Stories From the Storm

Folklorists train survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to harvest research — and even healing — from their experiences

By JENNIFER HOWARD

Carl Lindahl was at Houston's convention center, handing out fresh clothes to newly arrived evacuees from New Orleans, when he heard his first Katrina stories. The people he was helping talked to him. And talked, and talked.

"They couldn't not tell their stories," he says. "And the stories they told portrayed them in such a different light than I was seeing on the media."

What he heard as a volunteer in early September 2005 helped Mr. Lindahl, a professor of English at the University of Houston and a specialist in folklore, create "Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston," a story-collecting project that may be unique among the multitude of oral-history and folklore ventures that have sprung up in the storms' wake.