vulnerable populations hurricane katrina as a case study

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Vulnerable populations: Hurricane Katrina as a case study

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1 Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, Los Angeles, CA, USA. [email protected]
PMID: 20405467
DOI: 10.1017/s1049023x00007718

Mitigating disaster impact requires identifying risk factors. The increased vulnerability of the physically fragile is easily understood. Less obvious are the socio-economic risk factors, especially within relatively affluent societies. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated many of these risks within the United States. These factors include poverty, home ownership, poor English language proficiency, ethnic minorities, immigrant status, and high-density housing. These risk factors must be considered when planning for disaster preparation, mitigation, and response.

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Vulnerable populations. Jaiswal A. Jaiswal A. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2011 Apr;26(2):138. doi: 10.1017/S1049023X1100015X. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2011. PMID: 21888737 No abstract available.

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DOI: 10.1017/S1049023X00007718
Corpus ID: 44294070

Vulnerable Populations: Hurricane Katrina as a Case Study

R. Zoraster
Published in Prehospital and Disaster… 1 February 2010
Environmental Science, Sociology, Medicine

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Disastrous Burdens: Hurricane Katrina, Federal Housing Assistance, and Well-Being

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Few existing studies of federal disaster aid examine the logics that govern assistance access. Applying the lens of administrative burdens, we identify four onerous aspects of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) housing aid program—regulations regarding application unit, documentation, and damage sufficiency, and long processing times—that prompt assistance delay or denial for in-need households. Our empirical strategy pairs administrative records from FEMA on denied applications ( N = 206,157) after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita with survey ( N = 354) and in-depth interview data ( N = 106) from a longitudinal study of low-income survivors of Katrina. Results show that applications from poor, communities of color were disproportionately denied or delayed due to burdensome program requirements and their implementation. Interviews and survey evidence elucidate the compliance costs and suggest a toll on post-disaster well-being.

natural disasters
disaster aid
mental well-being
administrative burdens

Climate change and population settlement patterns are rendering more people vulnerable to disaster exposure (IPCC 2014 ). Over the past half century in the United States, populations have grown in counties bordering the Gulf and Atlantic coasts (NOAA 2013 ), and tropical cyclones have strengthened and become slower moving (Sobel et al. 2016 ). The result of these dual patterns is a dramatic increase in the number of billion-dollar hurricanes that upend the lives of many people, including the most vulnerable (Smith 2020 ). As federal disaster aid becomes increasingly costly in this context, social scientists must conceptualize it as an essential part of the fragmented social safety net. Yet scholars have historically paid limited attention to government assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—the agency tasked with administering most disaster aid—relative to other government programs.

A nascent but growing body of scholarship documents racial and socioeconomic disparities in federal dollars from disaster aid programs (Domingue and Emrich 2019 ; Kamel 2012 ; Kousky 2013 ; Muñoz and Tate 2016 ). Differences in disaster aid correlate with unequal population recovery at a community level and economic trajectories at an individual level (Howell and Elliott 2019 ; Raker 2020 ). Examining disaster assistance across affected places or people using dollar amounts allows scholars to quantify relative differences in FEMA assistance and the effects on recovery outcomes. Yet, by focusing on dollar amounts, we argue that existing studies fail to consider how inequalities may emerge in the process of accessing aid, leading some in-need people to receive delayed assistance or none at all. A handful of studies have shown how problems with contact information and insufficient damage are frequent reasons for application denials and needs for appeals (García 2021 ; Kousky 2013 ). Others have conceptualized long processing times in disaster rental assistance programs as a form of “temporal domination” (Reid 2013 , 743). What remains largely unanswered is how people navigate the bureaucracy of federal aid in a period of acute need for housing, and what the scale and consequences of denial are for well-being in the recovery stage (Abramson et al. 2010 ).

In this article, we address this gap using mixed-methods data from two sources: administrative data from FEMA on applications for housing and property damage after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in New Orleans; and survey and in-depth interview data from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project, a longitudinal study of low-income mothers who lived in New Orleans at the time of Katrina. Denials for government assistance are a strategic site to investigate the scale and consequence of administrative burdens, but rarely do scholars have data to interrogate these processes. Drawing on Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan’s ( 2018 ) framework, we examine denial disposition codes from administrative data to estimate the scale of burdens, and the survey and interview data from the RISK project to understand the experiences and effects of burdens on post-disaster well-being and recovery. Results from a tripartite analysis—a descriptive examination of administrative data, qualitative coding of in-depth interview data, and regression analyses on survey data—demonstrate three key findings.

First, regulations surrounding appropriate documentation; proof of homeownership, residency, and occupancy; and damage substantiation and sufficiency constituted a large share of denied applicants, contributing to an overall denial rate of 53 percent. Although we are unable to decipher true eligibility from the administrative data, both justified and unjustified denials contribute to burden, and the magnitude of denials suggests a level of burden whose costs borne by in-need people may be greater than the benefit of their function to prevent fraud. This trade-off imbalance is particularly striking given evidence of relatively little fraud in other disaster cases and the documented struggles of public officials to implement policies after Katrina given the unprecedented need for government assistance. Additionally, bivariate associations point to disproportionate denials due to documentation and duplicate applications in zip codes with higher poverty rates and more people of color, suggesting that these policies or their implementation may have exacerbated racial and socioeconomic inequalities. Second, qualitative data from the RISK project elucidate how in-need families experienced and navigated federal disaster assistance programs. In particular, the burdens of program compliance and the nature of interactions with FEMA bureaucrats were taxing on many of our respondents who had been denied assistance or experienced long waiting times for aid. Third, an analysis of survey data estimates the association between assistance denial and psychological distress. We find that being denied FEMA assistance, which interview data showed frequently occurred alongside burdensome experiences with policies or their implementation, correlated with greater psychological distress compared to receiving assistance, net of housing damage and pre-disaster mental well-being.

Despite the common refrain that disasters level the playing field, the consequences of disasters are not distributed equally across groups (Tierney 2019 ). Instead, marginalized people, such as low-income and people of color, bear a disproportionate share of disaster exposure and negative consequences (Fothergill and Peek 2004 ; Tierney 2019 ). During Hurricane Katrina, flood damage was concentrated in predominately poor and Black communities with low-quality housing (Donner and Rodríguez 2008 ). Because low-income households are less likely to be able to prepare for disasters or have enough insurance to buffer their adverse effects (Fothergill and Peek 2004 ), government assitance may be a vital lifeline. FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program (IHP), in particular, is an essential part of the post-disaster safety net for many marginalized people, and is often not their first encounter with government programs and bureacracies.

ACCESS TO FEMA POST-DISASTER ASSISTANCE

To date, most research on FEMA and other post-disaster government assistance focuses on variation in aid amount (Grube, Fike, and Storr 2018 ; Muñoz and Tate 2016 ). Our understanding of the process of applying for and receiving federal disaster assistance, as well as the consequences of aid denial, is more limited. A small number of studies explore these topics, documenting how applying for post-disaster federal aid is often slow, difficult, and complicated (Kamel 2012 ; Reid 2013 ; Texas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2021 ), with eligibility requirements that result in increased aid denial (García 2021 ). Megan Reid ( 2013 ), for example, examined Hurricane Katrina survivors’ experiences with FEMA’s rental assistance program, drawing on in-depth interviews and field observations with displaced Katrina survivors. She finds that FEMA policies and practices were oriented toward a middle-class family structure and socioeconomic status, and that low-income people with complex family structures were forced to wait while the state investigated their applications, leading to negative psychological and material consequences.

