PSMJ’s growth from Hurricane Katrina to today

By Emma Peterson. 

The PSMJ Disaster Rebuilding Fund was founded in response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Today, they’re helping communities across the country recover from disasters. 

2025 marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which claimed nearly 1,400 lives and still affects the economy and environment of the Gulf Coast to this day. Katrina was a devastating tragedy, but it also marks a moment in time where the United States came together to help a community. One group that had boots on the ground rebuilding was the PSMJ Disaster Rebuilding Fund. In this MetalCast episode, Karen Edwards sits down with Frank A. Stasiowski, who you might know as the founder and CEO of METALCON, to talk about the work he does through PSMJ.  

PSMJ came out of Frank and his wife’s need to find a way to help during the post-Katrina recovery period. He explained, “When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, my wife and I came up with the idea, of marshalling all the people in our mailing list to help out and do something for the communities on the Gulf Coast.” And so Frank and his wife jumped in and did their best to help. Frank explained, “We literally got on a plane and flew to New Orleans. We ended up in a little community called Waveland, Mississippi, met with the mayor and were put to work helping them find their citizens because the storm had displaced everybody. Everybody was all over the country. So, we went back to New Orleans, went to the post office and bought 6,500 postage stamps and we ended up putting out the survey and found about 95% of their people within a couple of weeks.” 

As Frank and his wife continued to try and find ways to help, they realized that one of the challenges was a lack of community spaces to coordinate efforts in. And that’s where the idea of using their skills and connections in the construction industry to repair and rebuild community spaces that were lost in the storm came from. PSMJ’s first project was a community center in Bay St. Louis (where the eye of Katrina hit). Frank elaborated, “We raised funds from the architects, engineers and contractors and built a building which is hurricane proof, so to speak, which can be used for community meetings, concerts, all kinds of things in the community of Bay St. Louis. It took us two years to do it, but it stands as a testament to the architects and engineers and what we could do to pull them all together.” 

And now, 20 years after Katrina hit, Frank and PSMJ are still running around the country with boots on the ground, to help communities recover in the aftermath of disasters. Frank shared, “We literally get on the ground and go and do it. In the case of Asheville, right now we're working with a public library in Asheville, North Carolina, and one of our people is helping them collect books. So even on the small end of things, we have books all over our office because people are donating books that we're going to ship to this library to try to rebuild their collection and their books ranging from kids' books all the way up to every category of books you find in a bookstore. And we’re planning a trip to Altadena, California to meet with the mayor and see what we can do to help them rebuild after the fires. And it’s all because of the power of our mailing list and our donations that we're able to connect with those people and go there to help directly.” 

Read the transcript, Listen to the full conversation or Watch the episode to learn more about the PSMJ Disaster Rebuilding Fund, their work and how you can support them!