But he says nothing in his 32 years as a social worker prepared him "to deal with the enormity" of the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has wrought in his hometown of New Orleans.

The storm has left homeless 38 of his immediate family members, including his daughter, a senior at Loyola University.

"My 76-year-old father's home was destroyed and he is trying to find some way to pay his employees. Our daughter evacuated with two changes of clothing, my brother-in-law has a 1-year-old son, the fate of my in-laws' home off of Canal Street is unknown, my stepsister's house in St. Bernard Parish is under 15 feet of water," he said. "You would have to multiply those stories by thousands to cover all of the human suffering."

Those who have witnessed the nation's worst natural disaster from afar are gripped by the plight of one of America's largest and poorest cities.

"It seems all the problems that have been building in New Orleans for years and years - the levees, marshes damaged by the oil and gas industry, the extreme poverty, violence and drug abuse - this hurricane just took the lid off all of those things," St. Romain said.

St. Romain, president of Volunteers of America (VOA) in Salt Lake City, spent most of Thursday readying his homeless outreach corps to help state officials take in 1,000 evacuees from Louisiana.

"These are my people," he said. "We're ready to do whatever we can do."

St. Romain expects many of them will need more than food and clothing. Most will likely be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments.

St. Romain's counterparts at the VOA in New Orleans say they are shut down and unable to reach out to anyone.

"It's impossible to understand the enormity of this. Even people with resources, like my dad, can't access money through ATMs to pay his employees," said St. Romain. "How can he pay his staff? They need money for food and water and shelter."

Though scattered from Mississippi to Georgia, St. Romain's relatives are all safe. After 36 hours of frantic phone calls, he tracked down the last one, his sister-in-law, late Tuesday. A nurse at a Gulfport hospital, she had stayed behind to care for her patients. But they are overwhelmed by sadness and uncertainty.

"My daughter had just set up an apartment in uptown New Orleans and doesn't know when she will ever get back there to get her stuff or what condition it's in," said St. Romain. "To hear her sobs over the phone, it was just complete emotional collapse."

St. Romain, who spent 37 years in the New Orleans area and last visited in April, also is grieving. "My wife and I are trying to not watch TV, but there is a part of us that says, 'This is our home and our family,'" he said. "We sailed Lake Pontchartrain and fished those marshes."