More recently, scholars have examined the process of applying for FEMA aid after Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. In the case of the latter, approximately 60 percent of applications to FEMA’s IHP were denied in Puerto Rico after the storm (NLIHC 2018 ), which Ivis García ( 2021 ) finds to be typically based on inadequate proof of home ownership, inability to make contact for inspections, or duplicate applications. His study was a descriptive qualitative one, with a small sample size. Chenyi Ma and Tony Smith ( 2020 ), however, provide quantitative evidence that most of the homes in Puerto Rico that were deemed “not economically feasible to repair” by FEMA belonged to low-income households, emphasizing how access to disaster assistance can exacerbate economic inequalities. A recent report by the Texas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ( 2021 ) describes how inconsistent eligibility criteria and complicated applications led to challenges for vulnerable populations applying for aid after Hurricane Harvey, ranging from requirements to produce extensive documentation to lack of language access for a diverse, multicultural population. More anecdotally, journalistic accounts of federal assistance after Harvey suggest that FEMA aid is often difficult to access and varies in its utility (Young 2017 ), given that many households were denied aid for some reason or another, such as a missed inspection. Although these studies offer insight into the experiences of disaster survivors applying for and being denied disaster assistance, missing from the extant literature is a unifying theoretical framework to understand these isolated denial experiences in a broader social and political context.

ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS IN DISASTER AID

To fill this gap, we apply the concept of administrative burdens (Herd and Moynihan 2018 ) to the case of federal disaster assistance for housing and property damage. Herd and Moynihan define administrative burden as “an individual’s experience of a policy’s implementation as onerous” (22), identifying three distinct types of costs that individuals experience in citizen-state interactions: learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs. Learning costs include the time and effort individuals exert to learn about a given program and determine eligibility requirements; compliance costs include the information and documentation needed to establish eligibility and the financial costs of accessing services; and psychological costs include the stigma that can arise from participation in unpopular programs, or the stresses associated with application or participation. This framework centers individuals’ experiences of state actions, rather than the state actions themselves. In the introduction to this issue, Herd and her colleagues ( 2023 ) offer a clear summary of administrative burdens and how they often function as a mechanism to reproduce inequalities.

Administrative burdens tend to disproportionately affect marginalized individuals. Herd and Moynihan ( 2018 ) discuss how burdens are distributive and reinforce existing inequalities and power relationships. Policies for means-tested public assistance programs, which are primarily oriented toward poor and low-income individuals and families, are typically more burdensome than universal programs. For example, accessing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is more difficult than Social Security or Medicare. Administrative burdens are often the product of political choices designed to protect political values, such as limiting “undeserving” applicants from accessing aid (Christensen et al. 2020 ), given that politicians are generally less willing to impose burdens on those seen as more deserving (Baekgaard, Moynihan, and Thomsen 2021 ). However, burdens can also arise with less explicit negative intent, such as in the implementation (rather than the design) of policies.

Empirical evidence is beginning to mount on how administrative burdens function in specific programs, including burdens in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Social Security (Herd and Moynihan 2018 ). We extend this literature by examining administrative burdens to FEMA assistance for housing and property damage, illuminating the compliance and psychological costs that in-need disaster survivors experience when seeking FEMA aid and the resulting consequences for well-being. Despite little scholarly application of the administrative burden framework to disaster aid, administrative processes in federal disaster assistance are beginning to receive U.S. policymaker attention. In a recent executive order, the Biden administration pointed specifically to the case of disaster victims waiting months for benefits as an example of a “time tax,” calling for FEMA to make accessing disaster assistance easier and less burdensome. A focus on long wait times for disaster assistance complements other scholarly work on time and waiting as a burdensome element of public policy. For example, Jennifer Bouek ( 2023 , this issue) analyzes wait lists for subsidized childcare as a venue where burdens play out, identifying the stresses and uncertainty associated with such waiting. More generally, the experience of waiting represents what Stephanie Pierce and Stephanie Moulton ( 2023 , this issue) classify as a passive compliance cost that imposes delays and uncertainty on clients, distinct from paperwork, documentation requirements, or other more active compliance costs. Using the case of FEMA disaster assistance, we show how such passive compliance costs, in turn, exert psychological costs.

OVERVIEW OF ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS IN FEMA’S IHP

Established by the 1984 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program is the key federal program that provides direct assistance to households following a disaster. A state governor requests a disaster declaration and, if granted, the federal government provides direct assistance for underinsured or uninsured damaged property (Reese 2018 ). Disaster victims apply for assistance with FEMA (whether by telephone, online, or in person), providing personal information such as social security number, current and pre-disaster addresses, telephone number, insurance information, household income, and a description of losses (GAO 2006 ). After an initial assessment of eligibility, FEMA contacts victims to schedule an inspection, during which FEMA meets with victims in their homes to assess the verify damage, ownership, and occupancy. FEMA then approves or denies the application, within about ten days (FEMA 2005 ). If denied, applicants receive a letter detailing why they were denied and may appeal the decision within sixty days. Under IHP, at the time of Hurricane Katrina, the maximum aid per household was $26,200. Although IHP also includes other forms of assistance, most FEMA IHP grants go toward the Housing Assistance Program (financial assistance for rental housing and home repair and replacement). In this study, we focus on the Housing Assistance Program.

Unlike other government programs that are means tested and for which eligibility is determined by a set threshold, FEMA determines eligibility after application and is based on the extent of property damage. 1 This shifts many learning costs—the search process of identifying programs, assessing eligibility and requirements—from an upfront barrier to program application to compliance burdens during and after application. One significant example is the mandate of one application per household, or the shared household rule, which prohibits multiple applications with the same residential address. This means that multigenerational families often struggle to access aid, disproportionately affecting low-income households with complex family structures (Reid 2013 ). It also ignores the realities of displacement during a major disaster such as Katrina, where many families provided the same contact information of a shelter (Young 2017 ), flagging applications as duplicates. However, documentation provided to applicants about IHP assistance does not explicitly state that only one application per household is allowed (FEMA 2005 ). Instead, survivors typically learned of this requirement after being sent a denial determination letter, initiating a lengthy, and potentially frustrating, process of appeals.

Applicants also incur compliance costs when proving occupancy, ownership (for homeowners), and identity. Until recently, only certain forms of documentation were accepted for homeownership, which marginalized many low-income Black homeowners who pass down deeds intergenerationally (Dreier 2021 ). Additionally, when an inspector comes to a property to assess damage, they must determine that the damage crosses a particular threshold for the homeowner to be eligible for aid. However, the inspector must be able to access the property and the applicant must be present for the inspection, both of which were often impossible when homes were still underwater, and families were still displaced from New Orleans. Further, whether damage warrants aid is partly a subjective assessment of what makes a home “unsafe” or “uninhabitable.” Finally, in a moment of crisis when housing needs for poor families were extremely acute, the processing time for FEMA was often long, resulting in problems with contacting the applicants.

