The Red Cross responds: (From “Red Cross Response to Hurricane Katrina: Facts at a Glance) “The Red Cross response to Hurricane Katrina is the largest response to a single, natural disaster in the 125-year history of the organization.”

There are 361 American Red Cross shelters open in 9 states (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and Georgia) with many more on standby. More than 96,100 evacuees are being sheltered.

tags: katrina, red cross

Sinking in: Perhaps symbolic of the collective delay in responding to Katrina has been how Amazon.com has responded. Universally praised for turning over its front page to tsunami relief almost immediately, Amazon.com did not add a donation link of any size to its front page until three days after the hurricane. Today, six days after, the dominant position of the Amazon.com front page is finally devoted to Katrina relief. This is not a criticism of Amazon’s response, rather a curious observation of how there was an apparent initial disbelief by lots of people that an unprecedented tragedy of historic proportions was unfolding. (I’ll reserve my criticism for Apple, who has hyped the Mighty Mouse in the dominant position all week.)

Cruise control: Three Carnival Cruise Lines ships have been pressed into service by FEMA to provide shelter for as many as 7,000 hurricane victims.

tags: katrina response, katrina

Qatar responds: (From CNN.com) “Qatar has offered the United States $100 million to assist in the humanitarian crisis triggered by Hurricane Katrina. The state-run Qatar News Agency said Saturday that Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, decided to contribute that amount for relief “and humanitarian supplies for the victims of this disaster.”

tag: katrina response

Lance responds: Lance Armstrong and his namesake cancer survivorship foundation will donate $500,000 to help cancer victims displaced by Hurricane Katrina get treatment. Armstrong said Saturday he expects the money will be used to help transport cancer patients to hospitals and cancer centers where they can continue to get treatment. He said more money could be donated in the future.

tags: katrina, katrina response

If this is true, Tom Benson should be banned from the NFL and all NFL fans should boycott the sport: The Times Picayune is reporting that (scroll down) New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson is leaning strongly toward moving the Saints permanently to San Antonio permanently.

In the context of post-Katrina despair, I can’t imagine this being true. In the history of bad timing and suicidal PR, this would take all-time, hall-of-fame honors. Frankly, NFL football is the only sport I follow with a passion. Yet, if the NFL allows the Saints to move away from New Orleans permanently in this context, I will announce my complete disgust with and loss of interest in the sport. Moving the team for the season is understandable, but permanently. Not now. Not in this context.

In fact, if I were NFL commissioner, I would announce that the Super Bowl will return to New Orleans at the earliest possible date.

Update: From the Washington Times: “The Saints already were thought to be the leading candidate to become the NFL’s next team in Los Angeles, a dream commissioner Paul Tagliabue wants realized by 2008. Saints owner Tom Benson, who conveniently has a home and businesses in San Antonio, has fought with Louisiana officials for months over the state’s contribution to a renovation of the 30-year-old Superdome. The Saints’ lease runs through 2010, but Benson can get out of it by paying $81 million. With the state facing so many more important needs, money for fixing the Superdome truly might be gone. And then so might the Saints. “

Chattanooga responds: The Chattanooga Housing Authority is making 80 units of public housing available for Katrina evacuee families. Residents of Chattanooga are being encouraged to donate everything from cookware to furniture for the families moving into the units.

tags: katrina, katrina evacuation, katrina housing, chattanooga

Comic relief: Tim Morgan has provided me some comic relief this morning.

Nashville responds: Tom Wood has set up a weblog called Nashville Helps and is pointing to a lot of requests for help and to ways in which Nashville-area residents are responding.

tags: katrina, katrina evacuees, nashville

Pool this data - lists of survivor/missing databases: As people have been kind enough to e-mail me links to the following efforts to build databases of names of survivors and missing people, I’m happy to list them. There needs to be a way to pool this data so that people don’t have to go from database to database looking for the information they seek. Perhaps a narrow search engine that just indexes these domains? A google hack that just searches these? If someone comes up with one, please add it to the comments:

Update: The Katrina People Finder Project is an effort to pull-together all of the disparate databases and forums springing up to help loved ones find one another. They need volunteers.

