Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group, Harvard Medical School

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You can read about the history and effects of Hurricane Katrina at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_katrina.

Information about what the government is doing to help victims of Hurricane Katrina can be found at www.hhs.gov/katrina.

An issue that has not received much media attention is that asbestos was released in the air from older buildings destroyed by the storms. This has important public health implications that are discussed at The Asbestos and Mesothelioma Center.

In addition to the oral histories of the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group, a number of other oral history projects have been established to document the experiences of people who lived through Hurricane Katrina. Some of these projects continue to recruit people to tell their stories, while others do not. Some have posted stories on line, while others have not. Among the most important of these oral history projects are the following:

The Katrina Video Ethnography Project
The Katrina Video Ethnography Project is a ten-year effort to document the causes and effects of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The project is based at Louisiana State University's (LSU) Department of Sociology in Baton Rouge. In the first days after the hurricane, over 80 videotaped interviews with displaced persons were collected by a team of students and faculty at LSU who worked in parking lots and shelters. Later work focused on the areas surrounding the levee breaches. The project will follow individuals, organizations, legal actions, and relief efforts in Louisiana for a ten-year period.
Currently collecting data?	Yes
Enrolling volunteers?	No
Reports or Project Available at:	Currently Unavailable
Contact:	Wesley Shrum Louisiana State University Professor of Sociology shrum@lsu.edu 225-578-5311

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (www.hurricanearchive.org) uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present people's experiences of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media and the University of New Orleans, in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and other Gulf area partners, organized this project. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided funding. The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank contributes to the ongoing effort by historians and archivists to preserve the records of these storms by collecting first-hand accounts, on-scene images, emails, blog postings, podcasts, and other digital files. By allowing the people affected by these storms to tell their stories in their own words, the historical record will remain accessible to a wide audience for generations to come.
Currently collecting data:	Yes
Enrolling volunteers:	Yes, go to www.hurricanearchive.org for more information
Reports or Project Available at:	www.hurricanearchive.org
Contact:	info@hurricanearchive.org

Louisiana Folklife Program: In the Wake of the Hurricanes
A coalition of scholars and the public interested in documenting the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have begun a landmark cooperative effort to provide a framework for comparing data collected from independently funded projects. The coalition provides basic questions and a form for collecting demographic information, allowing for comparison across different projects. The American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress has agreed to partner with the Coalition to serve as a secondary repository for the materials collected by the Coalition. The information collected will include evacuation narratives, stories of relocation, memories of flooded communities/neighborhoods and data pertaining to the relationship between strong cultural identity and decision-making in a crisis.
Reports or Project Available at:	http://www.louisianafolklife.org/katrina.html
Contact:	Dr. Susan Roach Louisiana Tech University msroach@latech.edu

I-10 Witness Project
The I-10 Witness Project is a community-based story collective formed to document the myriad tales emerging from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Administered by the multi-disciplinary New Orleans arts production company Mondo Bizarro, I-10 Witness seeks to give a voice to affected Louisiana citizens by documenting their stories through sound and video. I-10 Witness believes that this is the time to listen and provide a safe space for people to express how this storm has influenced their lives. I-10 Witness also wants to cultivate a forum where citizens can voice their concerns about the reconstruction, redevelopment and rejuvenation of southern Louisiana and New Orleans.
Currently collecting data?	Yes
Enrolling volunteers?	Yes
Reports or Project Available at:	http://i10witness.org
Contact:	info@mondobizarro.org 504-304-7855

A number of sites contain images that portray the damage that Hurricane Katrina caused, such as http://www.nola.com/katrinaphotos/user/ and http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_coverage.html.

A number of blogs have been created to present personal testimonials of hurricane survivors, such as www.hurricanekatrina.org and http://i10witness.org/stories.html.

Many websites have been created by relief agencies either to provide information, requesting donations, or both. You can search for examples of these on the web.