FEMA IHP seeks to both provide necessary assistance to households after a disaster and to prevent fraud or improper access to program assistance (GAO 2006 ). FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator Zimmerman, in her testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, noted that “FEMA must balance the requirement to quickly distribute funds to meet the needs of disaster survivors with its responsibility to be good stewards of taxpayer funds” (Zimmerman 2011 ). Despite reports of fraud during Hurricane Katrina (GAO 2006 ; Zimmerman 2011 ), evidence indicates that the prevalence of fraud has been relatively low after recent disasters. According to a GAO report after Superstorm Sandy, less than 3 percent of assistance was determined to be fraudulent (GAO 2014 ). In instances where the state attempts to manage competing values of program integrity and program access, administrative burdens often arise and do so amorphously alongside notions of deservingness. This is particularly true of federal disaster assistance after Hurricane Katrina, where many survivors were both “deserving” because of their status as disaster victims and “undeserving” because of the association between accessing public assistance and their various identities, like race and gender (Reid 2013 ).

OVERVIEW OF THE CASE: HURRICANE KATRINA

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 2005 as a category 5 hurricane, wreaking havoc on an entire region, causing prolonged displacement, and resulting in billions of dollars in damage. The storm and its aftermath killed nearly two thousand people and displaced countless more (Picou and Marshall 2007 ); New Orleans was particularly hard hit. The most disastrous effects came not from wind damage or heavy rains, but instead from catastrophic flooding that resulted from the breach of several levees in New Orleans, compounded by gross government mismanagement (Brinkley 2006 ). Poor, people of color were especially vulnerable to Katrina, bearing a disproportionate brunt of the losses (Elliott and Pais 2006 ). Hurricane Katrina was an extraordinary disaster event that surpassed the conditions for which many FEMA policies were designed. The policies and practices of FEMA IHP were meant to respond to a typical disaster, but Hurricane Katrina was in no way typical, given the scale and extent of damage and displacement and its overwhelming concentration in vulnerable neighborhoods. As we show in this article, FEMA policies were unprepared for to meet the needs of survivors following such an extraordinary event. Indeed, Hurricane Katrina famously exposed the shortcomings of federal disaster assistance programs.

DATA AND METHODS

Our empirical analysis marshals three forms of data from two sources, all focused on survivors of Hurricane Katrina (or Rita) from the same forty-seven zip codes in the New Orleans area.

ADMINISTRATIVE FEMA DATA

First, we use administrative data from FEMA for the final dispositions of all federal disaster aid applications filed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We acquired the data via a Freedom of Information Act request in 2018 (FOIA 2019-FEFO-00891). To assess the frequency of denials presumed to generate burdens, we conduct a descriptive analysis of the denial categorical outcomes. We use three pieces of information from each household-level application: the type of damage for assistance, denial disposition code, and zip code of residence. We restrict our descriptive analysis to the 438,365 applications that FEMA considered for either home repair or personal property replacement from forty-seven zip codes in New Orleans. Of those, 5.73 percent were appeals from first-round decisions and 5.92 percent were withdrawn by the applicant, resulting in 387,298 first-round nonwithdrawn applications (206,157 denied). To the forty-seven zip codes, we link data using the corresponding ZCTAs from the 2000 Census on two demographic measures: the proportion of adults (ages eighteen to sixty-five) living below the poverty line, and the proportion of the population that are people of color (except non-Hispanic White).

RESILIENCE IN SURVIVORS OF KATRINA PROJECT

The second data source is the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina Project, a mixed-methods, fifteen-year longitudinal study of Hurricane Katrina survivors from 2003 to 2018 (Waters 2016 ). Participants were enrolled in two community colleges in New Orleans before the disaster, and as a study requirement, were parenting a child younger than eighteen years old and living below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Participants were primarily Black and single mothers. For this article, we rely on in-depth interview data from 2006 to 2010, and survey data from a pre-disaster baseline in 2003 and a one-year follow-up in 2006–2007.

The in-depth interview sample includes 106 participants who completed a post-disaster interview between 2006 and 2010, selected for variation in their post-disaster mental health and residential location. We employed a flexible, iterative coding process (Deterding and Waters 2021 ). First, we applied a series of index codes that captured any experiences respondents had with FEMA or other government assistance. Next, we developed and applied analytic codes to the portions of the transcripts included in the FEMA index codes. These codes correspond with the administrative burdens and associated consequences we identified a priori (learning and compliance costs associated with documentation, sufficiency, application unit, and processing time). We also included an Other code, which we applied to experiences that did not fit neatly into one of the established buckets. Next, we read through the output of the Other code and developed new, emergent codes, which we then applied in another reread of this output.

The survey data come from an analytic sample of N = 354 respondents with complete data on all variables. We measured psychological distress one year before and one year after the disaster using the Kessler-6 (K-6) scale (Prochaska et al. 2012 ). The K-6 score is a construct of nonspecific psychological well-being and is estimated by a series of six questions to respondents whether they have had feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, restlessness, effort, sadness, and worthlessness in the last month. Response options are (0) none, a little, some, most, and (4) all of the time. For the main independent variable, we constructed a mutually exclusive categorical variable corresponding to the status of respondents’ FEMA housing aid at the time of the post-disaster survey, using several questions about application, inspections, and approval. We categorize respondents’ status with federal disaster aid as (1) no request (no application), (2) denied (applied and received denial), (3) pending (applied and awaiting either decision or for home appraisal), and (4) approved (applied and received aid).

To isolate the association between disaster aid status and psychological distress, we include several key variables. Each respondent was asked their level of housing damage on a 5-part scale from none to enormous. Time since the disaster is the number of days since Hurricane Katrina, given that the survey interview date is correlated with the probability of receiving a final determination on an aid application. We also include a parsimonious set of sociodemographic control variables measured one year before the disaster. Age is a continuous variable. A dummy variable differentiates Black respondents from non-Black respondents. A dummy variable indicating single and not cohabitating is used for marital status. Self-rated health is a variable ranging from one to five, corresponding with excellent to poor health. A dummy variable differentiates socioeconomic status indicating those who received no public benefits relative to those who received at least one, such as SNAP, Section 8 housing, or disability. We measure social support using the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona and Russell 1987 ), which ranges from one to four.

Equation (1) shows the fullest model specification, regressing psychological distress (Y) at the post-disaster survey wave (t) as a function of (F), the status of respondents’ FEMA housing aid application:

β 1 is the main coefficient of interest in our analysis. It is estimated conditional on a lagged measure of distress before the disaster (t-1), a variable capturing the level of housing damage (H) post-disaster, and the previously mentioned sociodemographic controls assessed before the disaster in vector X. We first assess a baseline model that excludes vector X. In text, we use the summary K-6 score (ranging from 0 to 24). In supplemental analyses, we estimate equivalent models on each of the six items, and we also examine dummy variables indicative of moderate mental distress (MMD)—K-6 score greater than 7, and serious mental illness (SMI)—K-6 score equal to or greater than 13. These regression models are intended to provide descriptive evidence of associations and are therefore not interpreted as causal estimates.

Our results section proceeds in three parts, relying on each source of data to uncover (1) the frequency and distribution of denials per FEMA administrative data; (2) the experiences of compliance and psychological costs from the RISK study interview data; and (3) the relationship between aid denial and well-being from the RISK study survey data.

FREQUENCY AND DISTRIBUTION OF DENIALS, FEMA DATA

Of the 387,298 first-round nonwithdrawn applications for home repair and personal property replacement, FEMA approved 46.77 percent of applications for aid and denied 53.23 percent (206,157). Figure 1 shows the distribution of denial categories. What were the policy logics associated with assistance denial in hard-hit areas of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina? The modal reason for denial was insufficient damage, which constituted just over a quarter of denied applications (26 percent). Reasons related to insurance coverage (insurance over the maximum payout) were also common (21 percent). Another 16 percent of applications were denied due to duplication from another applicant, and 10 percent to the inability of FEMA to contact the applicant. Problems with signatures (7 percent), documentation (4 percent), and inaccessibility (3 percent) constituted about 14 percent of denied applications together, corresponding to around twenty-eight thousand applications denied aid.

