Daniel Hoffmeier, right, with the Coast Guard, along with an unidentified police officer, helps load children into a helicopter while transporting victims of Hurricane Katrina from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center to the airport, Saturday Sept. 3, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

On Aug. 29 Hurricane Katrina roared through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, killing hundreds of people, virtually destroying New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities, and jettisoning hundreds of thousands of people into homelessness.

True to form, local massage communities moved into action just days after the storm had passed, volunteering time and caring to those affected most by the hurricane.

Specially trained teams of therapists traveled to sites along the Gulf Coast to provide massage to emergency responders—the firefighters, search-and-rescue personnel, health-care workers, police officers and other professionals who respond when disaster strikes. Individual therapists volunteered massage for traumatized survivors living at Red Cross and Salvation Army relief centers. And across the country, massage schools, therapists and spas held fundraisers to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina begin to piece their lives back together.

Over the past decade the massage-therapy field has seen the development of teams of therapists who provide massage to emergency responders. Massage teams can be found in the aftermath of fires, floods, plane crashes, earthquakes—any type of emergency. Massage-team members are trained in Critical Incident Stress Management and seated massage, and work hand-in-hand with state or national emergency-response organizations.

In Hurricane Katrina's wake, the Carolina Emergency Response Massage Team (CERMT) was deployed by the South Carolina Department of Emergency Management to Mississippi. Ten therapists traveled to the Gulf Coast, according to Doug Rasmussen, CERMT's executive director. Rasmussen had recently begun a new organization, Emergency Response Massage International, to teach workshops in emergency-response massage. In the month following Hurricane Katrina, he trained teams of therapists in Jackson, Mississippi; Atlanta, Georgia; Shreveport, Louisiana; and San Antonio, Texas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked another massage team, the Florida Immediate Response Stress Team (FIRST), to work under the umbrella of the administration's Incident Management Team to provide chair massage to emergency responders. FIRST sent three massage therapists to a base camp in Hancock, Mississippi, where more than 1,000 responders were stationed, according to FIRST Director Sue Welfley.

Some American Massage Therapy Association chapters have Massage Emergency Response Teams (MERT). According to national AMTA's Web site, members of the Mississippi chapter's MERT team provided massage under the direction of the Mississippi State Department of Health.

Hurricane Katrina was unique among disasters in that survivors were transported to far-flung states, meaning that a broad population of massage therapists was needed to volunteer. Therapists set up chairs and tables at relief centers throughout the country to provide massage to hurricane survivors.

Still more massage therapists also made time to lend a hand. They coordinated massage-a-thons, offered chair massage in exchange for Salvation Army and Red Cross donations, and gave a percentage of their income to relief agencies. Massage-school clinics donated proceeds from student massages.

The Internet played a large role in massage therapists' communication immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Online chat rooms were used to rally therapists for massage-a-thons and other fundraising activities; newspapers reported online about massage events aimed at raising money for the Red Cross and Salvation Army; AMTA National opened up the Career Center on its Web site to nonmembers to "help those massage therapists who lost their massage practices as a result of the hurricane"; and Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals set up a special online forum for ABMP members to talk to each other about the hurricane.

The online edition of The Decatur [Alabama] Daily News reported that massage therapist and New Orleans resident Avery White, who had been forced by Hurricane Katrina to abandon his massage practice, C.B.D. Massage, provided massage to fellow evacuees at Decatur's Parkview Baptist Church just one day after the hurricane hit. His comment to the newspaper reflects the dedication and helpfulness of the massage community: "'Man, I'd be doing this at my shop right now if it wasn't flooded ... Have table and chair, will travel!'"

— Karen Menehan