When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, it left behind devastation on an almost unimaginable scale. More than 1,800 people were killed, millions were displaced, and entire communities across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were forever changed.

Among those who responded in the aftermath was Paul Schlumper, then a research engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) called upon his team to help train recovery workers and residents on how to protect themselves while rebuilding in hazardous conditions.

“Our cornerstone program is the on-site safety and health consultation program,” Schlumper explained. “We’ve been doing that since the late 1970s, and OSHA knew about us. When Katrina hit, they saw that as an opportunity for us to help and go down to the region and assist with a little bit of the response, but primarily the recovery efforts.”

The first challenge was simply getting to the affected areas. Hotels in Biloxi and Gulfport were either destroyed or filled with FEMA personnel and first responders. “Initially we had to stay in Mobile and then drive over to the Gulfport-Biloxi area because there weren’t any hotels available,” Schlumper recalled. “Once we got going for a while, some of the hotels in the Gulfport-Biloxi area opened up, and we were able to travel straight down there.”

His team was on the ground within weeks of the storm, but it took until December to begin large-scale training sessions. “For the first few months, we really just networked, met with people, tried to get a feel for the area. After a few months, we were able to set up a good deal of safety and health-related training.”

Paul Schlumper (left) conducts training with Hurricane Katrina recovery workers inside a temporary tent in 2005.

The list of dangers was long. “The immediate concerns that were expressed to us were things like chainsaw safety, fall protection, and electrical safety,” Schlumper said. “Mold was huge from a health standpoint. After a period of time with all that moisture, there’s going to be mold.”

His team also emphasized personal protective equipment. “Whatever work people were doing, we wanted them to wear the proper equipment: safety glasses, hard hats, steel-toed shoes, and gloves. We spent a lot of time doing that.”

Although OSHA and FEMA provided the initial orientation, the bulk of the work quickly shifted toward the private sector. “Very soon thereafter, especially starting in December of that year, we started working with some of the major construction companies,” he noted. “Those were the people doing the work, trying to rebuild the area.”

Schlumper says the scale of the disaster is what still resonates most.

“You get in the car and drive for a lot of minutes and even hours, and you’re still in the impacted areas,” he said. “Before, there were beautiful old houses. After, it was just flattened. I remember going down there and seeing the casino barges that floated across the highway and landed on top of a hotel. Just the sheer devastation… that’s what I carry with me.”

While the hazards were similar to those on any construction site, Katrina underscored the importance of preparation and scale. “I think the exposures were what we normally see on a construction job site,” Schlumper reflected, “but the sheer devastation of the storm is probably the biggest thing for me.”

Schlumper now serves as the director of the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES) Program at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute and manages the OSHA 21(d) Consultation Program. He also serves as a safety consultant on the consultation program and teaches a variety of safety-related courses, including machine guarding, lockout/tagout, general industry safety and health, and OSHA recordkeeping.

The OSHA 21(d) Consultation Program of the SHES team provides no-cost and confidential occupational safety and health consultation services to small and medium-sized businesses in Georgia.

If the recovery were to happen today, Schlumper says technology might be greatly beneficial for the response. “Drone technology would be much more widely used nowadays than it was back then, just from the immediate response and recovery efforts,” he suggested.

Today, Schlumper continues to carry forward the lessons of Katrina. His advice to future professionals is grounded in both technical knowledge and compassion.

“My engineering background has really served me well,” he said. “But this is definitely a profession where it helps to really care about people. My team is very passionate about keeping workers safe. It’s more than just trying to turn a profit or being regulatory compliant—it’s keeping everybody safe and going home in the same condition that you came to work that day.”

Through the 21(d) program, the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES) team at Georgia Tech provides consultation services to companies with fewer than 250 people at a single site and 500 people corporate-wide to:

• Identify workplace hazards, reducing injuries and illnesses.
• Provide guidance to comply with OSHA standards.
• Establish new and improve existing safety and health programs within the company.

The consultation is administered by a safety consultant and is confidential and will not be reported to the OSHA inspection staff.

Any entity seeking to engage the services of SHES can contact them via their website: https://oshainfo.gatech.edu/.

Writer: Christopher Weems
GTRI Communications
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 3,000 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $919 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.