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Distribution of Denial Categories for Ineligible Applications

Source : Authors’ calculations based on FEMA FOIA data (FEMA 2019 ).

Note : N = 206,157.

Figure 2 maps the spatial distribution across the forty-seven (and adjacent) zip codes in New Orleans of disaster assistance applications (panel A), overall rates of denial (panel B), and rates of denial for three specific categories discussed in previous research to be particularly consequential compliance regulations in vulnerable populations (panels C through E). The total number of applications ranged from 357 applications in 70343 to 35,964 in 70117 (Bywater and Lower 9th Ward). Despite an overall individual-level denial rate of 53 percent, the community-level denial rates ranged from 35 percent in 70049 to 70 percent in 70047—two zip codes on opposite banks of the Mississippi River. Panels C through E show stark divergent spatial patterns of denials due to insufficient damage, duplicate applications, and documentation across zip codes. The majority Black zip code 70129 in New Orleans East had the highest rate of denials due to duplicate applications at 27 percent.

Zip Code Distribution of Applications and Denial Rates After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in New Orleans

Note : Poverty = the proportion of adults (ages eighteen to sixty-five) living below the poverty line.

POC = proportion of the population who are people of color (all except non-Hispanic White). We refer readers of the print edition of this article to https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/5/122 to view the color version.

Administrative data from FEMA did not include information about applicants. To understand if denial rates map onto local demographics, panels C through E provide two bivariate correlations between the denial rate (Y axis) and, first, the proportion of adults in poverty and, second, proportion of the population who are people of color. The local denial rate for insufficient damage was negatively associated with local poverty and racial composition. This makes sense as greater damage occurred in low-income, minority communities. In panels D and E, we find strong, positive relationships between both community-level poverty and racial composition, and the local concentration of denials for duplicate applications and documentation. The correlation between documentation denial rate and poverty and concentration of people of color was 0.53 and 0.54, respectively. The correlation between the local denial rate for duplicate applications and concentration of people of color was 0.71 and 0.42 for the poverty rate.

EXPERIENCES OF COMPLIANCE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL COSTS, THE RISK STUDY

The denial reasons documented in FEMA data were commonly experienced by RISK participants as burdensome, either as a function of policy design or the failure to implement them in the overwhelming disaster circumstance. We use in-depth interview data from RISK, in combination with documentation and reports on FEMA IHP policies during Katrina, to detail the compliance and psychological costs participants incurred when applying for disaster aid.

Application Unit

Many respondents experienced difficulties applying for and receiving FEMA assistance because of the prohibition against duplicate applications, which permits only one application per household. This shared household policy intended to prevent providing duplicate benefits. The program expects that everyone in a household will coordinate and submit one application. However, the documentation that FEMA provided potential IHP applicants (FEMA 2005 ) makes no mention of this restriction against multiple applications from a single address, which was ultimately confusing and frustrating for individuals who were denied under this rule.

For example, Victoria was a twenty-two-year-old Black woman with a young son at the time of Katrina. 2 She had been living in her own apartment in New Orleans, but after her landlord raised the rent, she and her son moved in with her parents the month before Katrina. She lost everything when her parents’ home was flooded in the storm. She applied for FEMA assistance to replace her personal belongings, including her clothing, furniture, and car, but was denied when her mother claimed her as a resident on a different application. Despite being told by FEMA to appeal her case, she continued to be denied and ultimately gave up: “[FEMA] said I wasn’t eligible and that I was on my mom’s application and that made me ineligible. . . . They said that we should appeal it. So, we did that, and they still said I was ineligible, so I just left it alone.”

Victoria was unaware that the policy prohibited multiple applications from the same household when she applied for assistance. This lack of transparency from FEMA resulted in a frustrating interaction between Victoria and FEMA that could have been avoided by clearer delineations of eligibility requirements. Furthermore, Victoria’s family situation—a multigenerational household of adult children with families living with their parents—was not uncommon, but even though she likely maintained personal property and managed household finances separately from her parents, she did not receive assistance.

Other respondents were similarly denied assistance because they cohabitated with others, often parents. Samantha was twenty years old, had one child, and lived at home in New Orleans with her mother. Like Victoria, she noted that her mother received help from FEMA, but she did not: “My mother got help from FEMA. I didn’t get any assistance from FEMA because they were saying it was a duplicate [application], because they said I lived in the same household.” Despite living at the same residential address, many of these families functioned independently, with adult children paying rent (often informally) to parents. Families living together may have had their own personal property, but FEMA policy does not recognize the potential division of assets within a household. By immediately denying any application from an address used on an existing application, the implementation of the policy led to a difficult appeals process and often no assistance for in-need families.

Additionally, the realities of post-disaster displacement made the enforcement of the shared household rule difficult. Most of our sample was forced to evacuate New Orleans and many lived in community shelters across the Gulf Coast region. This meant that many survivors shared a telephone line for the shelter and listed the shelter as their contact information on their FEMA application, to ensure that they would be reachable (given that this was before cell phones were commonly used, especially among low-income people). As a result, some of these applicants were also flagged as submitting a duplicate application and denied. Nicole, who was twenty-six years old at the time of Katrina and had one child, told her experience: “[FEMA] was telling me that I have a duplicate application. . . . This happened to a lot of people—if you used the same telephone number as somebody else, that’s going to show that you have a duplicate application. . . . People in the Astrodome had duplicate applications because they used the same phone number.”

In addition, when families were displaced from New Orleans for an extended period, family members often separated. One component of IHP assistance for housing damage is rental assistance, but the restriction against duplicate applications precludes these separated family members from separately accessing rental assistance. According to the GAO ( 2006 , 24), FEMA recognized this issue and adjusted the policy after the fact: “FEMA created new IHP procedures to allow multiple household members separated by the disaster to receive rental assistance. As a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thousands of families evacuated to locations across the country and in some circumstances required families to temporarily separate. As a result, providing assistance to multiple household members was warranted.”

Our respondents were instead consistently denied when more than one household member applied. Note that in some cases, this policy did capture fraud as intended, but the original denial of the recipient led to burdensome and stressful processes of appeals. For example, Cynthia, a twenty-year-old mother, related that a relative in Florida claimed FEMA benefits using her address, and that she was denied assistance as a result: “[FEMA] didn’t give me anything because my uncle tried to claim our house. . . . They told us we couldn’t get it. . . . He tried to get FEMA [aid] for our house, and he was in Florida somewhere.” This story highlights the trade-offs in policy design and implementation between program integrity and access. The adjudication process between duplicate applications may lessen burden if the implementation of the shared household rule did not simply deny the additional application from a given address, as was the case with Cynthia, and set off a lengthy appeals process. Instead, it could be the role of FEMA to use administrative records to ensure that the rightful applicant is not mistakenly denied.

In sum, the restriction against duplicate applications that produced burdens for our respondents had three primary issues. First, the restriction itself was poorly communicated to applicants. Our respondents were unaware that they were prohibited from applying if they lived with their parents, and thus were confused when they were denied for this reason. The documentation that FEMA provided applicants in August 2005, titled “Help After a Disaster” (FEMA 2005 ), makes no mention of the requirement that only the head of household applies. This often resulted in unnecessary and burdensome interactions between applicants and bureaucrats. Second, the policy itself does not account for the complicated family situations of many low-income families, such as multigenerational households. Third, FEMA’s method for adjudicating between multiple applications by immediately denying second applications with a phone number or address, often leads in-need people to a lengthy appeals process.

