American Red Cross . The
American Red Cross mobilized the largest relief effort in its 124-year history to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Local Chapters across the nation mobilised tens of thousands of volunteers for immediate deployment to the disaster region. In the first two weeks after the storm, the Red Cross had brought 74,000 volunteers who provided shelter to 160,000 evacuees and more than 7.5 million hot meals. More than 250 Emergency Response Vehicles (ERVs) were sent to provide food and water to victims. By September 11, 75,000 evacuees remained in 445 shelters in 19 states. By that date, the Red Cross was calling for 40,000 new volunteers to relieve those who initially responded. Disaster response classes were training tens of thousands across the country. The American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund collected donations from the public for the relief effort. By September 28, they had raised about one billion dollars in cash and pledges, surpassing the rate of donation for the September 11 attacks. This is ten times more money than the next largest amount collected by a charity, the Salvation Army. The Red Cross estimated that its response would cost some $2 billion of which $100 million was expected to be reimbursed by FEMA, while the rest would need to come from donations.
Yahoo!,
Google and later
Amazon.com set up donation pages for the Red Cross. As the Red Cross had raised the vast majority of donations and its response is limited to disaster aid and not to recovery, some charities suggested that the Red Cross share money with groups engaged in rebuilding efforts. The American Red Cross has not been allowed by Louisiana to provide aid within the city of New Orleans.
Amateur radio operators The president of the
American Radio Relay League, Jim Haynie, sent a message to all
amateur radio operators noting that the situation in New Orleans and other affected areas is "simply too dangerous and no one is being allowed in". Many media outlets say communications infrastructure is overloaded and destroyed in many places in the disaster area. During the storm, amateur operators gave weather reports to the
National Hurricane Center in Florida using HF radio. Operators are also handling health and welfare messages for organizations such as the
Salvation Army and
Red Cross. Many amateur radio organizations are staging outside the affected area getting ready to deploy into the city and suburbs. On September 1, the
American Red Cross asked the ARRL to help provide radio and amateur support for its 35 kitchens and 250 shelters. By September 3, the ARRL had set up amateur radio operations at the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Headquarters in Montgomery Alabama.
America's Second Harvest America's Second Harvest (now known as
Feeding America) responded to the efforts by collecting over 33 million pounds of food specifically for Katrina relief. Since the food bank in New Orleans was non-operational for a short period of time after the hurricane hit, a temporary warehouse was set up in
Baker, Louisiana. This operation distributed food to people who were in need before the hurricane as well as people now displaced by Katrina's wreckage. Second Harvesters Food Bank of Greater New Orleans which is a part of America's Second Harvest was operation within a few days and coordinating efforts with the staff in Baker, LA.
Camp Hope Camp Hope is a volunteer camp located in
Violet, LA, which has housed volunteers in the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort of St. Bernard Parish since June 1, 2006. The economic recovery of the Parish is dependent on the removal of debris to facilitate the return of both residents and businesses. The mission of Camp Hope is to house and facilitate volunteer relief efforts in St Bernard Parish and around the New Orlean's area. Those efforts include managing and participating in the removal of health and safety hazards from properties throughout St Bernard parish with the assistance of the local, state, federal, volunteer and non-governmental agencies. As of August 16, 2006, volunteers in St. Bernard had completed 1,668 homes in the Parish.
Family information websites Several websites were set up to help family members find out information about each other in the chaos. Some include the Red Cross, The Weather Channel, local newspapers, Craigslist, and others. Yahoo set up 100 Internet-linked computers at the Astrodome and developed a meta-search of evacuee registration websites. On September 11, despite having reunited several families, the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had a list of 1,600 children listed as missing by their parents, or who were seeking their families. Problems were that many survivors had no internet access, let alone electrical power, let alone computers or even computer literacy. There were also many sites so a searcher would have to go through several and sort through the many different search protocols and syntax. Another problem in theory is fraud, and another problem is that many sites only included last and first names which in a mass of several hundred thousand displaced persons obviously included many duplicates.
Other organizations Many charities immediately began fund-raising efforts on behalf of Katrina victims and survivors.
The Salvation Army responded to the immediate needs of the survivors. Eventually 5.6 million meals were served, 3.3 million people were assisted, and nearly $400 million donated. The Army's immediate response to
Hurricane Katrina included the mobilization of more than 178 canteen feeding units and 11 field kitchens which together have served more than 5.7 million hot meals, 8.3 million sandwiches, snacks & drinks. Its
SATERN (
Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network) network of amateur ham-radio operators picked up where modern communications left off to help locate more than 25,000 survivors. And,
The Salvation Army pastoral care counselors were on hand to comfort the emotional and spiritual needs of 277,000 individuals. The New York Regional Association of Grantmakers (now Philanthropy New York) published a Donors' Guide for individuals and organizations looking for philanthropic options for Gulf Coast recovery In addition to the Red Cross, numerous charity and relief organizations stepped up their activities to aid hurricane victims. The
United Methodist Church provided volunteers to help muck out homes and rebuild affected areas. According to the church's volunteer service arm,
UMVIM, over thirty thousand United Methodist volunteers have worked in the affected areas since Katrina.
