Hurricane Katrina

Political effects

As high profile news coverage has reported, the American public in general blames all levels of government in different proportions for failures to perform their responsibilities in hurricane preparedness, reaction, and aftermath.

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Prevention and evacuation issues

According to the National Response Plan, the Department of Homeland Security "will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort" http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp.

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The state evacuation plan (Part 1 Section D7) states http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf, evacuation is the responsibility of the local parish. In Orleans Parish that responsibility fell to Mayor Ray Nagin. Many critics have noted that while Mayor Nagin gave a mandatory evacuation order on August 28, before the storm hit, they did not make sufficient prevention and provisions to evacuate the homeless, the poor, the elderly, the infirm, or the car-less households. Hospitals, nursing homes, group homes, were supposed to have pre-determined evacuation and/or refuge plans in place. page II-3 Foreign nationals without transport claimed that the police refused to evacuate them, giving bus places only to American citizens. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1562517,00.html

Related Topics:
Ray Nagin - August 28 - Prevention - Car

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Prior to this, on August 27 the White House issued a statement http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html, effective August 26, authorizing federal emergency assistance for Louisiana. The statement authorized the DHS and FEMA to coordinate disaster relief and "...required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn." This includes all the parishes in the state of Louisiana except the coastal parishes which are inherently exposed to the most destructive forces of a hurricane. The President had not yet authorized FEMA to enter the coastal areas despite the governors request including those parishes. http://www.gov.state.la.us/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=973 The governor activated the National Guard with her August 26, State of Emergency Declaration page II-4 Red Cross relief in New Orleans remains forbidden by the Governor. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/08/katrina.redcross/index.html

Related Topics:
August 27 - August 26 - DHS - FEMA

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According to the Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan, evacuation was mainly left up to individual citizens to find their own way out of the city. http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf It was known that many residents of New Orleans lacked cars. It is also believed that many citizens, having survived previous hurricanes, did not anticipate the impending catastrophe and chose to ride out the storm. Even so, a 2000 census revealed that 27% of New Orleans households, amounting to approximately 120,000 people, were without privately-owned transportation. Additionally, at 38%, New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates in the United States. These factors may have prevented many people from being able to evacuate on their own. Consequentially most of those stranded in the city are the poor, the elderly, and the sick.http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20050902http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0902-02.htm

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Some school buses were left parked on low ground where they would be easily flooded with storm water and then later by the levee flooding making their use impossible in the emergency evacuation after the rupture of the levee, sparking claims that Mayor Nagin did not follow some plan, but such a plan would necessarily require interstate coordination http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015. It is not clear whether these buses were owned by the city or by a private contractor to which the city had outsourced school bus services. The number of these buses has been greatly exaggerated http://mediamatters.org/items/200509120005?is_gsa=1&final=1 possibly in an attempt to smear Mayor Nagin. Mayor Nagin did send city buses from New Orleans' Regional Transit Authority to help shelter those that stayed behind. These buses were intended to bring the remaining people to the Superdome for a last haven and for relief, but the dome was stocked with few relief supplies. Many supporters also note that school buses, while powerful, can be difficult to control in normally high windspeed of 50-80 mph (80-120 km/h). Winds west of New Orleans were recorded at 50mph during the storm and approximately 10 mph after the storm but before the levee break. During non-emergency times, drivers of school buses must own and maintain a class D commercial license or better depending on the exact size and weight of the bus. During an emergency any driver is suitable as long as OK'd by the Governor Kathleen Blanco.

Related Topics:
City bus - Regional Transit Authority - School bus - Kathleen Blanco

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State and city evacuation plans (http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf (Part 1 Section C and part II-2) mention use of school buses for evacuation. With the following language: "The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating"

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In spite of risks and his lack of formal training or license, 20-year-old Jabbar Gibson commandeered a New Orleans school bus and rescued 70 people from the rising flood waters before making the 13-hour drive to Houston's Reliant Astrodome, arriving on Wednesday evening. http://images.chron.com/content/news/photos/05/09/01/katrina_renegadebus.jpghttp://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3335904 A day later a commercially licensed driver's bus filled with evacuees flipped, resulting in one death and many injuries after a passenger fought with the driver. http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050903/NEWS05/509030307

Related Topics:
Jabbar Gibson - Reliant Astrodome

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In a phone call to WWL radio made after the idle school and RTA buses were floodedhttp://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/, Mayor Nagin called for 500 Greyhound buses to be sent from outside the city to help evacuate. Coordination of transportation from outside the Parish is the responsibility of the Governor according to the State Evacuation Plan (Part 1 Section D).http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf Governor Blanco had yet to exercise this responsibility.

