Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
READING #1
November 9, 2012
The Debt We Owe Katrina
By DANIEL WOLFF
NYACK, N.Y.
NEW YORK, New Jersey and the Northeastern seaboard owe a debt of
gratitude to Hurricane Katrina.
The lesson of the Gulf Coast disaster was the failure of government at every
level — federal, state and local — and across party lines. Towns were
unprepared; Louisiana’s Democratic governor was slow to mobilize troops; the
Republican president oversaw a Federal Emergency Management Agency
response that was an almost complete fiasco. Evacuation orders were either not
issued or not followed, and many who wanted to get out couldn’t, because
public trains and buses weren’t made available. The legacy of Hurricane Katrina
was as simple as the Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.” And, to a large extent, the
Northeast’s response to Hurricane Sandy seems to have reflected that.
Many local governments issued evacuation notices and, unlike the New Orleans
Police Department, managed to enforce them. State officials prepared early and
cooperated, both within and across departments. FEMA aid arrived quickly this
time, and in large quantities. Death and destruction were minimized by studying
the response to Katrina — and doing the exact opposite.
But there were other lessons from the Gulf Coast disaster, slower to emerge and
longer lasting. Here in the Northeast, there has already been talk of starting
over, building better and coming back stronger.
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
As benign and uplifting as this may sound, in New Orleans “building better”
was often code for a political agenda. It meant attempting to rezone low-lying
areas as “nonviable” — and then turning them over to large-scale developers: a
post-flood, backdoor route to old-fashioned urban renewal.
Low-income residents were discouraged from returning to their neighborhoods
— in part because they were often the last to get power, water and other
services. Damaged schools were permanently closed, providing opportunities to
replace them with privatized alternatives. Hospitals dedicated to the care of lowincome patients were never reopened; instead, plans were made to replace them
with higher-end, more profitable facilities that would price out the poor. In New
Orleans, specifically in the most impoverished areas, flooding and wind damage
offered an opportunity to “solve” those problems by getting rid of the affected
population.
The areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy should be prepared for similar kinds
of opportunism. Take the Jersey Shore town of Asbury Park. For over 50 years,
the city has had run-down housing, declining schools and increasing crime.
Time and again, it has tried to solve those issues by building an economy based
on tourism. But focusing on its mile-long beachfront has meant neglecting
rampant poverty across the tracks on the town’s West Side.
Asbury Park was attempting a recovery before Hurricane Sandy, having sold
most of its prime real estate to a single developer, Asbury Partners (part of the
larger entity Madison Marquette), who promised to build high-end
condominiums and town houses. Progress had been slow. Instead, the areas that
had bounced back had done so mainly thanks to private homeowners and
entrepreneurs rebuilding historic homes and opening restaurants and other
businesses.
Hurricane Sandy brought the oceanfront three blocks inland. It ripped up
sections of boardwalk and sent hundreds of people to shelters. Like New
Orleans seven years ago, Asbury Park is now at a crossroads. Does it sweeten
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
the sweetheart deal the developers already have, use eminent domain to
condemn and raze low-income housing on the West Side, and lay the
groundwork for a “boutique city”? Or is there a way to use Hurricane Sandy’s
leveling of so many buildings to also level the city’s playing field: to bring it
back as a multiracial, mixed-income city?
Similar questions will face many of the towns and municipalities in Sandy’s
wake, including New York City. Much of the five boroughs’ low-income public
housing is situated in flood zones. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg estimates that
30,000 to 40,000 residents of public housing complexes have been moved out
and are now homeless — living in shelters or elsewhere. Will they come back to
the same, better or worse conditions — or come back at all? Will the destruction
of private clubs and residences along the New York and New Jersey shorelines
lead to rebuilding that includes more public access — or less? And will the
rebuilding itself, with its potential of billions of dollars in infrastructure repair
and redesign, produce big paydays for out-of-state firms (as it did in New
Orleans), or create more local jobs that will help lower regional unemployment?
As I hand wrote this essay on a yellow legal pad, all computers down, the house
cold and the refrigerator starting to give off an alarming smell, my first concern
was the immediate restoration of power.
But if Katrina is any model, we have to think long-term as well — and make
sure we’re forging not just a speedy but an equitable recovery.
Daniel Wolff is the author of “The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back”
and “4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land.”
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
READING #2
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FEMA chief: Victims bear some
responsibility
Brown pleased with effort: 'Things are going relatively well'
vp> Programming Note: CNN looks at the disaster and chaos crippling Louisiana, "NewsNight," Thursday, 10 p.m.
ET.
(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those
New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina
bear some responsibility for their fates.
Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.
"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told
CNN.
"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of
New Orleans," he said.
"And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to
get them out of there.
"So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good,"
Brown said. "Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them."
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin have both predicted the death toll
could be in the thousands.
