Atlanta, Georgia Prepare For Hurricane Harvey Evacuees

ATLANTA, GA — Almost exactly 12 years after an estimated 100,000 people began making their way from the New Orleans region to Atlanta to seek shelter from Hurricane Katrina, Georgia officials are once again preparing to house and help refugees from a Gulf Coast storm.

Houston and the Texas coast have been walloped by Hurricane Harvey, which has been responsible for at least eight deaths and poured an unprecedented 40 inches of rain on some areas, causing massive flooding.

Harvey had weakened to a tropical storm and moved back out to the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. But with much of the region underwater, officials were eyeing the potential the storm would strengthen over the Gulf and possibly make landfall again on Tuesday.

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In Atlanta, state and local officials were working Tuesday to get ready for an influx of people like the one that followed Katrina.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed's Office of Emergency Preparedness was in communication with officials in the Houston area, as well as with the American Red Cross. The Georgia chapter of the American Red Cross "has deployed teams and vehicles to the Houston area and is coordinating recovery support efforts from Georgia," the mayor's office said Tuesday.

"The City of Atlanta is prepared to set up and provide temporary shelters to house evacuees in coordination with American Red Cross, Office of Constituent Services, Office of Human Services, and Continuum of Care," a spokesperson for Reed said. "The City is also prepared to begin coordination with Georgia Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (GAVOAD) and other partnering agencies to send emergency supplies to Texas throughout the different phases of recovery efforts.

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"As Hurricane Harvey continues its devastating impact in southeast Texas and the Gulf Coast, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner, and the heroic first responders and aid workers who are putting themselves at risk to help others," the spokesperson said in a statement.

On Tuesday, state public health agencies and the Georgia chapter of the American Red Cross also were working to prepare to take in evacuees from Harvey.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005, more than 100,000 residents of the region resettled in and around Atlanta. Of those, an estimated 67,500 still lived in Atlanta two years after the storm.

It was the second-largest number of evacuees anywhere, behind only Houston, where an estimated 150,000 evacuees would settle.

Largely African-American, evacuees from New Orleans were drawn to Atlanta largely due to its reputation as something of a black Mecca in the South. Unlike in Houston, where many Katrina evacuees with nowhere else to go were bused, Katrina evacuees who made it to Atlanta often had at least some financial means, and many were able to find jobs and establish new lives in the city, experts say.

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