Update II: The great folks at Yahoo! Have developed a search tool that indexes all of the databases.

Other lists of lists:

Yahoo! Hurricane Katrina Missing Person and Survivor Lists
Online Journalism Review Katrina Wiki

About.com’s Katrina Relief
Finding Loved Ones (FirstGov.gov)

Databases/forums:

(As of 8:30 A.M. (CDT), Sunday, I have updated the list below in order to synch it with the lists being maintained by About.com, Yahoo! and the Online Journalism Report being maintained by Staci Kramer. Rather than point to this post, I encourage everyone to point to About.com or Yahoo! as they have the resources and bandwidth to keep up with this. However, I still encourage search-engine geeks out there to come up with a narrow-search that indexes just these sites. Frankly, Google should be able to pull one of the Google mini boxes off the shelf and have something working within a half-an-hour.)

BBC News: Hurricane Katrina Missing People

CastPost.com Hurricane Katrina Person Database

Clarion-Ledger: Katrina Forums

CNN: Hurricane Katrina Safe List

Coast Guard: Report Those Missing/Stranded

Craigslist New Orleans: Lost and Found

DeadlyKatrina.com

DirecTV: Searchable PDF of text messages and emails

Earthlink: Hurricane Help

FamilyMessages.org: Katrina Survivor Locator

Find Katrina

FullCircle.net Family & Friends Board

GulfCoastNews.com: Katrina Survivor Connector List

GWID.com: Katrina Missing List

Hugh MacLeod’s Hurricane Katrina Help Page

Hurricane Katrina Connections

Hurricane Katrina Refugee Connect

Hurricane Katrina Survivor Registry (searchable)

Hurricane Katrina Survivors Forums

International Red Cross: Family News Network for Katrina

Katrina Check-In (site is down)

Katrina: Family-Friends Forum

KatrinaCentral.com

KatrinaFinder.us

KatrinasLost.com

Katrina-Messages.org

KatrinaSurvivor.Net

Katrina PeopleFinder Project

Meetup.com: Hurricane Katrina Meetups

MissingKatrina.com Photoblog

MSNBC Looking Message Board

MSNBC Safe Message Board

National Next Of Kin Registry

New Orleans Refugees Blog

N.O. Pundit Bulletin Boards

NOLA.com Hurricane Forums

NOLA Refugees Forums

NowPublic.com: Katrina Missing Persons Board

Picayune/Pearl River County Katrina Survivors

Red Cross Alert for Persons with Emergency Medical Conditions

Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network

Seeking People

Stay in Contact Forum

Survived Katrina Forums

Union for Reform Judaism Message Boards

U.S. Military Relief Information

Wal-Mart’s Hurricane Katrina Message Board

WDSU Message Boards

WorldNow Forums

WWLTV.com: I’m Okay Forum

WWLTV.com: Searching For Forum

Yahoo: Hurricane Katrina Message Boards

Got more links? Then either edit the OJR Katrina wiki or e-mail its editor at rniles(at)usc.edu

tags: katrina, katrina survivors katrina missing, katrina safe, katrina searching, katrina survivor, katrina list

How blogging can help: Kaye Trammel, the LSU professor who began blogging Katrina last Saturday has an op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post.

Quote:

“When people prepare for hurricanes, they do many things: top off gas tanks in cars, fill bathtubs with water, buy water, charge up mobile phones and check evacuation routes. I did all these things. And I started a blog.”

I am honored that Kaye Trammel mentioned my call for a new focus on emergency preparedness among bloggers and Josh Hallett’s encouragement for bloggers to get together with local officials before emergencies occur to plan for how we can assist in dissmenting critical information.

We’ll be doing that in Nashville in the coming weeks and months.