Courting disaster during Katrina

Louisiana Supreme Court rebuilds its network using MPLS VPNs and hot backup.

By Tim Greene, Network World
August 21, 2006 12:04 AM ET

When Katrina struck New Orleans, Peter Haas jumped into his RV with his wife, two daughters and a grandson and headed north to a campground near the town of St. Joseph’s to escape the storm.

It took the State Police three days to track him down. Hass was escorted back to New Orleans wearing body armor and accompanied by a SWAT team and a contingent of National Guard troops.

Haas shot to the top of New Orleans’ most-wanted list not because of anything he did, but because he was director of technology for the Supreme Court of Louisiana and, without him, the court system couldn’t get back up and running.

The Supreme Court building was in an area of the city that had been overrun by looters, so his mission was to get into the courthouse, grab eight key servers and network gear, plus some important files and checkbooks (to keep them out of the hands of looters). He had 60 minutes, and then the SWAT team and the National Guard were pulling out.

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It turned out the looters that had taken over that section of the city ignored the courthouse. His toughest problems were having to break windows and doors to gain access to what he needed, and the heat, which reached more than 100 degrees in the building.

Once that minor mission was accomplished, Haas had to create a new network so the seven state Supreme Court justices could get back to handling cases, as well as the important work of instructing lower courts how to respond to the emergency.

Peter Haas, director of technology, Louisiana Supreme Court:

“New Orleans could slide off the map in the middle of the night, and nobody at the remote site would know it until somebody called them and told them.’’