Throughout Hurricane Barry VIA LINK helped residents find shelters, locate sandbags, connect with cleanup services and obtain other critical resources. As the storm approached the State of Louisiana activated Louisiana 2-1-1 to be a part of their disaster services efforts and join their Emergency Operations Center. To meet the increased demand we tripled our normal daily staffing as our team worked 24 hours a day to assist residents.

Our staff assisted 923 callers and worked with Louisiana 2-1-1 to launch a text message tool for shelter information that was used by more than 5,400 people. We thank the Department of Child and Family Services for their partnership during this period.