In 2005 after Katrina, Chief Justice Calogero asked Justice Kimball to be the point person, both for working with FEMA to get the reimbursements for expenses that could be reimbursed by FEMA and to handle the issues created by Katrina. At that time, Chief Justice Calogero had evacuated to Dallas from his home in New Orleans. Justice Kimball, residing in New Roads, jumped right in and dealt with Katrina related issues for the next five years.
Court employees had evacuated to locations all over the country. Justice Kimball convinced FEMA, for the first time ever, to allow the court to rent an entire hotel with some surplus funds. The Court rented a Holiday Inn in New Orleans for Court employees to have a place to live when they returned to work. FEMA reimbursed the Court monthly based on the people that were at the hotel who would have been able to receive individual assistance from FEMA at the same time.
Justice Kimball also needed to assist all the other affected courts in the state.
Kimball’s working group started out documenting all the courts that had problems and what those problems were. She began having meetings weekly with all of those courts, who would come over to Baton Rouge. She gave them things that FEMA needed for them to do or that her working group needed for them to do. Then her group would work individually with each court to see what they needed.
For instance, in one court mold had grown in the Clerk of Court's office because all the records had been under water. Those records had to be sent off to be remediated. That court’s employees were not able to work there or receive filings because of the health hazard from the mold in the building. FEMA had to bring inspectors in HAZMAT suits to look at the facility.
One court allowed the court from a neighboring parish to hold proceedings in their courtrooms. Justice Kimball was able to set this up and try to put notice on the internet and notify people in one parish that their court hearings would be held in the adjoining parish.
In New Orleans, where the parish courts were flooded, the federal courts allowed trials and motion hearings to be held at the federal courthouse there in New Orleans.
There was a tremendous amount of cooperation with all the branches and levels of government -- federal, state, and city, and judicial, legislative, and executive. Everyone worked well together to try to resolve problems. Many times, it took all three branches of government to come up with something.
