KHOU 11’s Ilona Carson sat down with former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels to reflect on the city’s extraordinary response to Hurricane Katrina.
HOUSTON — It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina changed the Gulf Coast and the nation forever.
In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, breaching levees and flooding entire neighborhoods. As the crisis escalated, tens of thousands of residents were forced to flee, and Houston became a lifeline.
KHOU 11’s Ilona Carson sat down with former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels to reflect on the city’s extraordinary response.
Under Eckels’ leadership, the city transformed the Astrodome into a massive emergency shelter, welcoming evacuees from the chaos of the Superdome in New Orleans.
“We worked with Jack Colley, who was the director of emergency for Gov. Perry at the time and had planned to make the Astrodome a facility for maybe 2,500 people to evacuate,” Eckels said. “It was not something that we had not anticipated would happen in Houston, but it was something the scale of which we could never have dreamed of.”
That scale became clear in the early morning hours when Judge Eckels received a call from then-Gov. Rick Perry’s office.
“‘Remember that shelter we talked about, 2,500?'” Eckels recalled the conversation. “‘Well, we need to make it 27,500.'”
The Office of Emergency Management was activated and within just 14 hours, the Astrodome was ready. Food service teams, emergency personnel and volunteers mobilized to meet the overwhelming need.
“The miracle was not really that we got it up in 14 hours,” Eckels said. “But it was the way the process unfolded and how we were able to take care of folks.”
The first buses arrived carrying evacuees who had endured days of scarcity and fear.
“They were grabbing the food and putting it in their bags. They were coming from an environment that was so scarce and so stressful on them,” Eckels said. “We were a whole different world than they were used to in New Orleans.”
The operation expanded beyond the Astrodome into adjacent facilities, including Reliant Center, offering not just shelter but medical care, food, and a sense of safety. The same teams that catered football games were now feeding families in crisis.
“We didn’t really know what to expect here, though,” Eckels said. “It was a very heartwarming to see these folks get engaged in the shelter operations themselves.”
City, county and state officials, along with the business community, all working together for the greater good.
“The experience was in place, and we had a level of trust between Bill White, Rick Perry, and myself that we would all perform and do what we needed to do and make it happen,” Eckels said.
These were people from different sides of the political aisle coming together in a time of crisis.
“And Bill White had already announced he was running for governor against Rick Perry, but there’s a time for those kind of political fights and a time to work together to make things happen,” Eckels said.
That spirit of collaboration would extend well beyond shelters. Houston’s response became a national symbol of compassion and coordination.
“I think more than anything, it was the, the, the city beyond the Astrodome itself and the, the shelter operations that we did or that Mayor White did at the city, was the way the city of Houston embraced people coming here,” Eckels said. “I had folks coming up to me saying that they pulled up to the gas pump with Louisiana tags and somebody else would buy their gas for them, that kind of thing so, it was a chance for our city really to shine and be a shock absorber for that group as they came in.”
And for those who live it, like former Judge Eckels, it’s a reminder of what communities can achieve when they come together.
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