Twenty years ago, when Convoy of Hope headed south to help the devastated victims of Hurricane Katrina, staff were carrying supplies in a Dodge pickup truck and two tractor-trailers.
The faith-based nonprofit humanitarian and disaster relief organization — which has now responded to more than 800 emergencies globally — was in its relative infancy.
Founded in 1994, Convoy did not get involved in direct aid to disaster victims until 1998 and completed just dozens of missions before Katrina made its catastrophic and deadly landfall along the Gulf Coast in late August 2005.
Convoy of Hope, a faith-based humanitarian aid organization based in the Springfield area, spent more than a year helping victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and neighboring states.
Convoy responded to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 and to several hurricanes in 2004 but Katrina changed the response script in significant and lasting ways.
“Katrina was the wild west,” said Kary Kingsland, who was senior vice president of Convoy’s U.S. Program and Disaster Services from mid-1999 through 2021.
“Katrina set the stage and set the bar for everybody in the industry, compared to what we do now.”
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Lessons learned during Convoy’s time in and around New Orleans helped shape how the nonprofit prepares, stages supplies, distributes emergency aid, and looks after its trained army of staff and volunteers.
In the early responses to hurricanes, especially Katrina, Convoy adopted a mobile distribution model, which allows people to remain in their vehicles and drive along a path to load essential supplies such as food, clean water and hygiene kits.
The process proved to be faster, safer and more efficient.
Kary Kingsland
“What it did for us is it allowed us to increase our capacity to respond to needs but it also decreased the need for law enforcement and other amenities locally that was taxing during a major event,” said Kingsland, now vice president of rural initiatives for Convoy.
Headquartered in Springfield with regional distribution centers now in California and Georgia, Convoy monitors natural disasters and stays in touch with on-the-ground partners prior to entering an area.
The set-up was not as sophisticated in the early days, which matters because Convoy staff and volunteers stage supplies and arrive early — often when search-and-rescue operations are still happening.
Convoy of Hope, a faith-based humanitarian aid organization based in the Springfield area, spent more than a year helping victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and neighboring states.
Kingsland recalled venturing into an area early in the Katrina response, only to find unexpected danger.
“We were down there trying to scout an area that we knew had severe need,” he said.
Law enforcement told Kingsland and his teammate to stay in their vehicle because bodies had been discovered around the corner. Parked, they discovered that they were surrounded by venomous snakes.
“I was looking out here and counted 21 water moccasins within 15 feet of the truck because Lake Pontchartrain was now up to there,” he said.
Kingsland said now there is a “better sense of deployment and engagement when people are let in.”
In the aftermath of those early responses, Convoy has altered its “care for the caregiver” strategy, cycling staff and volunteers out of the area every couple of weeks whenever possible.
The Convoy of Hope Global Headquarters & Training Center on Monday, June 23, 2025.
“There is a lot of fatigue. If I look back, I don’t even know how we did what we did, what we were able to accomplish, because we didn’t have a deep bench,” Kingsland said of the Katrina response. “Some of us stayed on the ground a very long time.”
He deployed to the gulf in late August and remained until October, only flying home once for a single day.
“There’s things now that we wouldn’t do. We’re very, very mindful of our team, their personal needs, their health, families, how much time they spend in the field,” he said. “We’re mindful of the aftercare that could be needed based on the crisis and how impacting that could be to a person.”
Over the years, Convoy has developed a network of partners — largely churches — and can leverage those facilities to stage supplies and provide a respite for staff and volunteers during a response.
Convoy of Hope, a faith-based humanitarian aid organization based in the Springfield area, spent more than a year helping victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and neighboring states.
The historic hurricane left more than 1,800 people dead and billions in damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure across cities and states.
In the early months, Convoy was serving 58 communities hit by Katrina. Part of the area was struck a second blow when Hurricane Rita came ashore in late September 2005.
“Katrina was so severe and so huge,” Kingsland said. “We were all across the gulf with points of distribution.”
Kingsland said Convoy delivered 587 tractor-trailer loads in the first year of responding to Katrina and nearly 1,000 during its two-year commitment to the region.
“We did clean-up and reconstruction on 65 churches and 1,800 homes during that time,” he said. “We did a lot of community events, outreaches.”
Pallets of food, water, and supplies at the Convoy of Hope World Distribution Center on Monday, June 23, 2025.
Stacy Lamb, who is currently vice president of disaster services for Convoy, got involved with the nonprofit in the wake of the deadly May 2011 tornado in Joplin.
He said the lessons gleaned from the Katrina experience were plentiful and Convoy has built upon them to better meet the needs of families during a disaster.
“It’s everything from the standpoint of how we take care of our people, the infrastructure that we have, the assets and resources,” he said.
Lamb said the regional distribution centers and field distribution centers, which can be a gigantic tent or a warehouse or a church facility, allow the nonprofit to operate a “hub and spoke” model.
Convoy of Hope response vehicles at the World Distribution Center on Monday, June 23, 2025.
“The field distribution center became a base and because we have more assets available to us know — trucks and box trucks and team members that can drive all of those we didn’t have back in the day — we now can fan out from those locations,” he said. “That field distribution center becomes a hub where we can direct ship in 100 loads within a week if we need to and just cover an entire area.”
Convoy also created a “lead volunteer” program, which was formalized in 2015, that trains volunteers who are retired or have a lot of flexibility to deploy when needed.
“They come in, they get trained and they function just like us. They function like a staff member in the field,” Lamb said. “That becomes a force multiplier when in the field, which allows us to be much more aware of the team care dynamic and allows people to be able to rotate … but still have the personnel that we need.”
Lamb said Katrina was a turning point for the work of Convoy, which has continued to expand its reach.
Convoy of Hope trucks parked at the World Distribution Center on Monday, June 23, 2025.
“Each year, you learn more, you get better. We gain more resources,” he said. “You are always building on what you’ve learned from previous responses. When you go from the Katrina days, we had responded to less than 100 disasters at that time, to well over 800 at this point. Don’t think you ever stop learning.”
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: How Hurricane Katrina changed Convoy of Hope’s disaster response