More Katrina News - Library Related
Houston (Tex.) Chronicle, August 31:
Craig Nocaise, 21, a police officer, waited out the storm inside the Pass Christian (Miss.) Public Library, a branch of the Harrison County Library System, with 12 other town police. They noticed about a dozen of their police cars circling the building on a current of water. Then one crashed through the front door. Water poured in and rose quickly. When the back glass door wouldn’t open, the officers pulled their guns and fired at least 50 rounds into it before it shattered. They each then grabbed a cable line and climbed onto the roof, where they spent the next three hours in 130-mile-an-hour winds. “We lost every patrol car,” said Nocaise. “We still haven’t found some. They’re probably in the Gulf somewhere.” Asked more about the experience in the library, Nocaise choked up and walked away.
Baltimore (Md.) Sun, August 31:
In Gulfport, Mississippi, Katrina chewed up such everyday items as furniture, computers, and a piano and spat them back onto the city’s crumbling streets and beaches. In what was once the public library, wet books formed a mound of soggy pulp.
Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, August 29:
In Gulfport, windows were blown out and the business district was partially underwater. The damage was described by Fire Chief Pat Sullivan as “massive.” Waves were breaking across U.S. 90 and there was water standing in the Gulfport Library.
Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, August 30:
Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis home in Biloxi: The bottom floor of the Presidential Library and the home itself were gutted. A Confederate flag, though, still draped over the arm of Davis’s statue in the library.
Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, August 31:
The University of Southern Mississippi, Alcorn State University, and Jackson State University, as well as private Tougaloo College, remained without power and communication access on Tuesday afternoon. On Tuesday at JSU, students slept on makeshift beds in the student union and library, where generators could provide light.
“I would say 90 percent of the structures between the beach and the railroad in Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian are totally destroyed,”
Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday. “They’re not severely damaged, they’re simply not there. . . . I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago.”
Cincinnati (Ohio) Post, August 31:
Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher declared a state of emergency Tuesday afternoon because of the heavy Katrina-related rains. The order triggered implementation of the Kentucky Emergency Management Plan, which coordinates response and relief activities in response to the emergency. The heavy rain exacerbated leaks at the three-year-old Boone County Justice Center in Burlington, Kentucky. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Union, Kentucky, attorney Edwin Kagin. There was a leak in the fourth floor men’s bathroom, which deputy sheriffs closed down, he said, and a leak in the law library. “I couldn’t believe it. I was in the law library and I hear this plunk, and there’s a bucket catching water,” he said.
Tyler (Tex.) Morning Telegraph, August 31:
Tyler Public Library sent its bookmobile to the hurricane shelter Tuesday afternoon. It provided books, magazines, and other reading material to evacuees from Louisiana.
Thanks to the: publib-bounces@webjunction.org; on behalf of; K.G. Schneider [kgs@bluehighways.com]
Media Credit: PHOTO COURTESY/JON MAUL
