Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on the Gulf Coast left many of us wondering what we could to help.  In this issue of Network, two museum professionals share their responses to Katrina.  MER Board member Erik Holland had the opportunity to travel to Mississippi with a team from the American Association for State and Local History.  He reports on his experience In the Wake of the Storm. 

Katrina’s impact was felt far beyond the people and places directly impacted by the storm.  The images of broken levees and people with nowhere to go brought difficult questions about race, class, and justice to the forefront of the American conscience. Kelly Calnon Falck explains how The History Center in Tompkins County responded to its community’s need for answers with “Understanding Katrina.”

In the Wake of the Storm: Cultural Institution Assessments after Katrina in Mississippi

By Erik Holland, Interpretative Program Specialist, Minnesota Historical Society

Hurricane Katrina first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just north of Miami, Florida on August 25, 2005. After crossing the Florida peninsula and gaining speed and power in the Gulf of Mexico, the huge storm turned north and on August 29 again came ashore along the Central Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm.  Katrina was the third most powerful storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, behind Hurricane Wilma and Hurricane Rita, and the sixth-strongest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.  Katrina was also the first hurricane of the season to become a Category 5 hurricane.  Category 5 hurricanes have sustained winds equal or greater than 156 mph and potential storm surge equal or greater than 19 feet. The potential damage from a storm of this magnitude is complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings, as well as some complete building failures with small utility buildings being blown over or away. Flooding from these storms causes major damage to lower floors of all structures near the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas may be required.

We have all heard news reports of the deaths, destruction of property and displacement of families that this storm and subsequent flooding caused in New Orleans. But you may not be as aware of great losses elsewhere along the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, where Katrina killed 1281 and caused over 100 billion dollars in damage.

As the extent of the enormous destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina began to be realized, a constant stream of museum professionals contacted the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH) offices offering materials, time, and expertise. The question most often asked was, “How can we help?” AASLH’s logical response was, “We must understand the problem and assess the needs before we can respond to your question.”  AASLH quickly organized the History Emergency Assistance Recovery Team (HEART), to send museum professionals to the affected area to identify and mobilize the resources needed to assist local cultural institutions. Steve Shulman was hired as Project Director to coordinate this effort. Steve’s mobile phone number is (571) 241-6827.  He can also be contacted by email at shulman@aaslh.org.  

The first phase of the plan was for mobile assessment teams to be deployed to Mississippi and Louisiana.  The first of four assessment teams arrived in Mississippi on September 22, 2006, thanks to generous support from the Watson-Brown Foundation of Thomson, Georgia and The History Channel. HEART’s mission was to help impacted institutions by securing, assessing, and stabilizing collections, and if necessary, by moving resources to temporary storage facilities. Each team was made up of two conservators, a generalist, a team leader and an at-home captain. Each team was to serve for one week assessing current status and site needs at the time of their visits.

On September 15^, 2006, I received a short e-mail from Terry Davis, President and CEO of AASLH asking if I was: “Interested in being a team leader for one of our mobile teams?” I discussed the situation and potential with my wife, Susan, and with Tom Pfannenstiel, my supervisor at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). Susan and I had planned to take a much-needed leave from St. Paul to our property at Fort Clark, North Dakota at the same time that AASLH was proposing I be deployed. Our planned vacation made my work schedule open enough that the deployment was doable.

Even though timing was not an issue, both Susan and Tom counseled that more information regarding the deployment would be useful before making any decision. Since I was registered to attend the Annual Meeting of AASLH in Pittsburgh, and was planning to arrive on September 20, I decided that my decision could wait until speaking in person with those that were developing the plan.

The opportunity to learn about the HEART program came in the form of a 2 ½ hour meeting where many of the potential team members discussed what was known and what was unknown about the plan and expectations. There were about 25 people present excluding AASLH staff. The discussion was wide-ranging.  The people present at this meeting varied from those who needed answers to each question to feel comfortable to those who saw the lack of answers as part of the mission! We discussed everything from processes of reporting, equipment needs, the delicacy and tact needed when communicating with people who had been emotionally impacted by the storm, physical challenges and environmental concerns, the need to nurture and respect each team member, and the need to be cautious before making ambitious promises. 

At this meeting, questions were often answered with: “That will be revealed to you.” Or, “The answer to that may become apparent.”  Many questions went un-answered.  As team members roles were identified and particular players in the room spoke, it became apparent that the potential team leaders all were very “CAN DO” type folks.  A major expectation in the “job description” of a team leader was to be the “forager” for the team—to find resources (such as drinking water, food, support folks and institutions, supplies and equipment) that would facilitate the work of the team.  At that meeting, I told a much-relieved Terry Davis that if things were okay with MHS, I would be the leader of HEART Mississippi Assessment Team # 3 (MS Team 3).

The other on-the-ground members of MS Team 3 included generalist, Kim Diehl; paper conservator, M.J. Davis; and objects conservator, Barbara Moore. Ann Toplovich served as the at-home captain.  My work as team leader began before we even left for Mississippi.   There were a great many meetings, much discussion of concerns, words of wisdom, offers of help, questions, answers, warnings, phone calls, preparatory inoculations, worker’s compensation conversations, equipment purchases and general chaos before we arrived in Jackson, Mississippi on October 5^th. 

On the Monday before our team was to arrive in Mississippi, I took part in a conference call, with the team leader I would be replacing, the at-home captain, the project Director and the AASLH staff.  As the on-the-ground work progressed, each team member became familiar with the area that had been impacted and each other. These working groups communicated daily with their at-home captain via phone. 

