{"id":27117,"date":"2015-08-24T09:04:05","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T14:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=27117"},"modified":"2016-08-29T14:37:20","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T19:37:20","slug":"an-iconic-image-of-government-failure-courtesy-of-hurricane-katrina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/08\/24\/an-iconic-image-of-government-failure-courtesy-of-hurricane-katrina\/","title":{"rendered":"Who didn’t evacuate for Hurricane Katrina? A picture of those left behind"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is what it looks like when government fails to protect its citizens:<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>
New Orleans, LA 9\/4\/05 — School buses have been swamped by the floodwaters following hurricane Katrina. Photo by: Liz Roll<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Hurricane Katrina hit, more than a quarter of people living in New Orleans in August of 2005 lived below the poverty line. Many of the poor in stayed at home to weather the storm. Why?<\/p>\n

27%\u00a0of New Orleanians didn’t own a car, making evacuation even more difficult and expensive than it would otherwise be.<\/p>\n

People without the means to leave are also the most likely to rely on the television, as opposed to the radio or internet, for news. TV news began warning people how bad the storm would be only 48 hours before it hit; some people, then, had only 48 hours to process this information and make plans.<\/p>\n

Poor people are more likely than middle and upper class people to never leave where they grew up. This means that they were much less likely to have a network of people outside of New Orleans with whom they could stay, at the same time that they were least able to afford a motel room.<\/p>\n

For those who were on government assistance, living check-to-check, it was the end of the month. Their checks were due to arrive three days after the hurricane. It was also back-to-school time and many were extra cash poor because they had extra expenses for their children.<\/p>\n

A study<\/a> of New Orleanians rescued and evacuated to Houston,\u00a0described here<\/a>, found that:<\/p>\n

…14% were physically disabled, 23% stayed in New Orleans to care for a physically disabled person, and 25% were suffering from a chronic disease…\u00a0 Also,<\/p>\n

\u2022 55% did not have a car or a way to evacuate
\n\u2022 68% had neither money in the bank nor a useable credit card
\n\u2022 57% had total household incomes of less than $20,000 in the prior year
\n\u2022 76% had children under 18 with them in the shelter
\n\u2022 77% had a high school education or less
\n\u2022 93% were black
\n\u2022 67% were employed full or part-time before the hurricane<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The city failed to get information to their most vulnerable residents in time and they failed to facilitate their evacuation.\u00a0 The empty buses in flood water, buses that could have been filled with evacuees prior to the storm, is a testament to this failure.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is what it looks like when government fails to protect its citizens: When Hurricane Katrina hit, more than a quarter of people living in New Orleans in August of 2005 lived below the poverty line. Many of the poor in stayed at home to weather the storm. Why? 27%\u00a0of New Orleanians didn’t own a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,126,272,129,85,304,295,307],"class_list":["post-27117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-disaster","tag-marriagefamily","tag-media","tag-politics","tag-the-state","tag-social-networks","tag-traveltourism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/08\/8.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27117"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69316,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27117\/revisions\/69316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}