INSUFFICIENT DAMAGE AND THE FEMA INSPECTION

Applicants must also meet a threshold of damage sufficiency when FEMA inspects the damage to their property. Following Hurricane Katrina, however, large swaths of New Orleans remained inaccessible for weeks or months. When FEMA inspectors were unable to access these homes, survivors’ applications were sometimes denied on grounds of insufficient damage. Rebecca, a twenty-nine-year-old Black mother of five, experienced this: “[FEMA] said that I didn’t have sufficient damage. But the same report that said I didn’t have sufficient damage said that the inspector couldn’t even get to my apartment because it was still underwater. Well, if you couldn’t get there and it was underwater . . . how could you say I had nonsufficient damages?”

This respondent then appealed the decision, after which FEMA noted that they would have to wait several weeks until the water receded. This experience sheds light on the burdens that applicants endured to meet a threshold of damage sufficiency during an inspection as set out by FEMA. The requirement for an inspector to assess property damage and for the applicant to be present for their inspection fails to consider the reality that many applicants are displaced and may not be able to return to their homes.

Although her property was accessible, Madison, a twenty-nine-year-old mother of one, was denied because she was displaced in Georgia. She said that an inspector attempted to schedule an inspection, but despite Madison’s being out-of-state and providing alternate contact information for a designated representative, the inspector never called: “The person who called me that was supposed to meet with you, I told him I was in Georgia. And he said, well I have to get somebody to come to verify that I came. The numbers that I gave her, she never called. . . . That house was not livable.” As a result, Madison was denied FEMA assistance. She made clear that the process of scheduling and communicating with the inspector was also burdensome in addition to her being displaced and unable to be present. FEMA likewise attempted to accommodate applicants in these types of situations (GAO 2006 ). For example, FEMA said that for applicants in areas that were inaccessible due to high flood waters, it used “remote sensing” (satellite technology) to assess damage and allowed applicants to designate a third-party representative to be present for inspections (GAO 2006 ). Again, however, our respondents were often still denied, suggesting potentially uneven implementation of these accommodations or a struggle on the part of implementation given the overwhelming need.

In some instances, respondents also reported unfair or mistaken characterizations by FEMA inspectors regarding the damage to their homes. For example, Julia explained that the inspector assigned to her case incorrectly determined the damage to her home: “I lived in a duplex and my house was downstairs and somebody lived up over me. But because the way the house looked, [the FEMA inspector] thought I had an upstairs and downstairs. She was like, ‘oh, you didn’t have any damage.’ And I fought tooth and nail, wrote back and forth, nothing.”

This represents a common trend: FEMA made an assessment considered incorrect by the respondent; the denied respondent attempted to appeal the decision; but the lengthy appeal and bureaucratic process led to people giving up and aid never materializing. In the face of unprecedented disaster, FEMA found itself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of affected individuals. FEMA inspectors are mostly a contract workforce, and in the case of Katrina were mobilized on short notice, cutting corners on typical training procedures for new inspectors (GAO 2006 ). Our respondents often bore the consequences of these policy and implementation issues, as seen in struggles with FEMA inspections.

DOCUMENTATION

To receive FEMA assistance, applicants must provide documentation that establishes home ownership, occupancy, and identity. However, given the rushed and chaotic conditions under which most families evacuated during Hurricane Katrina, it was common for people to not have any of this documentation with them while displaced. Many families assumed that they would be returning to New Orleans within a couple of days and left important documents at home. When it came time to apply for FEMA aid, those without proper documentation often ran into difficulties. Kristen was such a twenty-five-year-old mother of two. She noted that assistance was delayed because of issues she ran into trying to provide adequate documentation: “[FEMA] put us through so much to get [assistance]. Like we didn’t have any documents to send them showing them that we were affected by it. I had my ID because I had my purse. But most of the stuff I didn’t have.”

Like Kristen, Catherine was also initially denied on grounds of inadequate documentation. She was living in a house with her mother and her two children but had used a post office box address because of issues with postal delivery to her address. Despite providing a lease showing that she was her mother’s tenant, Catherine was denied assistance. Eventually, she appealed the decision, and her mother went to a recovery center in Houston to sign a letter attesting that this was all true, after which FEMA provided aid. However, these documentation requirements resulted in significant delays in receiving assistance as well as stress on Catherine and her family to appeal the decision and receive the aid for which they were eligible. This exemplifies how the burden of proof falls on individuals rather than the state, at a time when those individuals are in acute need for housing and stability.

Rebecca ran into similar problems with documentation while trying to secure assistance, but, unlike the previous two respondents, these problems prevented her from ever receiving assistance. Many of her important documents were in her parked cars, which were lost during Katrina. After months of fighting for assistance, she eventually gave up: “They [FEMA] kept saying one thing after another. They didn’t have the paperwork on my car. And I said, well, I have to get it. But everything was in the car. . . . When we came back, it was gone. Both our vehicles. . . . They were gone. So, it took us a while to get certain documents. But we fought with them up until maybe the end of 2006, beginning of 2007, when I just said, you know what, forget it.”

PROCESSING TIME

The extended processing time between applying for assistance and receiving that assistance from FEMA was often very long and thus costly for survivors. Indeed, both Angela and Lindsey explained that they waited between four and eight months for assistance, meaning that they were left without aid during the crucial weeks and months following the disaster. For example, Lindsey noted that “before I got my apartment, I think it was like about four months . . . and then it was maybe eight months before I got any actual financial reimbursement for personal property.” Angela applied for FEMA assistance at the beginning of September 2005 right after the storm hit but did not receive any aid until February 2006. For Cynthia, the wait was enough to give up: “And when I called FEMA to ask why they weren’t they helping, they told me they wrote out a check, but ‘we don’t know who to send it to.’ I’m like, I sent you everything. I sent you my new statement. I sent you my housing plan. I sent you where I work and everything and they were like, ‘oh well we’re still reviewing it.’ I’m like you know what? You can take this shit and stuff it.”

In addition to delays in receiving assistance, Cynthia received confusing and sometimes contradictory information when asking FEMA for updates on her application, suggesting that processes in place were overwhelmed by the magnitude of need after the disaster.

Kristen similarly pointed out that the reasons for delay were typically opaque. Recall that Kristen experienced difficulties providing adequate documentation to FEMA. She said it was almost impossible to know exactly why her assistance was delayed: “Because when you would talk to FEMA, you would get five to six different answers from people. So, you really don’t know what the reason for the hold up. Because they’ll tell you so many different things. You’ll call five times a day. They’ll give you five different stories.”

Investigations by the GAO provide support for our respondents’ experiences of long processing times. Despite explicitly providing estimates of ten days from application to inspection and ten days from inspection to decision (FEMA 2005 ), processing times were often two to five times longer (GAO 2006 ). This entailed significant costs for our respondents.

INTEGRITY, ACCESS, AND DESERVINGNESS IN DISASTER ASSISTANCE

A common theme across many of these individual experiences is that myriad FEMA policies made accessing disaster assistance onerous, lengthy, or even impossible for in-need families. As discussed, public assistance programs balance program integrity and program access (for a robust discussion of value trade-offs and error in administrative burdens research, see Bouek 2023 , this issue). Our qualitative data suggest that the delay and denial that resulted was burdensome and stressful.

