"There was even a team of people assisting employees with locating housing, schools, churches, banks and whatever was needed," he said.

SIDEBAR

Temporary locations are still home to some IT ops

The physical dislocations that were caused by Hurricane Katrina are forcing IT managers such as Jim Burgard to address problems as basic as how to get their staffers from one place to another.

Burgard, assistant vice chancellor for university computing and communications at the University of New Orleans, struggled after the storm to find a way to get IT workers to Baton Rouge, where the school set up a makeshift data center at Louisiana State University that it is still using. Finding places for them to live there was also a challenge, he said. Several employees who owned RVs used them as their temporary residences in Baton Rouge. Burgard himself commuted four hours a day round-trip between his temporary home in Crowley, La., and Baton Rouge. Now he's grappling with the transportation and housing issues as part of developing a new disaster recovery plan for the university.