Overview:

This page is dedicated to the catastrophic events that shaped our lands and our history. Some events were due to nature. Others were due to events brought on by man himself. Many of them changed places and communities forever.

Has your community experienced such an event? We invite you to be a "citizen journalist" as you report about what happened. Perhaps you lived through Hurricane Katrina and its effects. Maybe your community suffered a flood, a tornado, or an earthquake. What accounts do you have of these events and how they changed or altered the community in which you live?

Project Title:   Walking Tour Of The Make It Right Neighborhood   (Click here)

Middle school students, ages 10 – 13, from the T.H. Harris Middle School in Metairie, Louisiana, document the rebuilding of the 9th Ward in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005.  The project focuses on how Hurricane Katrina disrupted the lives of the people in the area and changed their community.  Over one million people were affected by the hurricane. 

The students reflect on what happened in the city of New Orleans, just six miles east of their school, the damage the hurricane caused, and the rebuilding of the neighborhoods. They took more than 600 pictures to document the destruction they saw – the canal breach, piles of debris in every neighborhood, houses with holes in their roofs, missing walls, and the devastation of the Lakeview area. The result was an ongoing project at the school. 

Students summarized what they had seen and learned, told stories of the residents’ plights in their own words, documented the recovery of the area, and summarized how it changed their lives.

Coming Soon:

• Wildfires in California

• Texan Power Outage