So what is the statute of limitations on disasters? Every battlefield memorial is the site of tremendous amounts of suffering.

This seems to be a case of "too soon" emotionally, but at the same time, it's feeding money into the local economy to repair the damage and it's raising awareness among people who otherwise have no reason to particularly care about New Orleans. You've got to convince the rest of the country that it's worth spending their money to build levees so you can keep living in a flood zone instead of moving someplace more naturally stable. And people seeing the destruction is part of that, I think, even if it is kind.. well, rude.

I object to TV coverage of this and other tragedies that exploits the very individuals it claims to honor by putting their tears and fears and regrets to use selling advertising.

Thank you for this. My family home was caught in Queensland's massive floods in January, and the people driving by just to *look* not only made me want to scream, but made the cleanup that much harder by blocking the roads. I can't even recall how it felt without tears coming to my eyes.

We even heard "I almost wish our place had flooded so we could be involved" from several people.

Surely, there are many different motives for disaster tourism.  It may be exploitative of others' misery for a good photograph, or it may be a form of bearing witness (in Katrina's case to government fecklessness and the unequal distribution of misery during environmental catastrophes).  

I have a goal of visiting every Nazi concentration camp.  I take pictures.  Exploitative of other's misery?  What if I tell you that I lost some distant family, and I feel morally committed to bearing personal witness to their murder?

This is just gross.

It's sad that this is even up for argument. Treating other people like zoo exhibits is never acceptable!

For all of those stating that this kind of tourism brings money, the low wages of the bus driver and hotel workers is not enough to lift them out of poverty or bring development to still devastated communities. If anything, this kind of gimmick disincentivizes development because without the destruction and despair no one would be going on these tours!

I am doing a research on vulnerability to flooding in a poor neighbor in one of the largest cities in  Argentina.  As part of my research I have conducted a large number of open interviews with people to try understand the way they experienced the flooding and how they recovered.  I was surprised when people, talking about the aftermath and without me asking about the subject began to describe how disturbed they were when they saw people from other neighborhoods coming with their cars, driving slowly to see the destruction.  They described the situation as "they were riding like in an amusement park", "it was humiliating", "why do they come?  not to help us for sure", "I was in tatters, shoveling sludge, and one of them stopped and asked: how high was the water in your house.  I threw sludge at him" .  In 25 of the 32 interviews that I conducted the accounts of disaster voyeurism came up spontaneously, and indication of the lasting psicological impact the presence of gawkers had in the flood victims: the floods occurred between 50 and 25 years ago.  

I am sure the situation can be extended to disaster victims all over the world.  Now, if we accept that dark toursim can bring benefits, we should not forget that it is at the cost of ignoring the dignity of the victims.  Would those in favor of dark tourism be willing to ask the victims  " Come on, forget about your self respect; someone can use the money the tourists bring in exchange for a your humiliation".

I would be very interested to hear ab out research that takes into account the victims 

I have had a quite a bit of experience with cleaning up in a flood prone area, not to mention wildland fire outcomes. There was never tourism as a result but in many ways I wished more people could see the outcome. It was a ten minute bit on the news that didn't come close to showing the drawn out results of all that clean up. I would hope (perhaps naively) that if people got to see the results of more natural disasters they might take preparation more seriously and/or be more educated about siting of houses in floodplains, wild fire areas, etc. Note: this in no way excusing disaster tourism nor invalidating the above post. Just a slightly different look at a the issue.

In 2013, more than 9 million tourists spent about $6.5 billion and employed almost 80,000 New Orleans residents. Tourism is the largest business sector in the area and without it New Orleans would certainly face economic disaster.

Yes, it is sad to see that some tourist buses must travel through the areas still affected by the storm. But this is selective reporting and is not representative of the tourism industry in the area.

What I read in these posts is a disturbing need to focus on the negative aspects of our culture and individual motivations. Why?