot of haircuts I gave away, especially to young kids.

Little boys lay men.

Tell your mama cut hair and he on until he comes.

No money with.

I said, Look, I know some guys and the smile on their face.

They were in our sheltering operation.

About 50% were children.

And we also knew that they were going to be with us for several weeks, that we needed to come up with something that was going to give them some activity.

We also had to address their need for schooling.

We realized that kids were out of school and we had a lot of supplies we were getting in.

So we set up a little area where the kids can go to get to continue some schooling.

You know, there were teachers who came and set up classes.

We made one of our staff people a recreation director.

And this person's job was to find all kinds of activities for the children to do once they would return from school, also have a place for them to do their homework.

We had children who arrived here with no parents, you know, pretty terrified.

And there were people in this community who took those children in.

They didn't know them.

They didn't know where they were from, who they belonged to.

But they took them into their homes and cared for them.

And helped to locate their parents and made sure that they got, you know, reconnected, you know, with their parents.

It was scary enough for kids to go through that and to go through it, separated from their parents, not knowing if they were going to find them again and to find kind of surrogate parents that would take care of them was really comforting to them.

Well, everyone, I'm Andre Moreau.

What an important story this is.

And how lucky are we that LPI exists to present independent documentaries such as this and in effect shares this historical archive that reminds us all about the fortitude of Louisianans in times of hardship.

Viewers who become members make all of this possible.

You can be part of this legacy when you call or text.

Give to eight, eight, eight, seven, six, nine, 5000.

Become a member of LP, be online at lp b dot org or scan the QR code on your screen.

Before we hear insights from another of the film's producers, let's again hear some of the thank you gifts that have been chosen especially to accompany this documentary, including companion books for your library.

When you become a member, you help LBB share important stories about Louisiana as our a way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive the Cajun Dome City combo, including the hardcover books The Day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible Storms of 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus, a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month receive the day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter.

About the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and a DVD of this documentary at either level Receive Visions LP based monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life Magazine and access to LP Passport, the streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

As we continue to talk about Cajun Dome City joined again by Linda Midget, executive producer of LP, and also Trent Anders, editor and publisher of Acadian House Publishing and executive producer of this film.

That's quite a task to be having those titles.

Trent And let me ask you, as executive producer of the documentary, how did it come about?

How was it decided to do this?

Well, first there was the book, and from the book, the film was born.

That's the book.

The day of the Cajun Dome Mega Shelter.

This book was written.

The first half was written by Jefferson Hennessey, who is a phenomenal freelance writer and journalist who midway through the thing, he died, and then his sister and her husband stepped up to finish writing the book.

So the husband, Mark Robin Robson, is a genius writer.

He's got a Ph.D. in English, and he's a screenwriter and a playwright.

And anyway, they finished it in good style.

And we think we have a good a good package as a result of it.

So the film we were aware, we know that film can do things that that material can't and vice versa.

But we were aware of this company called Xerox Motion Imagery in Lafayette run by Chris Allen and the work they do is equal to anybody in this business, anywhere, any United States.

And so we went to them and they joined us as a passion project, and we started working on it.

We on this thing for a few years.

And so that's where the film that's how the film came to be.

That's remarkable.

You are, of course, a veteran journalist yourself.

You've been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in literature, which is amazing.

Why was this particular story important for you to tell not only in a book than in a film?

Because of the power of a story, you can preach in principle all day long and people get it and they'll lose it.

But when you show them a story, they're never going to forget it.

We felt like this is a story we did not want to fade into oblivion.

There's such strong socially redeeming value to what the people of the Lafayette area did to to shelter the homeless and to feed the hungry.

And the way that we human beings should treat each other.

So we're hoping that this message can get out, you know, all over the country.

Well, and really, this changed the way that this happened around the country.

So the people in Katrina really changed the way shelters worked.

The people of South Louisiana who wrote the book on mega shelters and we're being with the nations leader in the creation of a mega shelter.

People in California and New York and New Jersey are following our lead member.

Support allows us to tell stories just like this.

And it also helps in two ways.

It allows LP to purchase broadcast rights to PBS favorites and also allows LP to produce and present original documentaries that share Louisiana stories.