Nagin issued a "desperate SOS" Thursday as violence disrupted efforts to rescue people still trapped in the flooded
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
city and evacuate thousands of displaced residents living amid corpses and human waste. (Full story)
Residents expressed growing frustration with the disorder evident on the streets, raising questions about the
coordination and timeliness of relief efforts. (See video on the desperate conditions -- 4:36 )
Sniper fire prevented Charity Hospital from evacuating its patients Thursday. The hospital has no electricity or water,
food consists of a few cans of vegetables, and the patients had to be moved to upper floors because of looters. (Full
story) (See video of a city sinking in chaos -- 2:54)
Brown was upbeat in his assessment of the relief effort so far, ticking off a list of accomplishments: more than 30,000
National Guard troops will be in the city within three days, the hospitals are being evacuated and search and rescue
missions are continuing. (See video of National Guard efforts to rein in violence -- 3:14)
"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtually a city that has been destroyed -- that
things are going relatively well," Brown said.
Nevertheless, he said he could "empathize with those in miserable conditions."
Asked later on CNN how he could blame the victims, many of whom could not flee the storm because they had no
transportation or were too frail to evacuate on their own, Brown said he was not blaming anyone.
"Now is not the time to be blaming," Brown said. "Now is the time to recognize that whether they chose to evacuate or
chose not to evacuate, we have to help them."
Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose father was a longtime New Orleans mayor, said there was
"plenty of blame to go around," citing underinvestement by federal authorities over many years "despite pleas and
warnings by officials."
Earlier on CNN, Brown was asked why authorities had not prepared for just such a catastrophe -- given that the
levees were designed to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane and Katrina was stronger than that.
"Government officials and engineers will debate that and figure that out," he replied. "Right now, I'm trying to focus on
saving lives. I think we should have that debate, but at an appropriate time."
Brown said Katrina was unlike other hurricanes in which the magnitude of the disaster typically subsides after the
initial blow. That was not the case Monday, when the Category 4 storm blew ashore.
"What we had in New Orleans is a growing disaster: The hurricane hit, that was one disaster; then the levees broke,
that was another disaster; then the floods came; that became a third disaster."
Brown said he had to be careful about getting rescue teams to the site earlier.
"Otherwise, we would have faced an even higher death toll," he said.
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
READING #3
Dear FRONTLINE,
I currently work for FEMA in Louisiana and on reading the posts see that many of the
people of the United States need to be educated in our governmental structure.
One glaring comment what that the federal government should have run over the local
and state governments and jumped right in. Our system does not work that way. We
operate under a federalist structure which means that the state has sovereignty. In
other words, the state must request assistance from the federal government before the
federal government can step in and do anything. Additionally, when the federal
government steps in, this usually means that the military comes in as well. Do you
really want your state taken over my military personnel and your state not have any
say in the matter?
Federalism is why this country works.
Stephanie Homme
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
READING # 4
November 10, 2012
The Government and the
Storm
To the Editor:
Re “Fractured Recovery Divides a Frustrated Region” (front page, Nov. 4):
We live in an era when government is viewed by many Americans as the
problem, not the solution. But catastrophes like Hurricane Sandy remind us why
we need government, both to protect us from devastation and to quickly restore
civilized society when devastation occurs.
Our government — local, state and federal — has failed us on both counts.
Despite warnings of our region’s vulnerability to rising sea levels, officials did
not act to protect homes and vital services against predicted storm surges of
historic proportions, and they have willfully ignored the underlying cause.
Now, in the storm’s ruinous wake, we are relying on an uncoordinated
patchwork of mostly private and volunteer efforts to bring relief to the cold,
hungry and homeless.
Over the past four decades we have sown the seeds of privatization and
relentlessly eroded our public services. With Katrina, Irene and Sandy — and
more names surely to come — we are reaping the whirlwind.
KENNETH M. COUGHLIN
New York, Nov. 4, 2012
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
READING # 5
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December 29, 2009
LEAVING THE TRAILER
In Katrina’s Aftermath, Still a Struggle to Help
By SHAILA DEWAN
NEW ORLEANS — When Renaissance Village, the vast trailer park that
housed Hurricane Katrina evacuees outside Baton Rouge, was closing down in May
2008, Theresa August was one of the last to leave. Babbling, singing and wearing a
baby’s onesie on her head, she had to be coaxed into packing up the clothes and trash
that crammed the trailer she called home.
Now, Ms. August, 40, lives in a small apartment in New Orleans that she decorated
with flowers and Christmas lights. A team of social workers ensures that she takes her
anti-psychosis medication and gets treatment for H.I.V. infection. Still shy and
fettered by a speech impediment, she can carry on conversations far more coherently
than at any other time since the storm.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it nowhere,” she said. “But I have.”
If any group of people could be said to have been the most shattered by Hurricane
Katrina, it was those who were left in Renaissance Village and other temporary
housing when the Federal Emergency Management Agency began to phase out
housing aid almost three years after the storm.