Consider the respondents, such as Victoria and Samantha, who were denied FEMA assistance because of the duplicate application rule. Both were denied because they were claimed as dependents on their parents’ applications, despite being adults with families of their own. These denials represent the policy working as intended, but at issue was that the policy itself failed to recognize the complex family structures and living arrangements of many poor families, suggesting an issue in policy design. In contrast, other respondents were denied assistance because of issues with providing supporting documentation, such as Kristen and Rebecca, or because they were unable to meet the inspector, such as Madison, suggesting issues with implementation. One interpretation of the practices to prevent fraud or the duplication of benefits, mainly by shifting the burden of proof onto the individual, is that FEMA sets out disaster aid deservingness to those who were not displaced for extended periods, who did not lose their documents and paperwork, and who have the ability to meet with a FEMA inspector whenever necessary.

CONSEQUENCES OF DELAY AND DENIAL

The delays and denials associated with these policies are not innocuous. For a low-income, marginalized population recovering from a natural disaster, being denied FEMA assistance for all the reasons outlined has negative consequences for mental well-being. Within the administrative burden framework, being denied is a clear psychological cost of the burdens associated with navigating FEMA programs. Indeed, many of our respondents reported experiencing acute distress because of the difficulties they encountered applying. For example, Kelly was a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two who is unemployed and relying on her husband’s income to make ends meet. She said waiting for FEMA and ultimately being denied multiple times was difficult for her family: “The hardest thing is not receiving any [assistance]. . . . That’s the hardest thing because like I said, the little money that my husband is earning, we’re putting dime by dime to fixing our home for us. So, the hardest thing is not receiving any help. When you are applying for it [FEMA aid], you get turned down.”

For many, the link between experiences of financial hardships resulting from disaster-related expenses and psychological well-being was tight. For those who lost everything after Hurricane Katrina, many shared their experiences of psychological distress. Rebecca, whose story we told earlier, is one example: “I was really out of money. I was fighting with FEMA. . . . I was trying to get what I thought I should have gotten, and everybody just kept turning me down. And I would have to go through all this paperwork, and I’m like, I don’t want to have to ask anybody to help me, because everybody’s going through it. And I was wondering how we were going to survive, how we were going to pay these bills, and I just didn’t see a way out.”

Rebecca’s difficult experience applying for FEMA aid led her to feel like she was “having a breakdown.” Rather than being a vital safety net in a moment of acute crisis, the burdens associated with FEMA assistance led to further distress. Rebecca pointed out that, in addition to the time and effort she put into accessing assistance (such as standing in lines), she also felt the weight of psychological costs by having to ask for help. For some of our respondents, applying for FEMA assistance was associated with stigma because they were judged and made to feel inferior for seeking aid. For example, Erica, twenty-eight years old, described both the hassle and how she felt inferior: “I just didn’t feel like going through the hassle of standing in the lines, waiting on the phones and, you know. . . . I was like, you know what? I’m just sick of this. I’m tired of feeling like I’m begging people for something or, you know, like they call us so-called refugees. . . . That was just disgusting and aggravating. It was like, uh-uh, I’m not doing this.”

Being called a refugee, cast as an outsider jumping through hoops to access basic government assistance, and feeling inferior for seeking out assistance took its toll on Erica and many others.

DISASTER AID DENIAL AND WELL-BEING: SURVEY EVIDENCE FROM RISK

RISK respondents’ narratives clarify and underscore the costs incurred in accessing disaster assistance, which required difficult compliance processes, stringent requirements, and taxing procedures. Each denial generated some form of burden, stemming from factors that administrative data suggested were not unique to the RISK survey sample but generally experienced by applicants from low-income, communities of color. Qualitative data also suggested a link between denials or delay and well-being. We now turn to assess this association using survey data.

Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics of the RISK survey sample. The sample mean K-6 score increased from 5.59 to 6.81 from before to after Hurricane Katrina. The prevalence of moderate mental distress increased from 22.60 percent to 38.42 percent.

View inline

Descriptive Statistics of Survey Sample, Percentages, and Mean (SD)

Figure 3 presents results from two nested multivariable OLS models regressing post-disaster K-6 on FEMA aid application status (for tabular presentation, see table A.1 ). Survey participants who were denied FEMA aid scored significantly higher on the K-6 scale of psychological distress relative to those approved for aid (β = 1.637, p < .05), controlling for level of damage and pre-disaster psychological distress. The effect was not attenuated by the inclusion of additional controls for sociodemographic indicators in model 2. We find no statistically significant difference in psychological distress between those with pending applications and those who had already been approved for aid. Among the controls, social support correlated with lower levels of distress, protecting against mental health adversity (p < .001). As expected, those with greater housing damage also experienced significantly greater psychological distress after the storm, net of other factors.

OLS Models Regressing Post-Disaster Mental Well-Being on FEMA Aid Application Status

Source : Authors’ calculations based on Resilience in Survivors of Katrina Project (Waters 2016 ).

Note: N = 354. Point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals displayed. Models use robust standard errors.

Holding all other variables at their means, the full model predicts that respondents who were denied aid had a K-6 score of 8.86, above the threshold used clinically to indicate moderate mental illness. Those who did not apply for aid had a predicted K-6 score of 6.06, whereas those who were approved had a predicted score of 6.42. Respondents with pending applications scored 6.87. In figure A.1 , equivalent models to those presented in figure 3 but regressed on the individual K-6 measures demonstrate that aid denial was particularly consequential for three subquestions: experiences of restlessness, sadness, and effortfulness. We show that aid denial was significantly associated with a greater likelihood of experiencing serious mental illness, relative to no mental illness, indicated by a K-6 score of above 13. It did not significantly distinguish the likelihood of moderate mental distress, relative to no distress; however, the coefficient is in the expected direction (see figure A.2 ).

This article contributes to a growing body of scholarship documenting the contours and consequences of administrative burdens in public policy. Using data obtained from FEMA through a FOIA request, we first offer descriptive evidence that denials of FEMA assistance that generate burden are common and more likely to occur in disaster-affected areas with higher proportions of poor residents and people of color. Second, drawing on in-depth interview data with low-income mothers, we document how marginalized survivors experienced compliance and psychological costs associated with applying for FEMA aid, particularly stemming from duplicate applications, damage insufficiency, and failed documentation. Our respondents described the slow, complicated, frustrating process of applying for aid only to be denied or to have their assistance delayed in times of hardship. Survivors explained that these denials took a toll on their mental well-being. Survey evidence paints a similar picture. Our quantitative data suggest that aid denial was associated with greater psychological distress relative to those who were approved aid. The burdens our respondents encountered resulted from issues with design and with implementation, or in some combination. Our data cannot clarify the precise origin of these burdens. We focus instead on their scale and their impact.

Applying the lens of administrative burdens and examining their consequences highlights how federal disaster aid programs can exacerbate inequality for poor and minority residents in disaster-prone areas and reinforce existing power structures. Wealthier households are less likely to experience major damage from disasters because they live in less disaster-prone areas and may also have the resources to navigate and manage complex aid programs (Fothergill and Peek 2004 ). Conversely, poorer households are more likely to live in disaster-prone areas and may need government assistance, such as FEMA, to buffer the negative socioeconomic impacts of disasters. We have documented how the compliance and psychological costs associated with FEMA’s IHP further disadvantage the poorest and minority households and inhibit their long-term recovery. Our findings suggest that residents of areas with greater proportions of poor and minority households are more likely to be denied aid because of duplicate applications and lack of documentation—burdens that may be alleviated by smart policymaking that shifts them to the federal government.