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Some evacuees report that the drive from New Orleans to Baton Rouge took anywhere from five hours to nine hours; this drive usually takes up to an hour. Reports from the Associated Press state that 80% of the near 500,000 had evacuated safely from New Orleans prior to the hurricane's landfall. Even if licensed drivers had been available and the available buses had been used to evacuate the remaining approximately 150,000 people, they may not have made it to safety before landfall.

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This massive migration is the largest since the Dust Bowl of the 1930's sent about 300,000 people from the Great Plains States to other regions of the US, most notably California.

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Race and class issues

The question of demographics has been raised in the media as news video and photographs showed primarily black citizens stranded in New Orleans. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the 2004 New Orleans population to be 20.0% white and 67.9% black.http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_event=&geo_id=16000US2255000&_geoContext=01000US%7C04000US22%7C16000US2255000&_street=&_county=orleans&_cityTown=orleans&_state=04000US22&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=160

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Within the city itself, the poorest tended to live in the lowest parts that are most vulnerable to flooding.

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Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Black Leadership Forum, National Conference of State Legislators, National Urban League and the NAACP held a news conference expressing anger and charging that the response was slow because those most affected are poor.http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/02/black.lawmakers.ap/index.html

Related Topics:
Congressional Black Caucus - Black Leadership Forum - National Conference of State Legislators - National Urban League - NAACP

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http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/us/2005/09/02/udoji.katrina.race.factor.affl Critics say city, state and federal officials didn't bother to consider citizens who cannot afford private transportation when planning for a natural disaster in New Orleans. Mayor Nagin was criticized for failing to formulate an evacuation plan that provided transportation out of the city for those without private means.

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However, the greater amount of criticism was directed at the slow reaction of the Bush administration to the crisis. No meaningful help for thousands of people stranded at the city's Convention Center occurred until the fifth day of the flood. They went without food, water, electricity and toilet facilities. People stranded in the Superdome and on highway overpasses fared only slightly better. Polls revealed that a majority of African-Americans believed that racial bias played a role in the indifference the administration, including FEMA, showed. But, some commentators point out that FEMA's response was inadequate across the board, including its treatment of the predominantly white victims in Mississippi and suburban Louisiana.

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Civil rights groups were also very displeased with some of the language used in regard to the predominately black citizens of New Orleans. They were casually referred to as "looters" in print and broadcast reports. Looting usually means large scale theft and pillaging, not the taking of necessities such as water, that some desperate people engaged in. Though some outright looting did occur, the word appears to have been used to exaggerate the degree of wrongdoing of most people who took necessities.

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Another concern was the media's choice of terminology for the displaced. In one analysis, http://www.languagemonitor.com it was found that "refugees" appeared 5 times more frequently in the global media than "evacuees", which some people see as more neutral. Most of the major U.S. news outlets in eliminated the usage of "refugees". http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002477023_katword07.html

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The Immigration and Nationality Act defines "refugee" in Sec. 101(a)(42) as: Any person who is outside any country of such person's nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. http://uscis.gov/graphics/howdoi/refugee.htm

Related Topics:
Immigration and Nationality Act - Refugee

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According to the conventions of international humanitarian assistance, the correct term for the former residents of the hurricane affected areas would be "internally displaced persons". The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights defines internally displaced persons as: "Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border." http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/7/b/principles.htm

Related Topics:
Internally displaced persons - Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

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The word 'refugee' was rejected by critics because it implies lack of citizenship or second-class citizenship, a sore point considering the United States' long history of discriminatory and dehumanizing treatment of people of African descent. Perhaps because of the centuries it took them to acquire it, African-Americans highly value their citizenship.

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On September 2, while presenting on the NBC Concert for Hurricane Relief, music producer and rapper Kanye West strayed from his script and addressed what he perceived as the racism of both the government and of the media, stating: "George Bush doesn't care about black people", and called for the media to stop labelling African-American families as "looters" while white families were depicted as "looking for food". During these comments NBC cut filming on West and footage resumed with Chris Tucker. (West's comments were heard in the entirety in the eastern U.S., where the telecast was shown live; NBC later removed a portion of the comments on the tape-delayed telecast shown in the west. NBC also issued an apology for the comments.) http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2678975?htv=12

Related Topics:
September 2 - NBC - Concert for Hurricane Relief - Kanye West - Chris Tucker

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Some people perceived racism in a pair of photo captions that were posted at Yahoo.com. A caption said a white couple as had found items and a different caption said black man as having looted. But the photos and captions were from two news organizations and two photographers. The photographers said they had written what they saw, finding items floating in the water in one case, and taking items from a store in the other case. http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/looters.asp

