[CPProt.net] Hurricane Katrina Report: Affected Libraries

[Ellie Bruggeman]

      Hurricane Katrina Report: Affected Libraries

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s August 29 landfall on the Gulf 
Coast, the fate of many of the region’s libraries is still uncertain. 
/American Libraries/ will post news of any library-related damage on an 
ongoing basis as we learn of it. Watch this site for updates.

/Vanderbilt Hustler/ campus newspaper, Nashville, Tennessee, August 31:

The severity of the Katrina-related storms in Memphis August 30 flooded 
the basement of Rhodes College’s brand new library, which will remain 
closed until it is fully repaired.

/Houston (Tex.) Chronicle,/ August 31:

Craig Nocaise, 21, a police officer, waited out the storm inside the 
Pass Christian (Miss.) Public Library, a branch of the Harrison County 
Library System, with 12 other town police. They noticed about a dozen of 
their police cars circling the building on a current of water. Then one 
crashed through the front door. Water poured in and rose quickly. When 
the back glass door wouldn’t open, the officers pulled their guns and 
fired at least 50 rounds into it before it shattered. They each then 
grabbed a cable line and climbed onto the roof, where they spent the 
next three hours in 130-mile-an-hour winds. “We lost every patrol car,” 
said Nocaise. “We still haven’t found some. They’re probably in the Gulf 
somewhere.” Asked more about the experience in the library, Nocaise 
choked up and walked away.

/Baltimore (Md.) Sun,/ August 31:

In Gulfport, Mississippi, Katrina chewed up such everyday items as 
furniture, computers, and a piano and spat them back onto the city’s 
crumbling streets and beaches. In what was once the public library, wet 
books formed a mound of soggy pulp.

/Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald,/ August 29:

In Gulfport, windows were blown out and the business district was 
partially underwater. The damage was described by Fire Chief Pat 
Sullivan as “massive.” Waves were breaking across U.S. 90 and there was 
water standing in the Gulfport Library.

/Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald,/ August 30:

Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis home in Biloxi: The bottom floor of the 
Presidential Library and the home itself were gutted. A Confederate 
flag, though, still draped over the arm of Davis’s statue in the library.

/Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger,/ August 31:

The University of Southern Mississippi, Alcorn State University, and 
Jackson State University, as well as private Tougaloo College, remained 
without power and communication access on Tuesday afternoon. On Tuesday 
at JSU, students slept on makeshift beds in the student union and 
library, where generators could provide light.

“I would say 90 percent of the structures between the beach and the 
railroad in Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian are totally 
destroyed,” Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday. “They’re not severely 
damaged, they’re simply not there. . . . I can only imagine that this is 
what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago.”

/Cincinnati (Ohio) Post,/ August 31:

Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher declared a state of emergency Tuesday 
afternoon because of the heavy Katrina-related rains. The order 
triggered implementation of the Kentucky Emergency Management Plan, 
which coordinates response and relief activities in response to the 
emergency. The heavy rain exacerbated leaks at the three-year-old Boone 
County Justice Center in Burlington, Kentucky. “I’ve never seen anything 
like it,” said Union, Kentucky, attorney Edwin Kagin. There was a leak 
in the fourth floor men’s bathroom, which deputy sheriffs closed down, 
he said, and a leak in the law library. “I couldn’t believe it. I was in 
the law library and I hear this plunk, and there’s a bucket catching 
water,” he said.

/Tyler (Tex.) Morning Telegraph,/ August 31:

Tyler Public Library sent its bookmobile to the hurricane shelter 
Tuesday afternoon. It provided books, magazines, and other reading 
material to evacuees from Louisiana.

/Other sources:/

Evacuees from New Orleans are being sent to the Houston area. The Harris 
County Public Library in Humble, Texas, north of Houston, has announced 
that evacuees are being given full residential privileges by the 
library, including visitor cards and internet passes. In some instances, 
the library has been able to provide computer-equipped study rooms so 
that evacuees can have some privacy as they attempt to determine the 
status of their families and homes. The HCPL children’s librarians have 
identified shelters near the branches and have made arrangements to take 
storytimes to them.

/Water Damage FAQ:/

The ALA Library has a fact sheet 
<http://www.ala.org/ala/contacts/alafaq/faq.htm> with some links to 
sites on the proper steps to take in cleaning up a library after a disaster.

/Posted August 31, 2005.
/

/http://www.ala.org/
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