Trane helps provide new quarters for St. Margaret's Daughters' Home
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Residents and staff of St. Margaret's Daughters' Home in New Orleans will be reunited in a temporary facility this month, two years after they evacuated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The 116-bed eldercare facility was destroyed when Katrina's storm surge overwhelmed the levees in the city's Ninth Ward. While everyone at St. Margaret's was evacuated safely before the storm, federal disaster officials deemed the building unsalvageable after it was flooded and filled with four-to-six feet of standing water for two weeks.
St. Margaret's officials immediately began the search for a new home - a process that culminates at 10 a.m. (CDT) today with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new temporary facility at 3419 St. Claude Ave.
The building, which formerly housed the Bywater Hospital, required extensive renovations to support an eldercare facility. The conversion was completed with grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) and a pivotal team of reconstruction partners, including Trane.
Since 1931, St. Margaret's, a nonprofit facility, has offered affordable, quality nursing care delivered with compassion and personal attention. Before Katrina struck, St. Margaret's provided residents with the conveniences of home, like a sunroom overlooking a lush garden and family rooms complete with big-screen TVs.
"Residents and staff are a tight-knit group," said Larry Stansberry, chief executive officer of St. Margaret's. "Those relationships survived the storm. It became my No. 1 priority to get everyone under one roof again after this horrible tragedy. I consider the residents and staff of St. Margaret's to be like family and I wanted to bring them back home."
Once officials decided upon the former hospital building, they quickly
began renovations. Partway through the reconstruction process,
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