How do you make do when you now have nothing?

Two panels of community leaders on Tuesday recalled being confronted with that dire situation immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated metro New Orleans 20 years ago.

Alden McDonald, the president and CEO of Liberty Bank, discovered within a day that all of his bank branches were badly damaged or destroyed. How would customers get access to their bank accounts? Many of them had been evacuated with nothing. How would they borrow money to begin reconstruction?

Liberty reestablished an Internet connection through another bank and set up a physical operation in Baton Rouge.

“As people came in, we wrote down on a piece of paper how much they took out,” McDonald said at a forum organized by GNO Inc. that was held at the Port of New Orleans.

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