And we have a member challenge that I want to mention right now.

The Friends of LP B Board of Directors are proud to support Cajun Dome City and on LP B, and they're challenging all viewers to donate right now during this program matching dollar for dollar.

The first 1500 dollars call during during this program only.

And in effect it makes your donation worth twice as much to LP.

And also thanks to the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism for their support.

Absolutely.

So tell us about this second book, The Terrible Storms of 2005, because the film has reminded us that it wasn't just Katrina that impacted the community so deeply.

That's right.

Of Hurricane Rita, in a way, was a worse hurricane than Katrina was.

And the people of extreme southwest Louisiana have said before what we tend to get forgotten.

Rita tends to get forgotten.

Rita leveled Cameron.

That was not a single building, but the courthouse that was still standing when Rita came and mauled that Cameron, the town of Cameron and so on.

So this book covers Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

And it also has, interestingly, the definitive story of the origins of the Cajun Navy.

They're all kind of stories floating around.

The Cajun nation was founded by a gentleman from from Abbeville who went to the TV stations and said, our neighbors in New Orleans are in deep trouble.

Please report to Acadiana Mall with your boats if you can.

They were expecting 40 and if they got 600 or 700 boat.

There was a multi mile convoy, a mission of mercy, if you will, heading for New Orleans the very next day after the levees broke.

And so that's why the Cajun Navy.

That's the true genesis of the Cajun Navy.

These can be part of your library.

They're part of the legacy of Cajun Dome City and the aftermath of Katrina.

They're part of the gifts they're being offered to you right now.

And there are other gifts.

Also.

When you become a member, you help.

LBB share important stories about Louisiana as our way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose from these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive the Cajun Dome City combo, including the hardcover books The day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible Storms of 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus, a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month receive the day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter about the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

And a DVD of this documentary.

At either level, receive Visions LP based monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life magazine and access to LP Passport, the streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

So of course, this broadcast on LP is the first time that this film has been seen statewide.

How long did you work on this film?

The film took about two or three years to do.

Then we bumped into Colbert, which slowed it down.

And yeah, we interviewed many, many people.

We were fortunate to get a handful of actual evacuees from New Orleans who came and interviewed, and we felt like their interviews were one of the most things because people scattered after Katrina, not not on their own volition, but people scattered.

And so we had that as well as numerous other interviews that were that really and that really tell the story of what happened, the profound act of kindness that the people of Lafayette performed in welcoming their their neighbors in distress.

Very much so.

Trent, thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise, all of your experience with this and putting together this film for Lvb so people can understand what it was like and what things were happening at that time.

And we have a member challenged friends of Lvb board of directors.

We're proud to support Cajun Dome City on Lvb and are challenging all viewers to donate right now and they will match dollar for dollar this first 1500 dollars called to and during this program only.

And in fact, it makes your donation worth twice as much to LP.

And we'll go back to our programing now.

So all of our evacuees, we're getting food, but at some point, I know that the nutritional value of what I saw was not going to keep me going every day, all day.

Fortunately, I could go home, but those who were here couldn't.

When we saw what was being provided through the Red Cross, we quickly understood that that was not adequate.

The Cajun Dome, it just formed its own catering service and we had a pretty new brand new kitchen.

And we Greg Davis asked them if they were willing to cook all the meals, and they said, sure.

So we went to Lafayette General and Axim to let us use their nutritionist and our and that nutritionist met with our executive chef, and they help us come up with a menu plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

So at some point it was transitioned from from the people that the Red Cross had contracted with to one single source of food through us.

So we went from food that was just whatever you needed to survive with to, well, let's have a good meal.

That's what we do here in the South.

We feed you, you know, no, no matter who you are or where you come from, you walk into a Cajun home and somebody is going to want to feed you and they're not going to feed you a sandwich.

They're going to cook something for you for breakfast.

Each morning, the kitchen made scrambled eggs, bacon biscuits and £700 of grits.

Lunch and dinner might include homemade Louisiana favorites like red beans and rice or crawfish stew.

With the help of countless volunteers, the Cajun Dome residents were becoming more comfortable and beginning to settle into a routine, a routine that would soon be shattered.

