“How
can the next one be different?”
That is the question posed by Katrina/Sandy, a new interactive timeline released by LandofOpportunity and Sandy Storylineearlier this week. The timeline consists of videos and documents that bring together the stories, memories, struggles, and hopes of people whose lives were changed by the two most devastating hurricanes in recent US history.
The timeline was created to start a conversation that would “connect the dots” between the two disasters, the LandofOpportunity team explains:
As documentarians on the ground after Katrina and Sandy, we wondered what we could learn by stepping back and viewing the stories we’d documented in conversation with one another – and by incorporating the wealth of research, data, and analysis that has come to light in the years since.
The timeline takes users through five key stages of both disasters, including “storm,” “aftermath,” and “recovery/rebuilding.” At each stage, the personal stories of people who lived through Katrina and Sandy are juxtaposed and expanded through layers of reports, interviews, articles, and raw footage.
In the innovative style of LandofOpportunity’s other projects, users can jump between stages and layers of the timeline according to their own interests. As they are drawn deeper into the story, users become amateur investigators into the issues that affect crisis management and recovery in America, such as racial profiling and socioeconomic inequality.
The team hopes that juxtaposing the two storylines will allow people to discover “fresh perspectives and insight into survival and community resilience in the wake of disaster.”
Explore the timeline on LandofOpportunity, or read about the development of the LandofOpportunity platform on the CMSI Media That Matters Blog.