The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders on April 1, 1979. The agency's primary purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. The governor of the state in which the disaster occurs must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the President that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster. The only exception to the state's gubernatorial declaration requirement occurs when an emergency or disaster takes place on federal property or to a federal asset—for example, the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, or the Space Shuttle Columbia in the 2003 return-flight disaster.
The reconstruction of New Orleans refers to the rebuilding process endured by the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the city on August 29, 2005. The storm caused levees to fail, releasing tens of billions of gallons of water. The levee failure contributed to extensive flooding in the New Orleans area and surrounding parishes. About 80% of all structures in Orleans Parish sustained water damage. Over 204,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and more than 800,000 citizens displaced—the greatest displacement in the United States since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Wind damage was less severe than predicted. The damage that took place that needed to be repaired cost about $125 billion.
The New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) is the public library of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Succeeding earlier libraries in the city, it opened in 1897. Three branches were added by 1908. Carnegie library branches were added in 1911 and 1915. By 2005 a dozen branches were open. The main library is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (NOUPT) is an intermodal facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, US. Located at 1001 Loyola Avenue, it is served by Amtrak, Greyhound Lines, Megabus, and NORTA with direct connections to the Rampart–St. Claude Streetcar Line.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a 2006 documentary film directed by Spike Lee about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana following the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. It was filmed in late August and early September 2005, and premiered at the New Orleans Arena on August 16, 2006 and was first aired on HBO the following week. The television premiere aired in two parts on August 21 and 22, 2006 on HBO. It has been described by Sheila Nevins, chief of HBO's documentary unit, as "one of the most important films HBO has ever made." The title is a reference to the blues tune "When the Levee Breaks" by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
The term FEMA trailer, or FEMA travel trailer, is the name commonly given by the United States government to forms of temporary manufactured housing assigned to the victims of natural disaster by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Such trailers are intended to provide intermediate term shelter, functioning longer than tents which are often used for short-term shelter immediately following a disaster. FEMA trailers serve a similar function to the "earthquake shacks" erected to provide interim housing after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
SBP is a nonprofit, disaster relief organization. After temporarily volunteering in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenburg returned permanently in March 2006 and founded the project. The organization eventually expanded to include offices in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in Louisiana, Joplin, Missouri, Columbia, South Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia. By August 2022, SBP's national impact included assistance to 5,500 families, including the rebuilding of over 1,200 homes, including 600 in New Orleans. They have collaborated extensively with Toyota and Americorps. As a result of its accomplishments, the organization and its founders have been recognized by Senator Mary Landrieu, CNN, and President Barack Obama.
Faubourg Brewing Company was a brewery founded in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 31, 1907, and originally named Dixie Brewing Company. The brewing operation was located on Tulane Avenue until 2005 when it closed due to damage from Hurricane Katrina. After that the beer was contract brewed out of state until November 2019 when a new brewery opened in New Orleans. In 2021 the brewery was renamed the Faubourg Brewing Company. Following the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in May 2024, the company announced its closure and that all equipment from their New Orleans plant would be auctioned off.
As a result of Hurricane Katrina and its effects on New Orleans, Tulane University was closed for the second time in its history—the first being during the American Civil War. The university closed for four months during Katrina, as compared to four years during the Civil War.
John M. Barry is an American author and historian who has written books on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the influenza pandemic of 1918, and the development of the modern form of the ideas of separation of church and state and individual liberty. He is a professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and Distinguished Scholar at Tulane's Bywater Institute.
The Tulane Environmental Law Clinic (TELC) is a legal clinic that Tulane Law School has operated since 1989 to offer law students the practical experience of representing real clients in actual legal proceedings under state and federal environmental laws.
Servpro is a franchisor of fire and water cleanup and restoration franchises in the United States and Canada. The franchise system provides localized services and large-scale disaster recovery. It is headquartered in Gallatin, Tennessee.
Hurricane Sandy was an extremely large and devastating tropical cyclone which ravaged the Caribbean and the coastal Mid-Atlantic region of the United States in late October 2012. It was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spanning 1,150 miles (1,850 km). The storm inflicted nearly US$70 billion in damage, and killed 254 people in eight countries, from the Caribbean to Canada. The eighteenth named storm, tenth hurricane, and second major hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, Sandy was a Category 3 storm at its peak intensity when it made landfall in Cuba, though most of the damage it caused was after it became a Category 1-equivalent extratropical cyclone off the coast of the Northeastern United States.
Public Law 113-2, containing Division A: Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013 and Division B: Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013 is a U.S. appropriations bill authorizing $60 billion for disaster relief agencies. The Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), had authorized only disaster spending and emergency spending to exceed established spending caps. While emergency spending is not subject to the caps in the BCA, spending for disaster relief is calculated by taking the average of the previous ten years disaster relief spending, excluding the highest and lowest spending years.
Sandy Rosenthal is an American civic activist and founder of Levees.Org, an organization created in October 2005 to educate the American public about the cause of the levee failures and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Howard-Tilton Memorial Library is the university library on the uptown campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. A member of the Association of Research Libraries, the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library is ranked among the top 120 research libraries in North America and is a significant educational and cultural resource in the community. During Hurricane Katrina, the Library suffered extensive damage to its collections and its buildings.
All Hands and Hearts (AHAH) is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The organization's current structure formed in late 2017, when two existing nonprofits, All Hands Volunteers and Happy Hearts Fund merged to become All Hands and Hearts. All Hands Volunteers was founded in September 2005 by philanthropist and businessman David Campbell to provide relief to residents in areas affected by natural disasters worldwide. Happy Hearts Fund, founded by philanthropist and supermodel, Petra Němcová, sought a similar goal, to help communities recover after a disaster event. All Hands and Hearts is based in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts.
Michael Leonard Hecht is an American economic developer and businessman based in New Orleans, who is currently President & CEO of Greater New Orleans, Inc, the post-Hurricane Katrina economic development organization for the New Orleans region. Hecht has previously led the post-Katrina Business Recovery Program for the State of Louisiana, and the post-9/11 Small Business Assistance Program for New York City.
Hurricane Harvey was a devastating tropical cyclone that made landfall on Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting $125 billion in damage, primarily from catastrophic rainfall-triggered flooding in Greater Houston and Southeast Texas; this made the storm the costliest natural disaster recorded in Texas at the time. It was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Wilma in 2005, ending a record 12-year span in which no hurricanes made landfall at the intensity of a major hurricane throughout the country. In a four-day period, many areas received more than 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain as the system slowly meandered over eastern Texas and adjacent waters, causing unprecedented flooding. With peak accumulations of 60.58 in (1,539 mm), in Nederland, Texas, Harvey was the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States. The resulting floods inundated hundreds of thousands of homes, which displaced more than 30,000 people and prompted more than 17,000 rescues.
Sheldon David Yellen is an American businessman, author and the CEO of BELFOR Property Restoration. He has appeared on an Emmy-nominated episode of Undercover Boss on CBS.
