Disaster Archive
Hurricanes 2005
Damage and Response Reports – Gulf Coast
December 5 Leesville, LA Daily Leader article: Smithsonian collects storm artifacts
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, which came to the Gulf Coast in September to collect Hurricane Katrina artifacts, plans another trip in December to seek more. During the initial trip, staff members took more than 900 photographs and collected 20 objects related to the hurricane, including a cot and a New Orleans Hornets basketball banner from the Superdome, which served as an evacuation center for thousands, a sign reading ‘‘Have We Been Forgotten’’ from Houma and a kitchen clock that stopped at 9:25 that was found in a field in Waveland, Miss. To read more, click here.
November 2 Biloxi Sun Herald article: Don't forget past in building future, Congress is reminded. Government urged to play strong role.
Claiming that Gulf Coast historic landmarks serve as both economic tools and symbols of the area's cultural legacy, representatives of the region's historical preservation societies Tuesday told a congressional committee that plans for future rebuilding should incorporate the area's past.
David Preziosi of The Mississippi Heritage Trust, H.T. Holms of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and Derrick Evans of Gulfport's Turkey Creek Community Initiatives testified before the House committee investigating a legislative proposal that would create tax incentives and federal grants to assist the preservation and rehabilitation of Gulf Coast historic structures. To read more, click here.
October 31 Times Picayune article: Preservationists: People in flooded historic neighborhoods need federal breaks.
Whole historic neighborhoods could be wiped out if Congress doesn't help private owners across the Gulf Coast repair damages from Hurricane Katrina, preservationists say. To read more, click here.
October 13 USA Today article: Storm exacts a cultural toll
The human toll of Hurricane Katrina has been so great that it feels almost indecent to point out that no previous disaster, natural or otherwise, has destroyed so much of America's cultural and artistic heritage over such a wide region.
Museums were damaged or looted. Historic houses were blown away. Private art collections were flooded or shattered. Aquariums lost all their fish. Artists lost their studios or their work. To read more, click here.
October 6 The Day, New London article: Felled Oak Trees Could Find New Life At Mystic Seaport
Since Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast five weeks ago, Mystic Seaport has received 40 calls and e-mails from residents of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana who have offered the museum their fallen trees.
And not just any trees.
These are huge live oaks, some several hundred years old, which are needed to restore the Charles W. Morgan, the country's last wooden whaling ship and the museum's symbol. To read more, click here.
October 6 Galveston Daily News article: Curator assessed damage to coastal museums
Like most people watching the destruction of Hurricane Katrina last month, Catharin Lewis’ heart went out to the residents left homeless and hungry by the storm.
After that, however, she thought of the art and history soaking up floodwaters and damp with mold in areas along the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts.
Many of these collections have been ruined, according to history and museum organizations, which have only recently been able to review the damage. To read more, click here.
October 4 New York Times article: Some Experts Say It's Time to Evacuate the Coast (for Good)
As the Gulf Coast reels from two catastrophic storms in a month, and the Carolinas and Florida deal with damage and debris from hurricanes this year and last, even some supporters of coastal development are starting to ask a previously unthinkable question: is it time to consider retreat from the coast? To read more, click here.
October 3 News.com article: Saving data after Katrina, Rita
Now that the waters have receded and people are returning to their homes and offices, some victims of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita are turning to data recovery companies to save their files.
DriveSavers and CBL Data Recovery Technologies said Monday that they are just starting to see an increase in the number of calls from individual customers and companies that have damaged hard disk drives--some of which have been under water for several days.
"There was this couple in their early 70s in New Orleans that had to climb a tree for 4 to 5 hours before they ventured down," DriveSavers CEO Scott Gaidano said. "They found their laptop under the water and were worried because they had scanned their family photographs onto the laptop. The originals were destroyed in the flooding so they were counting on being able to rescue the photos from the hard disk drive."
Gaidano said his company receives 20 calls a day, on average, from victims of Katrina with more calls are coming in from Rita every day, he said.
"The main thing to remember is to not give up. That data could be saved," CBL chief executive Bill Margeson said. To read more, click here.
October 3 Washington Post article: Bit by Bit, Federal Team Recoups Gulf's History
National Park Service preservationists, escorted by the equivalent of the agency's SWAT team, spent the past two weeks rolling through checkpoints and wading into moldy and still-wet museums to preserve rapidly disintegrating artifacts that record some of the Gulf Coast's colorful history.
They returned this week to the Washington area and will begin sifting through condition reports on thousands of artifacts recovered after Hurricane Katrina. They saved flintlock muskets and Civil War pistols from rust. They rescued a Confederate colonel's diary and heirloom plant samples from mold. They helped save precious family photographs from the ever-growing trash piles in New Orleans neighborhoods. To read more, click here.
September 28 The Christian Science Monitor article: Saving history from a hurricane:
Teams of archivists are rushing to the Gulf Coast on an urgent mission to recover priceless records damaged by Katrina.
When two feet of water flooded the basement of the New Orleans courthouse a month ago, archivist Stephen Bruno faced a huge problem. All the books on the bottom shelves were wet. He knew the soggy volumes, containing important public records, must be put in freezers to halt the growth of mold until they could be dried out. "I made a public plea for help," says Mr. Bruno, custodian of notarial records for Orleans Parish. "Once they finished saving people, I became deeply concerned that we had to save records." To read more, click here.
September 15 Los Angeles Times article: A record of the everyday
To Gulf Coast conservators, life's simple mementos are treasures, collections that define our culture and document regional communities. Now they fear much has been lost to the hurricane. To read more, click here.
September 10 Washington Post article: Buried Treasures: Storm's Toll on Culture.
Add to the human toll of Hurricane Katrina a staggering cultural cost. Early reports document capricious and heart-rending losses. Historic houses were swept away, watercolors swamped. Museums survived, but heat, humidity and lack of security threaten individual works of art and major collections. To read more, click here.
September 3 Baltimore Sun article: Reconstruction records poses a huge challenge.
In Bay St. Louis, Miss., part of the courthouse collapsed. In Chalmette, La., local judges were reportedly stranded at the St. Bernard Parish court, trying to reconstruct records damaged in the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina. And at the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans, boxes of evidence files were reported to be soaked. To read more, click here.
September 3 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article: Hurricane Aftermath: Region's Historic, Cultural Treasures Threatened
The horrible history being made by Hurricane Katrina raises inevitable questions about the history that may be lost. To read more, click here.
September 1 Baltimore Sun article: Historical, artistic treasures in path of hurricane
How do you reclaim a ruined treasure? Once Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters have receded, the dead have been buried and the cleanup has begun, the people of Louisiana and Mississippi may face yet another devastating blow: the destruction of cherished artwork and historical documents. To read more, click here.
