Washing Away: Losing Louisiana Playing on LPB
Just a friendly public service announcement; for those of you in Louisiana who have access to LPB, a show titled “Washing Away: Losing Louisiana” is replaying on LPB. Check your listings for showtimes.
Watch The Trailer: Window Media iPod
In the Fall of 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita churned ashore and wreaked havoc upon the already endangered coastline of Louisiana. Washing Away: Losing Louisiana tells the stories of six Louisianans and how the storms affected the coastline, their land and their livelihoods. These people share their stories and their knowledge of the larger impacts of coastal land loss on the environment, wildlife, the economy, industry, culture and communities.
The participants include New Orleans chef Leah Chase, the owner of the famous Dooky Chase Restaurant; Errol Domingue, a third-generation sugar cane, rice, cattle and crawfish farmer from Erath; Preston Dore, a shrimper from Delcambre whose seafood restaurant, bar and distribution business were destroyed by Rita. Marlon Horton, a 26-year-old New Orleans East resident, videotaped his harrowing experiences during and following Katrina including the flooding of his home, his helicopter rescue, and evacuation to the Causeway bridge and then to the Astrodome. Also featured are Port Fourchon port director Ted Falgout and Kerry St. Pe, a marine biologist and director of the Barataria-Terrebone National Estuary, a 4.2 million acre area currently experiencing the worlds fastest rate of land loss.
Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon narrates the program, which features music by Cajun performer Zachary Richard, New Orleans jazz singer Leah Chase and the talented Cajun band LAngelus.
4 Comments so far
Leave a reply
This is Audrey Marks,
There will be a meeting coming up October 28TH at 4:00. Its A Saturday. Meeting will be held at the boat shed in the middle of Holly Beach. They will not anounce this meeting public. As they don’t want to many land owners to show up. So please tell any land owner you know. We need to save Holly Beach.
Some people out there want to change the name, Holly Beach to Little Destin also they wanting to stop campers and RV Parks and trailers from coming.
We need as many land owners out there to Please come on October 28Th at the 4:00 PM meeting to vote to allow RV Parks and campers and trailers to come. We need everyone to vote to save the name Holly Beach.
So to all Holly Beach land owners Please come. This meeting is also public. Bring your own chairs.
Come all : Come save Holly Beach.
Here in Tallahassee, our cable system shows both the local PBS station, WFSU but also the Georgia Public Broadcasting system which I find superior to WFSU. GPB has been airing a special from time to time about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and how it’s affected so many people. I am not sure if it is the same program at “Washed Away.” I don’t think it is since the one mentioned above is narrated by Susan Sarandon and the one I saw was narrated by an unknown male voice-over talent. Although I do remember Leah Chase being interviewed in this one as well. I imagine that there have been several documentaries made so far on the topic.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Dont know if you will remember me or not, I’m steve, the guy with the blog “Song of November” who comments from time to time on your blog.Anyway, i saw this story on NBC news this evening, and it was such a cool story, I decided to send it to you. Heres my blog entry for it. You may already know about this, but in case you dont…….
The Picture Project
Saw this on NBC nightly news tonight, and thought it needed to be passed on. What is “The Picture Project”? It is a labor of love above everything else, a task to help Katrinas victims claim something of themselves back, and give them perhaps a little closure. But I wont bore you with more of my words, instead I’ll just cut & past from their site, “The Picture Project”
What is the Picture Project?
Volunteers from Erie, Pennsylvania traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi, in October with the goal of setting up a system to collect pictures found in the ruins after Hurricane Katrina, and eventually return these photos to their owners. Once there they learned that thousands of pictures had been found, yet no one knew who they belonged to or what to do with them.
The Picture Project is the Erie community’s gift to the residents of the gulf coast and surrounding areas whose precious photos were lost in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In partnership with The Sun Herald, South Mississippi’s Newspaper located in Biloxi, pictures from a six-county area will be collected and brought back to Erie where volunteers will catalogue and scan them onto the internet, where Kodak will assist in the project by printing the pictures free of charge and supplying the prints to those who claim them.
What is the duration of the Project?
Volunteer groups in Erie from local schools, churches, senior centers, retiree groups, etc. will work on the Katrina pictures until they are all posted. The Erie effort will serve as a blueprint for dealing with the loss of photos whenever a disaster strikes anywhere in the Country, be it a hurricane, tornado, flood, earthquake, etc.
What help was secured?
The owner of the local United Van Lines franchise of Erie has delivered a Go Mini storage container from their Erie company to the parking lot of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi. Picture collection points are set up at Wal-Marts in a six-county area where people who find pictures can leave them. These boxes will then be taken to the storage container at The Sun Herald and it will be trailered back to Erie for the work to begin. Erie’s local ABC affiliate will partner with TV media in Biloxi to put out the word to residents there. Once the Go Mini Container is returned to Erie, the United Van Lines affiliate, JH Bennett Moving and Storage, will assist the project with utilization of its record management storage system. Locally, the Erie Historical Museum director has offered their help with the project. Werkbot Studios has agreed to develop a website, free of charge, for The Picture Project. Nationally known author, Ann Weiss, who wrote The Last Album, which describes how she retrieved pictures from Auschwitz-Berkenau concentration camp and returned them to the families of those murdered there, is helping with the project. She will garner national publicity for the sponsors. A graphic artist is designing a Picture Project shirt for volunteers to wear and for sale with the proceeds benefiting hurricane aid. Sponsors will have their names and logos on the shirt.
Many individuals in Erie want to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but cannot physically travel to affected areas and do not feel just donating funds is enough. This volunteer work can be done in their spare time right in their own community. Local high school students who must complete community service hours as part of their graduation requirements will be recruited to work on the project. This will teach them the importance of family history through photographs and give them a meaningful concept of what personal loss occurs in such a disaster.
Isn’t this low on the priority list when people need food, water and shelter?
Yes. However, these material items can be supplied, but once a moment in time has passed, unless it has been captured in a photo and that photo saved, the physical memory is gone. Salvaging these memories can have a profound positive effect on the mental health of many families who suffered from the Katrina disaster. Without this project, some families will lose their entire history in photos.
I AM LEAH.