In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many social scientists traveled to Louisiana t
ID: 105736 • Letter: I
Question
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many social scientists traveled to Louisiana to make sense of how the local, state, and federal government, local communities, corporations, political parties and social movements, and non-government organization including religious communities, were responding to environmental disaster at a time scientific consensus was moving toward the human or social causation of rising sea levels. How do Vincanne Adams and Arlie Hochschild differentially frame questions, field sites, and methods in this moment? For each, what appears to be their main research question? How do they go about creating ethnography—what and who do they engage? What concepts do they use?
Explanation / Answer
The affected area of Hurricane Katrina covered three states and approximately 90,000 square miles. In the state of Louisiana alone, approximately 1.7 million people were affected by the storm and needed to be evacuated. This was a daunting task that required evacuating the most densely populated area of the state to unaffected regions both within the state and in other states around the country. The state of Louisiana evacuated approximately 1.5 million people before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. However, approximately 150,000 to 200,000 individuals (accurate numbers were difficult to attain) remained during the storm. While many people chose to stay, others did not have an opportunity to evacuate because of unavailable resources, noted Jimmy Guidry of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
During the pre- and post-storm evacuation, the state set up special needs shelters for those with medical needs and began triaging approximately 30,000 to 40,000 people. The largest emergency room of 700 beds was established at an assembly center to take care of people from affected areas. Available resources were stretched further when Hurricane Rita made landfall in the Gulf Coast a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina. While Hurricane Katrina affected primarily the eastern part of Louisiana, Hurricane Rita affected the western part. The challenge in responding to Hurricane Rita was that individuals evacuated before Hurricane Katrina to the western part of Louisiana needed to be reevacuated to the eastern and northern parts of the state. Thus, within two hours of the order to evacuate from the path of Hurricane Rita, every remaining gymnasium and every empty space not in the affected area became a shelter, said Guidry.
In the initial days following the storm flooding of Hurricane Katrina, the state evacuated approximately 12,000 caregivers and their patients from 25 hospitals. This was a slow process. In some cases patients were evacuated, one or two at a time, by boat to a helipad where they were transferred to a helicopter that brought them to the airport, from which they were flown to other states. This evacuation of hospital patients to out-of-state locations helped to empty beds and prepared hospitals for attending to victims of the storms.
Two months after Katrina struck, at least 20,000 public school students from Louisiana (mostly from New Orleans) who were uprooted by the hurricane, were still not attending any school. About 200,000 evacuees remained in hotels, while only 7,308 temporary trailers and 10,940 housing units had been occupied by victims in the three affected states. Many Medicaid recipients were unable to get benefits in their new locations.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the United States. An estimated 1,833 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed in late August 2005, and millions of others were left homeless along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans.
Katrina was the most destructive storm to strike the United States and the costliest storm in U.S. history, causing $108 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It ranks sixth overall in strength of recorded Atlantic hurricanes. It was also a very large storm; at its peak, maximum winds stretched 25 to 30 nautical miles (46 to 55 kilometers) and its extremely wide swath of hurricane force winds extended at least 75 nautical miles (138 km) to the east from the center.
Government officials have sought to learn from the tragedy and implement better environmental, communications and evacuation policies. The Army Corps of Engineers has rebuilt the levee system, making the barriers higher and supporting them with steel beams that extend as far as 65 feet (19.8 meters) below sea level.
On 2006, Congress passed an act to reorganize FEMA. The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act offers grants to help cities revise evacuation plans, includes provisions for better communication with non-English speaking people and those with disabilities and recognizes the evacuation needs of people with pets. The act also increases funding for Urban Search and Rescue teams and requires the establishment of a family registry within six months after a storm.
The city of New Orleans has improved resident access to evacuation and alert information. For example, they have an e-mail and text message system called NolaReady that 13,000 residents have signed up for.
Ten years later, the region was still recovering from Katrina. The New Orleans metro area's population had dropped dramatically, from 1.386 million in 2005 to 1.04 million in 2006. By 2014, it had climbed back to 1.252 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of housing units and business establishments had also fallen and by 2014 had not returned to pre-2005 levels.