These distributive consequences can also point to notions of deservingness. On the one hand, making post-disaster assistance easier to access might mean that more people receive aid who otherwise would have been deemed ineligible, leading more individuals to receive aid who otherwise are seen by the state as undeserving (for example, those who miss inspections, those who do not have enough damage). On the other hand, prioritizing program integrity leads some individuals who are eligible to experience burdens, which arise from policies that limit access and ensure integrity (such as documentation requirements). Our analysis illuminates the burdens resulting from these policies or their implementation that disproportionately affect marginalized households after a disaster, and to point toward how integrity, access, and deservingness are state logics that combine in ways that may contribute to inequality.

Although the eligibility and compliance requirements may appear neutral at face value, their impacts are not. Our qualitative evidence suggests that families ran into issues proving sufficient damage, and the aggregated analysis of administrative data that denials due to insufficiency were less common in areas with higher poverty and more people of color. These bivariate relationships, however, do not control for damage severity, given the disasters’ greater impacts in marginalized neighborhoods in New Orleans (Donner and Rodríguez 2008 ). Thus the aggregated nature of this evidence may further mask underlying mechanisms, and future research should model relationships between burdens and outcomes conditioning on key individual-level attributes like more objective severity.

In terms of mental health and well-being, our finding that aid denial is associated with psychological distress highlights the need to consider government policies—and more suggestively, administrative burdens—as social determinants of health. We were unable to differentiate the cause of denials in the survey data, but our qualitative data suggest that many denials and their associated policy processes were burdensome for respondents. The qualitative data also support our interpretation of the direction of the association given that we did not find evidence that mental health problems led to greater difficulty with program navigation.

Reduced or delayed access to FEMA IHP assistance after disasters gave rise to significant administrative burdens, with negative consequences for disaster survivors. A recent summary of study evidence concludes that one key stage of promoting post-disaster health equity is that “social services should integrate and strive to reduce the administrative burden on survivors” (Raker et al. 2020 , 2128). Identifying how to reduce burdens for citizens or shift them to the state is critical. This could be achieved several ways in FEMA’s IHP. First, FEMA should craft the IHP program to be more generous for disaster survivors. Since Hurricane Katrina, the program has not become more generous: $26,200 in August 2005 has the same buying power as $36,900 in October 2021 ($1,000 less than the October 2021 maximum grant). FEMA could integrate community-level social vulnerability indices in the calculation of awarded grants and relax the concern that some households may receive “too much” aid.

Second, FEMA should reconsider the trade-off of reducing fraud and promoting access. By focusing almost exclusively on reducing fraud and abuse of the program, at the expense of access for in-need survivors, the structure of disaster aid in its current configuration comes with costly trade-offs. Instead, increasing access through virtual assessments and wider documentation standards could help FEMA officials struggling to implement appropriate procedures. The Florida Automated Community Connection to Economic Self-Sufficiency (ACCESS), the state’s service delivery model for its public assistance programs, offers an innovative approach (Heflin, London, and Mueser 2013 ). Rather than filling out paper applications and visiting a state office for an interview, individuals apply for benefits via ACCESS, an internet-based system that determines eligibility simultaneously for multiple programs and does not require documentation to verify most expenses and assets. FEMA could look to ACCESS as an example of a service delivery model that prioritizes access in managing the application process, determining eligibility, and delivering benefits.

Beyond these potential changes in the near term, we believe now is the time to seriously reconsider the structure of disaster aid in the United States. Climate science suggests that even with large investments in greenhouse gas reduction, trends in disaster severity will continue. Creating a universal disaster assistance program is worthy of consideration. Some scholars argue for a universal, parametric-based flood insurance program (Sengupta and Kousky 2020 ), which would eliminate many administrative burdens. There would be no need to prove eligibility, schedule an inspection, or track down and submit required paperwork. Another site of potential overhaul would be the structural integration of FEMA processes with existing government structures, such as the Internal Revenue Service on property taxes, to reduce applicants’ need to prove their eligibility. If guided by scholarly evidence, decision-makers can reduce or shift administrative burdens to promote equity and recovery in the face of disaster.

Tabular Form of Figure 3 , OLS Models Predicting Post-Disaster Well-Being

FEMA Aid and Individual Measures in K-6 Scale

Source : Authors’ tabulation based on the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina Project (Waters 2016 ).

Note : Results from fully adjusted models that control for all variables in model 2.

Reference group is Approval.

Two Models Predicting Post-Disaster Mental Distress and Mental Illness

Source : Authors’ tabulation based on Resilience in Survivors of Katrina Project (Waters 2016 ).

Note : Results from fully adjusted models that control for all variables in model 2. Reference group is Approval.

↵ 1. Although eligibility for IHP was mostly determined when an individual applied, eligibility requirements were in place, including that the individual must have experienced losses in a federally declared disaster area; had uninsured or underinsured needs; been a citizen, noncitizen national, or qualified alien in the United States or have a qualifying individual who lived with the disaster victim; have been living at the home at the time of disaster; and be unable to live in or return to their home or have a home that requires repairs because of disaster damage (GAO 2006).

↵ 2. All demographic information refers to respondent characteristics at the time of interview. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

© 2023 Russell Sage Foundation. Raker, Ethan J., and Tyler Woods. 2023. “Disastrous Burdens: Hurricane Katrina, Federal Housing Assistance, and Well-Being.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 9(5): 122–43. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2023.9.5.06. For comments on previous drafts and support, we thank Meghan Zacher, Sarah Lowe, Mary Waters, Lilly Yu, Saul Ramirez, Marie Claire Meadows, and Kate Burrows, as well as the participants of the “Administrative Burdens as a Mechanisms of Inequality in Policy Implementation” conference at the Russell Sage Foundation and three anonymous reviewers. The RISK Study was generously funded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grants P01HD082032, R01HD057599, and R01HD046162, National Science Foundation grant BCS-0555240, MacArthur Foundation grant 04–80775–000-HCD, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant 23029, the Center for Economic Policy Studies at Princeton University, and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. The first author acknowledges support from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Direct correspondence to: Ethan J. Raker, ethan.raker{at}ubc.ca , 6303 NW Marine Drive #2318, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z1, Canada.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Abramson , David M .,
Tasha Stehling-Ariza ,
Yoon Soo Park ,
Lauren Walsh , and
Derrin Culp
Baekgaard , Martin ,
Donald P . Moynihan , and
Mette Kjærgaard Thomsen
Bouek , Jennifer W
Brinkley , Douglas
Christensen , Julian ,
Lene Aarøe ,
Martin Baekgaard ,
Pamela Herd , and
Donald P . Moynihan
Warren H . Jones and
Daniel Perlman
Cutrona , Carolyn , and
Daniel W . Russell
Deterding , Nicole M ., and
Mary C . Waters
Domingue , Simone J ., and
Christopher T . Emrich
Donner , William , and
Havidán Rodríguez
Dreier , Hannah
Elliott , James R ., and
Jeremy Pais
Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA)
Fothergill , Alice , and
Lori A . Peek
García , Ivis
Grube , Laura E .,
Rosemarie Fike , and
Virgil Henry Storr
Heflin , Colleen M .,
Andrew S . London , and
Peter R . Mueser
Herd , Pamela , and
Herd , Pamela ,
Hilary Hoynes ,
Jamila Michener , and
Donald Moynihan
Howell , Junia , and
James R . Elliott
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Kamel , Nabil
Kousky , Carolyn
Ma , Chenyi , and
Muñoz , Cristina , and
National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
David L . Brunsma ,
David Overfelt , and
J. Steven Picou
Picou , J. Steven , and
Brent K . Marshall
Pierce , Stephanie Casey , and
Stephanie Moulton
Prochaska , Judith J .,
Hai-Yen Sung ,
Wendy Max ,
Yanling Shi , and
Michael Ong
Raker , Ethan J
Raker , Ethan J .,
Mariana C . Arcaya ,
Sarah R . Lowe ,
Meghan Zacher ,
Jean Rhodes , and
Reese , Shawn
Reid , Megan
Sengupta , Rohini , and
Carolyn Kousky
Smith , Adam B
Sobel , Adam H .,
Suzana J . Camargo ,
Timothy M . Hall ,
Chia-Ying Lee ,
Michael K . Tippett , and
Allison A . Wing
Texas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Tierney , Kathleen
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
Waters , Mary C
Young , Abe Louise
Zimmerman , Elizabeth

