LPB is partnering with Mississippi Public Broadcasting for an in-depth look at how procedures, policies and planning for hurricanes have changed in the last four years. In that time, three of the ten costliest hurricanes on record -- Katrina, Rita and Gustav -- struck Louisiana. Katrina made a second landfall in Mississippi, leaving behind unprecedented havoc and a harsh education in the discipline of disaster. What did these events teach us about coping with catastrophe?

LPB President Beth Courtney hosts the Louisiana segment of the program and LSU Media Professor Craig Freeman moderates the Mississippi discussion.

 

Louisiana panelists include:

• retired Lt. General Russel Honore’,
• Mark Cooper, Director of the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness;
• Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden
• Gerri Hobdy, director of partnership relations at the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and
• Tony Russell, FEMA Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office Director.

Mississippi panelists include:

• Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) Director Mike Womack,
• Hancock Country Chancery Clerk Tim Kellar,
• Mississippi State Senator Debbie Dawkins and
• Bob Fenton from FEMA.

Chat panelists:

• Karen Rowley, Ph.D., Special Projects Manager, Public Affairs Research Council, Louisiana
• Ashley Edwards, Policy Analyst to the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Renewal, Mississippi

Read full biographies here.

 

The program was simulcast on KRVS-FM in Lafayette and air on Thursday, August 27 at 7PM on WRKF-FM in Baton Rouge.

Click here to view the chat archive.

Watch ONLINE.

This program is underwritten by a Local Service Initiative Grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Partner Links:

• Louisiana Public Square
• Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB)
• Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB)
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)

Resource Links:

• COPE
  
• Are you Prepared? Survival Planning.
• Coastal Comeback:
  Louisiana & Mississippi After Katrina
  
• Disaster Preparedness Action Kit for Nonprofits
  
• Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations (LANO)
  
• Gohsep.la.gov - The Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Web site to provide information about emergency operations plans, public assistance, and grants.
  
• Rebuild.Louisiana.gov:
  A new Internet database is now available to the general public and it details millions of dollars worth of recovery projects in the Baton Rouge region, many of them ongoing and dating back to Hurricane Katrina's 2005 landfall. The Web site, Rebuild.Louisiana.gov is a tool that’s meant to help citizens keep track of more than $9 billion in rebuilding projects. All of these rebuilding efforts are related to hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, Ivan and Cindy.
• southernclimate.org:
  The Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP) aims to bridge the gap between climate science and local-level climate hazard planning processes. SCIPP is a collaborative research effort between the Department of Anthropology and Geography/Southern Regional Climate Center at Louisiana State University and the Oklahoma Climatological Survey at the University of Oklahoma.

Background Information:

• The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina (pdf)
  
• Katrina's Diaspora (NYTimes).
• GulfGov Reports
  (Study of the Communities Damaged by the 2005 Hurricanes)
  from the Rockefeller Institute
  
• More: The Role of Community Rebuilding Plans in the Hurricane Recovery

Map:

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National Hurricane Center:

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