After Hurricane Katrina tore through the Louisiana coast in late August 2005, Sam Voisin received a 3 a.m. phone call from his general manager.
“We’ve been activated by the governor as a shelter, and we need you to come to work,” Voisin recalled his boss telling him.
Voisin was the director of sales at the Cajundome & Convention Center in Lafayette, Louisiana, an arena that turned into a temporary haven for thousands of people displaced by the storm. That morning, there were about 100 buses lined up in front of the building waiting to be processed, Voisin said.
Employees turned the arena into a city. The box office became the post office, the suites became doctors’ offices, the ballroom became a school and a church, outdoor areas became spots for recreation and indoor areas for sleeping. They also fed people three meals a day.
Voisin was in charge of setting up a shower program for about 3,000 people, some of whom had waded through sewage- or oil-filled water to escape the destruction, he said. Locker rooms traditionally assigned to home and away teams were made available to evacuees who needed to wash away the grime and regain a sense of composure.