When we got to Gulfport, Mississippi we found that everyone had a story.  Thousands were displaced, homeless, or injured, and hundreds had died.  Even five weeks after the storm, when we arrived, bodies were still being found in rubble piles miles away from the coast.  Everyone we talked to, including our own team, suffered from survivor’s guilt.  After such an overwhelming experience, it was sometimes hard for people to make necessary decisions.  Everywhere, we found that people were simply doing the best they could. Arriving with specific skills, our team was often able to provide positive direction, offer understanding suggestions, and help to advocate for collections that were/are at risk, while supporting staff by listening. At most sites we visited we were able to say the work undertaken by the staff and/or volunteers was being done with great care under extreme conditions.

We saw the complete gamut of what a storm of this enormous size could do. We saw places 1 ½ hour drive inland that had sustained wind damage to hundreds of trees. We saw buildings moved from their foundations, damaged by fifteen-foot high storm surges.  When a wall of water that high slams ashore, it picks things up and carries them, sometimes miles inland.  When that same water rushes back out to sea, you can imagine how much it carries with it.  We saw a block-long, three-story tall casino barge sitting where the recently restored Tullis-Toledano Manor in Biloxi had once stood.  We saw miles of beachfront houses, lovingly restored after Hurricane Camille in 1969, completely gone. We saw streets, causeways, bridges, and railroad tracks so twisted they were difficult to recognize. We saw rows of rubble eight feet tall and ½ a mile long. Cars tossed into a makeshift junkyard in a road ditch where they had been washed or blown. Need I say more?

The four HEART assessment teams in Mississippi contacted nearly one hundred cultural organizations. AASLH is compiling the assessments and developing the second phase of this long-term recovery effort. If you feel that you or your institution may be able to help with materials, money, or expertise contact AASLH. As further plans are developed and implemented, your offer will be much appreciated.

Collections were damaged. Buildings were destroyed. Lives, careers, and institutions were forever changed by Katrina.  But artifacts, stories, memories, and history survive. Concerned people have undertaken and must continue, to the best of their abilities, to ensure that our cultural heritage is preserved.

Disaster and Deliberation: One Museum’s Response to Katrina

By Kelly Calnon Falck, Director of Education, The History Center in Tompkins County

Conversation : the spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and feelings; talk.  How can one conversation or a series of small, personal conversations make a measurable difference in this media saturated, sound byte world we live in?  Only if those private conversations are turned into public action.

In the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina’s Gulf Coast landfall, the disaster was on everyone’s mind.  Horrifying images reached through the television and off of the page to tug at our human core.  Conversations about the disaster permeated every aspect of daily life.  And the questions that were arising from those conversations demanded answers.

At The History Center in Tompkins County, in Ithaca, NY, my colleagues were quietly buzzing about these stories of survival and loss that seemed almost too dramatic to be true.  One week after the storm, on September 7, 2005, an email from Linda Norris, Executive Director of the Upstate History Alliance related a conversation she had had with a museum professional affected by the 9/11 tragedy.  He wondered whether museums and cultural organizations would respond to Katrina, as they had to the events of September 11, 2001, and step up to be important centers for community response and contemplation.  Her insight challenged me to boldly consider my museum as a center of civic engagement – not just in theory, as we had been doing at The History Center for the past several years, but in practical reality.

As her words were resonating in my mind, I was engaged in another seemingly casual conversation with Ithaca College Environmental Historian Michael Smith.   We were meeting to discuss another project but were sidetracked by conversation about how the environmental history of Louisiana played a role in the scope of the disaster.  This conversation helped me to understand how The History Center could help our community grapple with the questions we all seemed to be asking.

We did ask ourselves – briefly – whether discussions about a hurricane 1400 miles away from Tompkins County fit within the mission of a local history site in Upstate New York.  However, we quickly determined that helping our community to understand the history that had shaped Katrina’s impact was a perfect match for our mission to “use the past to illuminate the present.”  We then brainstormed a list of questions that were emerging from the tragedy and looked to our friends at local colleges and universities to help us begin the search for answers.  Within two weeks we had contacted and confirmed guest speakers from the colleges and the Ithaca community to lead a five part series entitled “Understanding Katrina: People, Nature, History and the Future”

Public programs like this one are not usually conceived of and arranged within a two-week period.  Nor had we budgeted for a five-part community forum series about a natural disaster.  We knew that this series had the potential to bring in new audiences and fill a need in our community – if we could get the word out. Although our initial response was to apply for grant funding, we wound up dismissing that plan because we knew that the series had to be timely to remain relevant.   In a five-minute presentation to The History Center Board of Trustees we found the solution.  I explained the concept and outlined the key players and was greeted with enthusiastic support and underwriting from an individual trustee. 

The partnerships with scholars and community experts culminated in a series of discussions that analyzed many aspects of this great tragedy.  Together with the public we examined environmental history, agriculture and sustainability, the science of weather forecasting, the role of the media, and race relations; all with an understanding that the issues exposed by the wrath of Katrina in the Gulf Coast touch our lives from New Orleans all the way to New York State.  Community response to the series has been all that we had hoped for – and beyond.  The discussions facilitated by the speakers were informative, provocative and emotionally charged.  Through surveys we learned that more than two-thirds of the over 200 participants were first time visitors to The History Center.  We have had countless reports of people thanking us for undertaking the series and applauding our efforts to address issues of contemporary concern.   

And so the series was born out of a conversation.  The same type of conversations I’m sure many of you were having and are still having with your co-workers, friends and families.  Through the course of conversation we decided that we had the opportunity and the responsibility to begin the search for answers.   The History Center strives to be a trusted incubator of community discourse - a place for thinking not only about the past, but understanding the present and using that information to create a better future.   In doing so we have raised awareness about our relevance to the community and have begun to reap the benefits of new voices and new perspectives.