Shreveport became a remote operational center for LifeCare during the Katrina crisis, linking its corporate staff with colleagues and patients stranded at Memorial in New Orleans. From a hospital in Shreveport, senior vice president Robbye Dubois and a small team coordinated messages, pursued evacuation assistance, and later tried to locate patients who had been moved out of the city. The connection offered a means to organize help across distance, but could not resolve who controlled access to rescue assets, when transportation would arrive, or how patients would reach safety after evacuation.

A remote command post

LifeCare’s staff in New Orleans communicated with colleagues in Shreveport through pcAnywhere, software ordinarily used by help-desk specialists to access computers remotely. The typed exchange let the teams relay information in real time, even as telephone and internet service became limited. It also carried personal messages for employees who had been unable to contact their families for nearly two days, turning the company’s improvised communications channel into a narrow link between workers and loved ones as well as between field staff and managers.

Dubois was working from a hospital in Shreveport with a quality-management director and an information-technology specialist. Although LifeCare’s corporate headquarters was in Plano, Texas, she lived in Shreveport and commuted between the two places. Her position was complicated by recent changes in company management: The Carlyle Group had acquired LifeCare earlier that month, and the new senior leaders, including the chief operating officer, were away from the office when the crisis escalated. Dubois chose to lead the response with the colleagues available to her rather than rely on superiors she did not expect to provide useful assistance.

Messages, lists, and uncertain evacuation plans

At Memorial, assistant administrator Diane Robichaux was managing evacuation work for LifeCare patients at two New Orleans-area campuses while the senior administrator was outside the city with his family. She gave Memorial’s command leaders a list of LifeCare’s most critical patients and reported that her organization was trying to move its own patients. After learning that Memorial’s helipad could receive helicopters, she sent Dubois a list of fifty-three patients who still needed evacuation; two of the original fifty-five had died. Seven surviving patients relied on ventilators, another used an assisted-breathing device, and five required dialysis.

From Shreveport, staff sought guidance from Knox Andress, whom they believed worked with FEMA in Baton Rouge. They were told that FEMA and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals knew about LifeCare’s situation and intended to evacuate ventilator-dependent patients first, but no arrival time was available. Later calls brought no clear confirmation that LifeCare would be included in the rescue operation or where the hospitals stood in the evacuation order. Dubois urged Robichaux to go to the helipad and explain that LifeCare was part of Memorial and needed evacuation too. The remote team could press for action, but its information about official plans remained incomplete.

A brief offer to place LifeCare patients on Coast Guard helicopters gave way to further uncertainty, including the question of whether corporate approval was needed. As the water rose, truck access became harder. Dubois eventually told Robichaux that ambulances would be sent to a staging area, with critical patients first, but the process could take hours and might not begin until morning. Robichaux and her colleagues planned to proceed even if the backup power failed and their computer connection disappeared. Their expectation was that patients would start moving sometime between three and eight in the morning; it was a plan shaped by the possibility that their only dependable link to Shreveport might not last.

Transport beyond the city

Shreveport’s work did not end when patients left Memorial. Dubois arranged for a fleet from Lone Star Ambulance in Texas, a company with which LifeCare had a contract, to collect patients being evacuated by helicopter or boat from Memorial and from LifeCare’s campus near the New Orleans airport. That airport-area hospital was not flooded but had power problems. Dubois sought permission for ambulances to enter the city, but did not obtain it, and advised staff at Memorial to use whatever transportation officials arranged.

When Robichaux later asked whether ambulances originally bound for the planned staging area could be redirected to a boat landing near Ochsner, the Shreveport representative said she would try. The teams were also looking for ventilator-dependent patients who had already been flown out and attempting to arrange transfers to other LifeCare hospitals. These were distinct logistical problems: reaching people at a changed pickup point, identifying patients after departure, and finding another facility able to receive them.

The uncertainty had immediate consequences. Dubois learned late in the day that four LifeCare patients and seven LifeCare staff members from Memorial were stranded at the intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles Streets. She spent the evening calling the Coast Guard and Andress to seek help for them. Earlier, she had also spent much of Wednesday trying to find four LifeCare patients flown from Memorial by the Coast Guard and move them to other LifeCare locations. Evacuation from the hospital therefore did not guarantee arrival at a safe destination; patients and staff could remain exposed between the point of departure and the next organized transfer.

What the distance reveals

Shreveport’s role exposes both the value and the limits of centralized coordination in a disaster. The chat connection transmitted patient counts, family messages, and changing plans, while Dubois’s calls helped secure ambulances and pursue transfers. Yet the staff in Shreveport could not make federal or local agencies specify when assistance would come, could not secure permission for ambulances to enter New Orleans, and could not ensure that patients who had been evacuated were accounted for. Communication made the crisis more visible without making the response coherent.

The city also anchors a contrast in the book’s account of institutional support. During Katrina, Tenet and LifeCare’s remote corporate responses to their New Orleans hospitals were delayed and uncertain. In a later account of preparations for Hurricane Sandy, a reporter describes a parent health system with a well-organized local command center offering active support to its own hospitals and others in the region. The comparison makes Shreveport more than a place name: it marks the distance—geographical and organizational—between people trying to coordinate rescue and those facing the immediate consequences of the emergency.