Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed New Orleans, Louisiana and killed more than 1,800 people, is still making an impact on the whole country 10 years later, including the Santa Clarita Valley’s Disaster Coalition.

“Katrina was really the catalyst for solidifying the Santa Clarita Valley Disaster Coalition and making it become a permanent organization in Santa Clarita,” said Carl Goldman, a founder of the organization.

The Santa Clarita Valley Disaster Coalition was set up temporarily in the winter of 2004, when heavy flooding stormed through the community.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit as a Category 3 storm with 127 mph winds between Grand Isle, Louisiana, and the mouth of the Mississippi River at about 6 a.m., according to CNN. 

Katrina is, “the single most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history” and the “costliest hurricane in U.S. history,” according to FEMA, with the total damage for Katrina estimated at $108 billion and killing 1,833 people.

More than one million people in the Gulf region were displaced by the storm, according to CNN. At their peak hurricane relief shelters housed 273,000 people. Later, approximately 114,000 households were housed in FEMA trailers.

“When Katrina hit, a lot of people in New Orleans were stuck in the Superdome,” Goldman said. “The Red Cross was telling us the Southern California communities were going to get a bunch of displaced families from New Orleans while the city was rebuilt. We were told that we would get about 300-400 families in Santa Clarita.” 

Those hundreds of families turned out to be three, but led to the permanent creation of the SCV Disaster Coalition.

When Louisiana was hit with a second hurricane, Hugo, SCV Disaster Coalition members worked to adopt the small town of Houma and brought a “Flood of Books.”

“All of their elementary schools and libraries had been ruined from the saltwater,” Goldman said. “They asked for a donation of 20,000 books. A year later, we ended up collecting 96,000 books and delivered them by Camelot moving trucks. We restocked the libraries and gave about $16,000 worth of donations to the librarians. We ended up restocking five libraries.

“Through the Disaster Coalition and because of Katrina, we had all this energy and mobilized. When the fires hit a couple years later, we had other cities come in and support us, because we had helped them.”