Rita is now the third strongest hurricane on record in Atlantic Basin, and residents in Louisiana and Texas should be watching this one closely from a distance.

This is a major hurricane here.

Category five winds have actually gone up over the last couple of hours, 175 mile per hour sustained winds.

And the forward speed has slowed down to nine miles per hour.

Still moving on towards the west.

I look at what really hits the Gulf of Mexico and I realize that it's going to hit pretty close to us.

And as this system moves west, it does have the potential for a quite a significant water rise, flooding, rain, severe weather and even places like Louisiana coast with a prolonged easterly flow here.

We were very concerned about Hurricane Rita.

It was another powerful hurricane.

We're not supposed to be used as a shelter during hurricane.

We're below I-10.

It was one of those things that the different departments decided that if you're below I-10, you're not safe enough for a hurricane.

We realized about two or three days out, we're going to have to take all of our evacuees and move them somewhere else.

One thing you don't want to hear is that you have to evacuate the evacuees.

Working with the governor's office.

They were able to find places for our residents in Shreveport.

The Katrina evacuees were here several weeks before Hurricane Rita was a threat, and they were evacuated north and taken again from a place that they had come to be accustomed to and knew what to expect for about things like Katrina all over again.

You know, like, man, we just went through this and now we've got to go through this again.

We just relocated from New Orleans to, you know, Lafayette.

And I got to leave Lafayette to go to try to relocate and do this all over again.

This facility basically had become home.

A lot of these people, because we're talking to I was like 28 days or something, I guess, here.

And they had to leave all their possessions again because they couldn't put them on the busses.

Rita came in and it wasn't as bad as what they had anticipated for Lafayette, but it was for Vermilion, it was for Cameron, it was for Iberia, it was for St Mary.

That Had a lot of water issues.

So again, we were looking at another Katrina.

During the hurricane, I had the National Guard people with me in the building and we had some and some damage and some broken things and got those things fixed pretty quickly.

Within a couple of hours after the storm was over, in a few hours.

And then we were to start taking evacuees in again.

But this time they were from Texas and Lake Charles area.

And so we ended up in, I think, about between 30 505,000 more people came to the Cajun dome, got a call from Shreveport.

They want to send the evacuees back.

And they did.

They load them up on Greyhound busses and they sent them back after Rita.

I went back to the occasion.

Domingue is even more people, people from Lake Charles and out that we were Rita really hit back.

We had to find space for The people that had not been here yet without affecting this the stuff, the people that would been here before for three weeks already, they came back here and we filled up the Cajun dome with the evacuees less a few, and then all the recent evacuees.

So we're back in business again, Keeping the Cajun dome open as a shelter cost about $100,000 a day.

Food alone was nearly 12,000 per day.

There wasn't really a posture in place where FEMA could reimburse the Cajun dome because it lost a concert or it lost basketball games or it lost those things.

There just wasn't a provision in the federal government to able to do that.

A lot of stuff was donated, which was good, but we had operating expenses like electricity and the food cost and the transportation cost that I really wasn't sure.

And I think Greg, at some point in time wasn't sure if we're going to get a reimbursement.

The Cajun Dome paid for sheltering expenses out of its own pockets.

When their operating funds began to run out, they turned to the only other moneys available their capital improvement accounts.

By the end of the sheltering operation, there was virtually nothing left.

Over the 60 day, 58 day period, we service about 18,500 people, about 4500 were actually from Hurricane Rita, the Calcasieu Parish area.

The other 14,000 were from New Orleans.

We had about 7 to 8000 people in the facility at any one time.

You know, the Cajun almost used to running three hour operations, three a week, 9 hours a week.

That's nothing to keep up with.

When the sheltering started, we ended up with 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because the elevators don't get used very often.

Escalators, the same kind of thing.

So you magnify the use of the building by just huge numbers.

The damage done here was mainly from usage or for usage.

We got 30 years of usage in 58 days, so everything had to be replaced after that.

So it took us a while to recover when we reopened the first week of January.

It took us all of that time to recover from the sheltering operation.

It was just about being reimbursed for the expenses.

It wasn't about making money at that time.

The state and the government came back and they reimbursed us the operating expenses of $5 million to keep this place for 61 days.

