The Aftermath: Camille
The inland destruction caused by Camille resulted in a rethinking of the planning for natural disasters. Until that time coastal communities were presumed to be at the greatest risk from hurricanes; Camille proved otherwise and prompted the U.S.
Congress to pass the Disaster Relief Act of 1969. Hurricane Camille, along with other massive disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, including Hurricanes Carla (1962), Betsy (1965), and Agnes (1972), led to U.S. president Jimmy Carter's 1979 Executive Order 12127 that merged many separate disaster-related organizations into the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The agency is charged with coordinating recovery efforts after natural disasters in the United States.
In 1970, the Nelson County Chamber of Commerce commissioned Charlottesville Daily Progress associate editor Jerry Simpson and his wife, Paige Shoaf Simpson, to collect stories of Hurricane Camille into a book titled Torn Land. The book holds the accounts of numerous people who were involved in the rescue and recovery efforts following the storm; proceeds of book sales funded the building of a new Nelson County library.
The devastation of Hurricane Camille remains fresh in the memories of many Virginians. Roar of the Heavens: Surviving Hurricane Camille (2006), by Stefan Bechtel, retells the story of Camille. Bechtel was inspired to write a chronicle of the storm when, after moving to Charlottesville twenty years earlier, he began hearing about Camille from local residents. How a hurricane could cause such damage so far inland mystified him, and his curiosity resulted in perhaps the most thorough account of the storm.
Read more: http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hurricane_Camille_August_1969#start_entry