Story Archives of 'Hurricane Katrina'

The rich character of New Orleans has always been colored by the threat of great storms blowing in off the ocean. Louisiana Playwright Anne Galjour explores the connection between hurricanes and the Cajun way of life in a one-woman play she wrote more than a decade before Katrina hit. She’s bringing her work to the Upper Valley this week, and she joins us to talk about it with guest host Xenia Piaseckyj.

Anne Galjour is performing her one-woman play, Hurricane, at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts on February 6th and 7th and at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro, Vermont on February 11th. (Click the links for more details.)

Every year, students at Somersworth Regional Vocational Center build a house.

Students in the Building Trades class usually end up selling that house to someone within their community.

But this year, students are shipping their work more than 15 hundred miles away – to give it to a Louisiana family left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports.

This story was awarded first place in the 2006 Feature category by the New Hampshire Associated Press Broadcasters Association.

Last week, NHPR Correspondent Doug MacPherson reported on the training that Red Cross disaster relief volunteers take before heading off to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

And one of the people we featured in that story was Dee Brown.

She's a mother of three from Barrington and is the Executive Director of the Dover Children's home.

Brown decided that she had to do something to help those made homeless by Katrina.

So she took the Red Cross training.

And afterwards she told Doug she had no idea what to expect.

"I'm nervous because I don't know what to expect, you don't know where you're going, you don't know what the conditions you're going to face there. There's alot of just heartaches. So alot of it is preparing myself just emotionally for it. I'm kind of a softie when it comes to things, so I've got to find that inner strength to be able to work thru that and to make sure I can make that difference. Yeah, I'm scared."

For the past week Brown's been stationed in Thibodaux, Louisiana, about 40 miles southwest of New Orleans.

She called to check in and tell us what life's been like for the past week.

She spoke with NHPR's Mark Bevis.

Tape:

Many of New England's colleges and universities have come forward with offers of help in the form of scholarships to victims of Hurricane Katrina. We'll talk with a Franklin Pierce College administrator and some students who began the year matriculating in New Orleans but are now studying in New Hampshire.

We’ll talk with Granite Staters doing their part in the recovery effort for Hurricane Katrina. We'll also speak with those here in New Hampshire whose lives have changed…because of the devastation down south. Laura's guests are Shay Zeller, New Orleans native and Host of NHPR's The Front Porch; Julian Smith, a retired professor living in Durham who grew up in New Orleans and St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana and worked for the Louisiana National Guard in 1957 during the rescue and clean up efforts of Hurricane Audrey; Sarah Cherney, Executive Director of the Great Bay Chapter of the American Red Cross; Dan Barrick, reporter for the Concord Monitor, who is currently embedded with the New Hampshire National Guard in New Orleans and Governor John Lynch.