Over those two months, the Cajun Dome staff and volunteers spontaneous ously created the nation's first mega shelter.

It was a massive operation that cared for thousands of people.

No shelter of this scale had ever been attempted before.

The experience was so unique that the International Association of Venue Managers asked the Cajun Dome to document what they'd done.

The result became the manual for future mega shelters.

Each disaster, we always sat down and basically looked and reviewed what had been done.

The Cajun Dome was a big success in a mega shelter set up, which had never been a term used before.

The Cajun Dome was so big and so popular and I think so successful with its own mail service and, you know, pharmacy and hospital and entertainment that it has its own zip code and Cajun Dome City.

70594.

We were called one here at Occasional to join a task force to create an operations manual for a mega shelter.

This was a blueprint, a guide to help other arenas with this type of disaster.

You had to share of sitting next to the chief of police.

You had the mayor, president sitting next to some of the mayors and everybody working on the same things.

No one is trying to get up and say, well, I am the.

And we would meet and go over what happened the day before.

What issues we may have had to deal with.

What we were looking at for the next day.

What were some of the challenges.

And this was discussed every morning.

Everything was a new a new learning experience.

We ended up with a whole different organizational chart.

Of course, there's a huge evacuation shelter, organizational now that has all those positions, but the time made it up, moving along.

And so this manual became the standard for the industry.

Any event, any of us are called to do to do mega sheltering in the future.

We've had some large shelters for Red Cross, but the lessons that been learned here we were able to use in Hurricane Sandy and other big events in California in response to the wildfires that existed.

There are lots of massive evacuations and people had to be sheltered for an extended period of time.

And yes they were able to use that manual to refer to their shock operations, manual to make to get a get a heads up on how to structure their sheltering operation.

They used a lot of the ideas we had for prepositioning assets and preparation of communications.

And a lot of good things have happened because of the experience we had here.

So it's just a huge change in what we dealt with.

Going from fund, we create funds.

What we do, we create positive memories in your life.

Definitely was not positive memories in anyone's life in a very stressful situation for everybody involved.

As I approached the busses, I walked in the first bus with these sick people and I realized what it was all about.

Now, about the key to Don't be an evacuee.

It wasn't about the hurricane.

It's about people.

One thing Greg Davis and I always agreed about.

It's about taking care of people.

I don't think there's ever been a time like it.

Hopefully there won't be the need to have another time like that.

But it's just a testament to the people of Lafayette and Lafayette Parish.

In terms of medicine, and it wasn't something that I said by myself.

I've heard it repeated over and over again in terms of pure medicine, of people doing what we spent years training and perfecting a craft.

And it was the best pure medicine that we'd ever done because it wasn't about insurance forms and it wasn't about making sure that you checked off the right boxes and it wasn't about making sure you collected payment.

It was about taking care of people when they needed it and getting them that treatment and doing and putting all of your skills as a health care professional into effect as quickly as possible and just focusing on the patient there.

What happened at that pharmacy and what happened at that dome was a mirror image and a reflection of what was happening all over Acadian and all throughout Lafayette.

We were just there to provide a place for them to rest.

Nobody wants to be here.

Nobody wanted to be here.

He just wanted to get home and find a home.

I spent 61 days, 58 days officially.

We kept this clinic open.

17,000, 18,000 evacuees, 5000 medical visits and 750,000 meals served.

But as you can see, going through the cage, no, you can't tell that anything happened here.

It's been redone to get the cage domes like Mother Nature adjust.

Just, you know, storm comes through and they come the next week and everything's normal again.

But it survived and it will continue to survive.

I want to thank everyone for being with us for this presentation, Cajun Dome City, including our executive producer, Linda Midget, who was not on the set with us at the moment.

But our Cajun dome fellows are here once again, Greg Davis, the longtime Cajun Dome director.

Dr. Paul Azar, medical director of the Cajun Dome, and executive producer Trent Andrews, publisher and executive producer.

I want to thank everybody for what you did to make this happen and make this documentary happen, because once again it is all about Louisiana and Louisianans coming together and to be able to share it on LP with your support is what is so great about getting word out about this.

It's been a long time coming to put the C together and it certainly has several years to be sure, interrupted by COVID.

