{"id":38174,"date":"2011-08-29T08:02:15","date_gmt":"2011-08-29T13:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=38174"},"modified":"2017-09-17T13:37:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T18:37:00","slug":"hurricane-katrina-and-the-demographics-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/29\/hurricane-katrina-and-the-demographics-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Katrina and the Demographics of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Demographics<\/strong><\/p>\n

During disasters, poor people, people of color, and the elderly die in disproportionate numbers (source<\/a>), and Katrina was no exception. Many decisions were made in the days leading up to and shortly after Katrina that amplified loss of life for these groups. New Orleans is both a poor (23% poverty rate pre-Katrina \u2013 twice the national average) and segregated city, and these factors led to loss of life<\/a>. First, an effective evacuation plan was not in place<\/a> that accounted for the 112,000 poor, mostly black New Orleanians without cars. Additionally, the timing of the storm at the end of the month meant that those receiving public assistance were\u00a0unusually cash-strapped.\u00a0To make matters worse for poor people with children, school had just started so expenses for the month were higher than usual.<\/p>\n

The immobile poor were disproportionately left behind and lost their lives. A comprehensive study of evacuees to Houston (who had stayed behind during the storm) found that 22% were physically unable to evacuate, 14% were physically disabled, 23% stayed in New Orleans to care for a physically disabled person, and 25% were suffering from a chronic disease (source<\/a>). 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

Age was also a factor in fatalities. Nearly 40% of those who died in Katrina were elderly<\/a>, and many more elderly individuals died from the stress of evacuation and home loss.<\/p>\n

Government Response<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mayor Nagin received nearly $20 million to establish a workable evacuation plan in plenty of time for Katrina, but it\u2019s questionable whether it was ever developed, and it was never disseminated<\/a>. Two months before Katrina, Nagin spent money to produce and distribute DVDs<\/a> in poorer neighborhoods to inform residents that they would be on their own if a storm hit because the city could not afford to evacuate them. \u00a0In the days before the\u00a0storm,\u00a0Nagin sent empty Amtrak trains out of the city, failed to mobilized available school and other buses, and waited an entire day to call for a mandatory evacuation so he could determine whether the City would face lawsuits from local businesses (source<\/a>). All of these decisions were deadly.<\/p>\n

The federal response was no better. The city was quiet after the storm whipped through late Sunday night\/early Monday morning when President Bush announced that New Orleans had \u201cdodged a bullet<\/a>.\u201d Within hours, three major levees breaches and over fifty minor breaches flooded the city. Despite Governor Blanco\u2019s request for federal assistance on Saturday (two days before the storm made landfall) and concern from local media on Sunday (one day before the storm) that the levees wouldn\u2019t hold, they breached on Monday morning with only two Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers on the ground (see the\u00a0timeline<\/a>). It would take two days for 1,000 additional officials to arrive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once on the ground, FEMA slowed the evacuation with unworkable paperwork and certification requirements<\/a>. Marc Cresswell, a medic from a private ambulance company, reported that \u201cAt one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go, but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying.\u201d FEMA was also criticized for\u00a0turning away<\/a> personnel, vehicles, medical equipment, food and other supplies, and diesel fuel.<\/p>\n

The 30,000 people who evacuated to the Superdome (per Nagin\u2019s instructions) were stranded for a week. Those who evacuated to the Superdome experienced deplorable conditions \u2013 unbearable heat, darkness, the stench of sewage, and a lack of food and water. They were not allowed to leave, and, according to several evacuees I interviewed in Texas shortly after the storm, this led one man to take his life<\/a> by jumping from a balcony. This death was one of only six deaths at the Superdome: one person overdosed and four others died of natural causes. Another 20,000 people gathered at the Convention Center for assistance, an evacuation site the federal government was unaware of until three days after the storm.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

President Bush was otherwise occupied<\/a> during this time. The day Katrina hit, he traveled to Arizona and California to promote his prescription drug plan, had birthday cake with John McCain, and attended a Padres game.<\/p>\n

Panicked at the\u00a0slow federal response, Governor Blanco sent an urgent request: \u201cMr. President, we need your help. We need everything you\u2019ve got.\u201d The president retired to bed that night without responding to Blanco. The next day, he sang songs with country singer Mark Willis and returned to Texas for the final night of his vacation. The President was so oblivious to the suffering in New Orleans that his staff made a video of news coverage<\/a> four days after the storm to sensitize him. And, in response, President Bush\u2019s team assembled a carefully crafted PR plan to blame local officials seven days into the ordeal while thousands of people were still stranded<\/a>. Later that same day, President Bush made the infamous statement, \u201cBrownie, you\u2019re doing a heckuva job.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Cross-posted at\u00a0Caroline Heldman’s blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Demographics During disasters, poor people, people of color, and the elderly die in disproportionate numbers (source), and Katrina was no exception. Many decisions were made in the days leading up to and shortly after Katrina that amplified loss of life for these groups. New Orleans is both a poor (23% poverty rate pre-Katrina \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,345,126,304,285,1760],"class_list":["post-38174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-disability","tag-disaster","tag-the-state","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38174","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\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38174"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71465,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38174\/revisions\/71465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}