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The perception that racism played a role in how the victims of Hurricane Katrina are perceived is supported by considerable evidence. Would there have been general acceptance of claims that hundreds of people had been killed in the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center in the absence of stereotypical views of blacks? (The actual http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002520986_katmyth26.html death toll was six people in the Superdome and four in the Convention Center. All but two appear to have died of natural causes.) White supremacy sites on the Internet have used http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_katrina_sex_offenders.htm false accounts of violence in New Orleans to attempt to win support for their cause. Some states have conducted criminal background checks on evacuees without their knowledge. The attorney general of Utah claimed that many of the 400-500 evacuees who moved there were violent criminals, including murderers, only to subsequently http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3044487 retract his remarks. Sloppy reporters have also made outrageous claims about the evacuee population and criminality, based on speculation or very small samples of evacuees, such as those remaining in shelters after the passage of a week or more. Citizens in some cities where evacuees moved have http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509080205sep08,1,2178742.story?coll=chi-news-hed purchased guns in reaction to their presence, believing them to be dangerous. There is no reliable evidence that crime levels have increased in places where evacuees relocated. However, some law enforcement personnel believe evacuees are being http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=3832192&nav=1ugFOaTO targeted as victims of crimes because of a perception they have cash or debit cards from FEMA.

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African-American leaders including Jesse Jackson and Marc Morial of the National Urban League have called for the creation of a victims' compensation fund modeled after the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Related Topics:
Jesse Jackson - Marc Morial - National Urban League - September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

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"Within days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed and the president signed legislation authorizing a 9/11 victims compensation fund, which eventually provided more than $7 billion in compensation for the victims of 9/11," Morial said in a press releasehttp://www.nul.org/PressReleases/2005/2005PR222.html. "As it did then, Congress must take immediate and decisive action to begin compensating American citizens whose lives have been disrupted by this major national tragedy."

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The impact of the racial dimension of the tragedy may effect African-Americans most. According to poll data and media accounts, the treatment of victims in New Orleans led to feelings of distrust, alienation and anger among black Americans nationwide.

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Environmental issues

Katrina has caused a renewed interest in global warming and whether it is responsible for stronger hurricanes observed in recent years. See discussion on Long term trends in cyclone activity for more information.

Related Topics:
Global warming - Long term trends in cyclone activity

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An environmental factor in the extent of damage caused by Katrina has been the destruction of wetlands in the affected regions, which traditionally have a mitigating effect on hurricane damage acting as a sponge to slow floodwaters.http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-08-30-new-orleands-wetlands_x.htmhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102253.html

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Untreated sewage, decomposing bodies and livestock as well as a complicated mixture of toxic chemicals and oils originating from both domestic, agricultural and industrial sources are still mixing into the floodwaters creating a serious health risk across the whole of the flooded area. The immediate threats include disease contagions being spread from decomposing bodies, both by water and by animal vectors such as mosquitoes. Longer term threats will reveal themselves as the floodwaters recede, including biochemical residue which could severely impact surface and ground water, soil, and urban environments. An immediate challenge exists in safely disposing of vast quantities of polluted water inside New Orleans. Many news reports currently state that the water inside New Orleans will be pumped straight back into Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. The effects of this action remain extremely unclear and could result in serious contamination of both bodies of water.

Related Topics:
Sewage - Livestock

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Congressional investigation

The Washington Post reported on September 7 2005, that in an apparent attempt to control the political fallout over the destruction of much of New Orleans, the U.S. Congress would form a rare joint House-Senate investigative commission, but that unlike the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, a majority of the committee would be Republicans, and that Democrats would have no subpoena authority http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702125.html.

Related Topics:
September 7 - 2005

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Demographic Shifts

In surveys since the storm 45-50% of the nearly half a million people evacuated from the affected area into other states have indicated an unwillingness to return. A full 40% of those surveyed among the 250,000 evacuees in Texas indicated that they intended to remain in the state permanently. Another 15% indicated that they would probably relocate to other areas of the country instead of returning to Louisiana. Already, thousands of the evacuees and other citizens from Louisiana have started to migrate not only to the evacuation areas such as Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas, but to other areas including Tennessee, California and the Carolinas.

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Mayor Nagin of New Orleans recently admitted that he expected that even after several years of rebuilding, the City of New Orleans would likely only be about half the pre-Katrina size of 560,000.

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With this major shift in population will come significant political changes. It is estimated that in the next congressional seat realignment, after the census in 2010, Louisiana could stand to lose as many as five of its ten seats, due to population loss. Surrounding states will likely pick up these seats as a result. Texas will probably pick up at least two if not three congressional seats. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee could potentially pick up a seat as well. This could have a profound and long-lasting impact on the electoral map and on national elections beginning in 2010 due to both the migration of seats between states and the change in demographics in existing districts in the affected states.

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