But we kept we kept trucking and we we got it done.

Let me ask everybody, what is the proudest moment if there is such a thing among many proud moments?

Greg, I'll start with you.

For me, we decided as a community, our medical community and the biologists from the city, that every person that would show up on our doorstep would be treated with a human dignity.

We did not buy into the racial stereotype that was being played on a national media.

We saw every person coming to us for their poor help as a human being that was in desperate need of our help.

How important was that on that riser?

Well, I think my lesson learned here that we were able to develop a system that cut down the morbidity and mortality, deaths and injury from disasters like this that has revolutionized floods and hurricanes and fires, tornadoes, what have you, earthquakes.

So that was probably number one.

Number two, real closely, I'm a deity working with this.

These guys was phenomenal.

I couldn't have done it without them.

Thank you so much.

And I appreciate your friendship.

Your friendship, the teamwork and the camaraderie must have just been off the charts.

It remains that way.

Absolute.

We're still friends.

We still work together.

The mega shelter definition of caring for a large number of people over a long time.

You redefined that, didn't you?

Well, the Cajun dome invented that.

Nobody else in the nation had ever done it.

But not to a proud moment for me after the hurricane, when Governor Kathleen Blanco said, we're going to push through legislation no pet left behind.

Some of us love pets, truthfully, maybe more.

We love some people that pets or our fellow beings.

And she saw things that way.

The other proud moment for me was was the the critical moment at which the Cajun dome was called in which Greg Davis was called, and the state police had 17 busses and these drivers were exhausted.

And not to mention that people were dying in the first two or three busses and he announced our policy is we will turn no one away.

And I would also credit the mayor who that was his policy and Greg implemented it.

But but there is room in the end, we will make room for you.

You all come and all together.

18,500 people came and no one died.

Yeah, that's another thing.

No one died.

Yeah.

So thankful for that.

Trent, the books tell me about the books very quickly.

Again, all the the book, The Day of the Cajun going back to shelter was the research gathered and interviews done.

And that was the basis for the film.

And the film took that and plus did some really professional work at interviewing very skillfully a lot of people who were involved with this project.

Those books are some of the thank you gifts.

We want to thank everyone once again for joining us.

And there are other thank you gifts also.

Thank you for giving to help me.

We you when you become a member you help help share important stories about Louisiana as our way to say thank you.

We invite you to choose from these special gifts for $15 a month.

Receive the Cajun Dome City combo, including the hardcover books The Day of the Cajun Dome, Mega Shelter, and the terrible storms of 2005, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Plus a DVD of this documentary for just $10 a month receive the day of the Cajun Dome mega shelter about the small city that sprang up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and a DVD of documentary at either level Receive Visions LP based Monthly Program Guide, a subscription to Louisiana Life Magazine and Access to Lpv Passport, the streaming service for the very best of PBS and LP.

What happened at the Cajun Dome Mega Shelter was?

Nothing short of extraordinary.

The volunteers and the staff gave and gave and gave.

Everyone involved should be filled with pride.

Tragedy can strike at any time, but with the Cajun Dome mega shelter experience shows us is that the kindness of a small community can make a huge difference.

The lives of thousands of people in Cajun Dome City did just that.

Said I'm going through a change.

Change in my life.

Just ain't saying no, no, no.

That I've seen seen better days way down in New Orleans.

His feet are below freezing.

Family he all I heard is these memories here.

What do I feel?

I feel he went up from New Orleans.

He Oh, yeah.

I'm a long way from home.

Oh, you know my memories.

I'm gonna find my little way back somehow that down.

And I know that feeling you know, maybe it's just a sign of the times.

No more heartache, no more crying, no more calm, but still feel lousy like a part of me just died from.

Do what he thinks people are different in a different place.

The Lord, I'm so thankful that I found.

I found my way.

Found my way.

Still my heart still my heart is in 15 minutes for 100000.

I'm a long way from home now And from my memory, man Oh, you.

I've got to find my way back some time.

Back down to New it on my knees within nine.

Support for this program is provided by the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.

Explore Louisiana and learn about its rich culture, history, food, music and art.

Go to CRT, Dot State, dot L.A.

Dot US for more information.