In The Hurricane S Wake

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States, directly affecting 1.5 million people. Only one year earlier, an Indian Ocean tsunami struck Indonesia, destroying or damaging more than 370,000 homes. As forces of nature, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and floods are not limited to occurrences in any one community or any one country. In Law and Recovery from Disaster: Hurricane Katrina, attention is focused on the ability of law and legal institutions to not only survive such disasters but to effectively facilitate recovery. Using Hurricane Katrina as a lens, contributors address a wide range of issues of interest to people concerned about property law, disaster preparedness, housing, insurance, small business recovery, land use planning and the needs of people with disabilities. While Hurricane Katrina is the focal point for discussion, the lessons learned are readily applicable to a variety of disaster situations in a wide range of global settings.

This book surveys the past, present, and potential future variability of hurricanes and typhoons on a variety of timescales using newly developed approaches based on geological and archival records, in addition to more traditional approaches based on the analysis of the historical record of tropical cyclone tracks. A unique aspect of the book is that it provides an overview of the developing field of paleotempestology, which uses geological, biological, and documentary evidence to reconstruct prehistoric changes in hurricane landfall. The book also presents a particularly wide sampling of ongoing efforts to extend the best track data sets using historical material from many sources, including Chinese archives, British naval logbooks, Spanish colonial records, and early diaries from South Carolina. The book will be of particular interest to tropical meteorologists, geologists, and climatologists as well as to the catastrophe reinsurance industry, graduate students in meteorology, and public employees active in planning and emergency management.

Hurricanes created unique challenges for the colonists in the British Greater Caribbean during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These storms were entirely new to European settlers and quickly became the most feared part of their physical environment, destroying staple crops and provisions, leveling plantations and towns, disrupting shipping and trade, and resulting in major economic losses for planters and widespread privation for slaves. In this study, Matthew Mulcahy examines how colonists made sense of hurricanes, how they recovered from them, and the role of the storms in shaping the development of the region's colonial settlements. Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624–1783 provides a useful new perspective on several topics including colonial science, the plantation economy, slavery, and public and private charity. By integrating the West Indies into the larger story of British Atlantic colonization, Mulcahy's work contributes to early American history, Atlantic history, environmental history, and the growing field of disaster studies.

Of all the Homeland Security agencies operating in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, no agency performed its duties with the same level of diligence and heroism as did the U.S. Coast Guard. Tirelessly, Coasties in helicopters and small boats pulled survivors from rooftops, floating debris, and high ground and ferried them to safety as the rest of us watched live on CNN. Only a few days later, disaster struck again in the form of Hurricane Rita, which left even more people in desperate need of rescue and assistance. In the aftermath of the storms, some 5,000 Coast Guard personnel rescued 33,735 individuals--six times more than the annual average number rescued by the service nationwide. Then, unobserved by the media, the Coast Guard successfully restored the vital navigation aids in the region, preventing further death and destruction. In Katrina’s Wake presents a riveting account of the astounding operations undertaken by the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike America. While other government agencies struggled to mobilize and failed to provide real solutions, one small, decentralized agency stepped forward and performed above and beyond the call of duty.

Rebuilding in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita presented some very thorny issues. Certain cultural projects benefited from immediate attention and funding while others, with equal cases for assistance but with less attraction to future tourist dollars, languished. New Orleans and its surroundings contain a diverse mixture of Native Americans, African Americans, Creoles, Cajuns, Isleños with roots in the Canary Islands, and the descendants of Italian, Irish, English, Croatian, and German immigrants, among others. Since 2005 much is now different for the people of the Gulf Coast, and much more stands to change as governments, national and international nonprofit organizations, churches, and community groups determine how and even where life will continue. This collection elucidates how this process occurs and seeks to understand the cultures that may be saved through assistance or may be allowed to fade away through neglect. Essays in Culture after the Hurricanes examine the ways in which a wide variety of stakeholders---community activists, elected officials, artists, and policy administrators---describe, quantify, and understand the unique assets of the region. Contributors question the process of cultural planning by analyzing the language employed in decision making. They attempt to navigate between rhetoric and the actual experience of ordinary citizens, examining the long-term implications for those who call the Gulf Coast home.

Mariners Weather Log contains articles, news and information about marine weather events and phenomenon, storms at sea, weather forecasting, the NWS Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Program, Port Meteorological Officers (PMOs), cooperating ships officers, and their vessels. It provides meteorological information to the maritime community, and contains a comprehensive chronicle on marine weather. It recognizes ships officers for their efforts as voluntary weather observers, and allows NWS to maintain contact with and communicate with over 10,000 shipboard observers (ships officers) in the merchant marine, NOAA Corps, Coast Guard, Navy, etc.