They were among the region’s poorest people before the storm hit in August 2005,
their lives once supported in New Orleans by a dense web of family ties and
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
familiarity. Many were elderly, sick, addicted, mentally ill or otherwise disabled,
unskilled or uneducated, and traumatized. Their children were behind in school or
acting out. The storm was initially hailed as an opportunity to give them a better life,
but as time progressed, thousands of families disappeared into the yawning gaps in
government aid.
Now, more than four years after the flood, their lives have achieved only a fragile
equilibrium, with many of them still turning to private agencies for help as their
government aid expires. Some have transferred to permanent government programs
that pay for housing, but continue to face obstacles to self-sufficiency like clinical
depression or declining health.
Those who have succeeded have provided a valuable lesson to social workers in the
region, one that they say the federal government has been slow to learn: it is not
enough simply to give money, or rent vouchers, to people unable to strategize for
themselves. Those who have achieved the most stability, like Ms. August, have had
the most sustained kind of attention: caseworkers who make house calls, counseling,
transportation, gentle encouragement and tough love. That kind of care has been the
exception, not the rule.
Federal agencies spent more than $200 million on case management for victims of
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but often did little follow-up work.
“It’s easier just to throw money at people and then after a year cut them off,” said
Toni Bankston, a psychologist at Neighbor’s Keeper, a nonprofit group in Baton
Rouge that works with theCapital Area Alliance for the Homeless to provide
comprehensive assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Neighbor’s Keeper itself was making little progress with many of its clients, said
Sister Judith Brun, a nun who runs the organization, until it added mental health care
to its services.
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
“If nothing else,” Sister Judith said, “we have a very sharp insight into what has to
happen to help the helpless who’ve been uprooted. You’ve got to be a mentor and
almost a parent at times.”
Her agency creates a highly personal system of accountability for each client: one
unemployable woman gets an allowance, but must volunteer at a soup kitchen; a client
who is giving up drugs or alcohol might, despite Sister Judith’s reluctance, be
provided with cigarettes. In cases where the smallest obstacle could spell failure,
Neighbor’s Keeper has been on hand with bus passes, phone cards or school uniforms.
In contrast, FEMA paid for families to stay in hotels for months with little contact.
Because it has not encouraged deeper involvement by caseworkers, Sister Judith said,
“the federal government has gotten a very poor return on their investment.”
In many cases, the hurricane simply piled new difficulties on top of problems that
existed before, making recovery more challenging to assess. Laura Hilton, a barely
literate mother of three, is now securely housed in a New Orleans duplex, under the
same supportive housing program as Ms. August. But Ms. Hilton’s 12-year-old son,
Roy, remains far below his grade level in reading.
School officials take Roy to the doctor, fill his prescription to combat attention deficit
disorder, and give him his medication, but they say their efforts are less effective
because he does not take the drugs on weekends or holidays. Still, Roy attends school
regularly and has built relationships there. He sometimes asks Charlita Hayes, the
special-education coordinator, to let him see a photocopy of the driver’s license of his
father, who was murdered after the storm, which she keeps safe for him in her desk.
Alton Love, a single father in Baton Rouge, was hospitalized in 2008 with advanced
diabetes that he did not know he had. When he found a new job driving a van this
summer and went for a physical, he said, the doctor revoked his commercial driver’s
license because his disease was so severe.
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
Doris Fountain, 68, is finally back in her repaired home in New Orleans and regularly
visits a local center for older Americans. But when asked about the storm and the
cancer that killed her husband less than two years later, she bursts into tears.
Jermaine Howard, 16, missed three years of school. But after intervention from
Neighbor’s Keeper, he is living with an older cousin in Baton Rouge, performing with
his church’s dance troupe and has caught up to grade level. Now it is his younger
brother who is truant. Neighbor’s Keeper is working to place him in an alternative
school.
What is clear, from these stories and others, is that the storm is still raging. Of the
30,000 families receiving temporary rental assistance in February, 12,500 qualified
for permanent federal housing vouchers, while the rest were cut off because they did
not need further help or did not qualify.
Dozens of those families have called Neighbor’s Keeper in Baton Rouge or UNITY of
Greater New Orleans, a homeless-services provider, in desperation. For those clients,
the months spent on the rent program, Sister Judith said, had been a wasted
opportunity for federal caseworkers to help them move toward greater selfsufficiency.
Matthew Bailey, 44, fell behind on his $420 monthly rent shortly after his disasterhousing subsidy ended in September. He has a head injury, and his garbage-strewn
apartment is a cube of unbearable stench. He makes a tiny income from odd jobs like
caring for pets. Neighbor’s Keeper will help him apply for disability payments, a
process that can take more than a year.
Sister Judith questioned why his federal caseworker, whom Mr. Bailey said he had not
seen since shortly after moving into the apartment, had not begun the application
process for him.
“Matthew could have been a settled, lawn-mowing, dog-walking citizen,” she said.
Hurricane Katrina Readings
Question to Consider:
Was Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a social disaster?
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