Southern Baptist Disaster Relief mobilized hundreds of units from across the US. Southern Baptist Disaster relief manned massive feeding units, shower and laundry facilities, assessment teams, Mud-Out, and chainsaw and debris removal teams across the affected area. The
Catholic Charities activated a disaster response plan. The plan targeted areas outside of the disaster that are providing refugee relief and agencies located in or nearby are mobilizing to assist the needy.
Operation Blessing began organizing to ship food and relief supplies into the affected areas, as it has done in disaster zones around the world before.
America's Second Harvest, a
food bank that operates in many communities, began coordinating efforts to ship food donations to coastal areas.
Habitat for Humanity announced plans to check on all Habitat-built homes and their residents, and then turn to providing assistance to Habitat families, partners, and volunteers in need of help. The
American Public School Endowments began collecting funds to rebuild schools in the affected area, and to aid schools suffering from an onslaught of refugees.
Mercy Corps is accepting donations and sending a team of emergency relief experts to the Gulf region to offer financial and technical assistance for immediate and longer-term relief and recovery efforts.
Conservative Mennonites sent many volunteer laborers to help with cleaning and rebuilding of homes affected. Other nonprofit non-governmental organizations that are helping like the
ASPCA are listed on Network for Good's website.
Jehovah's Witnesses are responding by giving much food, water, clothing, and financial aid to victims.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also responding to the devastation. While emergency services and rescue personnel work on relief operations in New Orleans, they are at high risk of disease. The Family International has mobilized Christian Counsellors to provide spiritual healing, comfort and encouragement to the evacuees throughout Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi and have launched Katrina Relief Home to share the needs of the victims of this disaster. The KatrinaHelp wiki is a grassroots effort collating all refugee records from a variety of sites (including
Craigslist, et al.) in
PFIF format; they offer an elegant search interface to their database. The first Pfif spinoff is
SFIF (Shelter Finder Interface format), a clone of Pfif where elements and attributes have been adapted to model shelter entities developed by Shelterfinder an interactive database where a list of active shelters is maintained by volunteers
Awake In America, a
non-profit organization based in
Philadelphia, launched "Operation Restore CPAP" to get equipment to treat sleep apnea in victims of
Hurricane Katrina who had been previously diagnosed with
sleep apnea.
Hands On USA, now Hands On Gulf Coast, was on the ground in Gulfport and Biloxi a week after the storm. Founded in Thailand after the
2004 Tsunami, Hands On has evolved from immediate relief services, to recovery operations such as gutting houses and taking trees off houses, to community empowerment and redevelopment. They are based out of the Beauvoir Methodist Church in Biloxi, MS, although they also have satellite locations in New Orleans and Bay St. Louis. The Common Ground Collective is a local, community-run organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support to New Orleans communities that have been historically neglected and underserved. Common Ground's efforts include acting as a hub for medical and health providers, aid workers, community organizers, legal representatives as well as people with a variety of skills. The Common Ground collective also has been part of organizing the "Road Trip for Relief", a grassroots effort to bus 300 volunteers into New Orleans. is a non-profit organization that employs compassion and creativity to provide community-based disaster relief. Since Katrina, they have operated four relief sites, served over 300,000 meals and 25,000 residents of the Gulf. They are a United Way Partner Agency and currently run operations in Buras, LA and the Ninth Ward. The Welcome Home Kitchen is serving three meals a day to over 700 people, as well as providing free medical care, a distribution center of clothing and supplies, a community bulletin board and an information table. The Welcome Home Kitchen is facilitated by The Rainbow Family of Living Light as well as Katrina Alliance. World Shelters Task Force One operated in Hancock County, MS from September 15, 2005, until October 26, 2005, and deployed 80 shelter structures for relief efforts and housing. Remaining supplies and equipment went on to be used by Burners Without Borders, with support from The Buckminster Fuller Institute .
Camp Restore began on September 10, 2006, and has since provided shelter to over 3,500 volunteers as they rebuilt hundreds of homes that had been destroyed by the hurricane. The operation is based in East New Orleans and was started in part by the
Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. The
Chabad Lubavitch movement sent in rescue teams to evacuate people from the city and provided meals and shelter to evacuees. Chabad communities in Florida, California, Tennessee, Texas, and many other states made short and long term arrangements for many Jewish New Orleanians. Families were also provided with financial help and volunteers were arranged to help with the clean-up efforts The
Unitarian Universalist church organized a Gulf Coast Relief Fund which aided survivors in Plaquemines Parish.
In Film •
Waveland MissaHippie- 2005 •
Common Ground Collective: Solidarity Not Charity- 2005 ==International response==