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RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: 9 (5)

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OVERVIEW OF ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS IN FEMA’S IHP

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Hurricane Katrina Case Study

Hurricane Katrina is tied with Hurricane Harvey (2017) as the costliest hurricane on record. Although not the strongest in recorded history, the hurricane caused an estimated $125 billion worth of damage. The category five hurricane is the joint eight strongest ever recorded, with sustained winds of 175 mph (280 km/h).

The hurricane began as a very low-pressure system over the Atlantic Ocean. The system strengthened, forming a hurricane that moved west, approaching the Florida coast on the evening of the 25th August 2005.

A satellite image of Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane. It made landfall on Florida and Louisiana, particularly the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas, in August 2005, causing catastrophic damage from central Florida to eastern Texas. Fatal flaws in flood engineering protection led to a significant loss of life in New Orleans. The levees, designed to cope with category three storm surges, failed to lead to catastrophic flooding and loss of life.

What were the impacts of Hurricane Katrina?

Hurricane Katrina was a category five tropical storm. The hurricane caused storm surges over six metres in height. The city of New Orleans was one of the worst affected areas. This is because it lies below sea level and is protected by levees. The levees protect the city from the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain. However, these were unable to cope with the storm surge, and water flooded the city.

$105 billion was sought by The Bush Administration for repairs and reconstruction in the region. This funding did not include potential interruption of the oil supply, destruction of the Gulf Coast’s highway infrastructure, and exports of commodities such as grain.

Although the state made an evacuation order, many of the poorest people remained in New Orleans because they either wanted to protect their property or could not afford to leave.

The Superdome stadium was set up as a centre for people who could not escape the storm. There was a shortage of food, and the conditions were unhygienic.

Looting occurred throughout the city, and tensions were high as people felt unsafe. 1,200 people drowned in the floods, and 1 million people were made homeless. Oil facilities were damaged, and as a result, the price of petrol rose in the UK and USA.

80% of the city of New Orleans and large neighbouring parishes became flooded, and the floodwaters remained for weeks. Most of the transportation and communication networks servicing New Orleans were damaged or disabled by the flooding, and tens of thousands of people who had not evacuated the city before landfall became stranded with little access to food, shelter or basic necessities.

The storm surge caused substantial beach erosion , in some cases completely devastating coastal areas.

Katrina also produced massive tree loss along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Louisiana’s Pearl River Basin and among bottomland hardwood forests.

The storm caused oil spills from 44 facilities throughout southeastern Louisiana. This resulted in over 7 million US gallons (26,000 m 3 ) of oil being leaked. Some spills were only a few hundred gallons, and most were contained on-site, though some oil entered the ecosystem and residential areas.

Some New Orleans residents are no longer able to get home insurance to cover them from the impact of hurricanes.

What was the response to Hurricane Katrina?

The US Government was heavily criticised for its handling of the disaster. Despite many people being evacuated, it was a very slow process. The poorest and most vulnerable were left behind.

The government provided $50 billion in aid.

During the early stages of the recovery process, the UK government sent food aid.

The National Guard was mobilised to restore law and order in New Orleans.

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Natural and Manmade Disasters: Vulnerable Populations

First Online: 02 January 2020

Cite this chapter

vulnerable populations hurricane katrina as a case study

Jennifer Marshall 11 ,
Jacqueline Wiltshire 11 ,
Jennifer Delva 11 ,
Temitope Bello 11 &
Anthony J. Masys 11

Part of the book series: Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications ((ASTSA))

1533 Accesses

24 Citations

In recent decades, the influence of natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, heat waves, droughts, floods and epidemics, on Global Health Security have become more prominent. In addition, disaster events stemming from civil unrest or natural disasters create humanitarian and refugee crisis thereby contributing to local, regional and global health security challenge. These disaster events also highlight the social, physical, psychological and economic vulnerabilities among population groups. Vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, families with children, older adults, disabled and low-income individuals suffer disproportionate harm in disasters. Vulnerable populations are less likely to undertake self-protective actions before, during or after disasters. They are also at greater risk for poor physical and psychological health outcomes after a disaster. This chapter focuses on the impact of disasters on the following vulnerable population groups: pregnant women and families with children, and older adults. It highlights the complex and unique needs of women, children, and older adults which can lead to catastrophic consequences during and after a disaster. Case studies are included to demonstrate the vulnerabilities and ensuing consequences for women and children and older adults during or after disasters.

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Disaster Risk Management: A Resilient Health System

Protection of Vulnerable Groups in Natural and Man-Made Disasters

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Marshall, J., Wiltshire, J., Delva, J., Bello, T., Masys, A.J. (2020). Natural and Manmade Disasters: Vulnerable Populations. In: Masys, A.J., Izurieta, R., Reina Ortiz, M. (eds) Global Health Security. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23491-1_7

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Chapter Five: Lessons Learned

This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We are going to review every action and make necessary changes so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people.

-- President George W. Bush, September 15, 2005 1

The preceding chapters described the dynamics of the response to Hurricane Katrina. While there were numerous stories of great professionalism, courage, and compassion by Americans from all walks of life, our task here is to identify the critical challenges that undermined and prevented a more efficient and effective Federal response. In short, what were the key failures during the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina?

Hurricane Katrina Critical Challenges

National Preparedness
Integrated Use of Military Capabilities
Communications
Logistics and Evacuations
Search and Rescue
Public Safety and Security
Public Health and Medical Support
Human Services
Mass Care and Housing
Public Communications
Critical Infrastructure and Impact Assessment
Environmental Hazards and Debris Removal
Foreign Assistance
Non-Governmental Aid
Training, Exercises, and Lessons Learned
Homeland Security Professional Development and Education
Citizen and Community Preparedness

We ask this question not to affix blame. Rather, we endeavor to find the answers in order to identify systemic gaps and improve our preparedness for the next disaster – natural or man-made. We must move promptly to understand precisely what went wrong and determine how we are going to fix it.

After reviewing and analyzing the response to Hurricane Katrina, we identified seventeen specific lessons the Federal government has learned. These lessons, which flow from the critical challenges we encountered, are depicted in the accompanying text box. Fourteen of these critical challenges were highlighted in the preceding Week of Crisis section and range from high-level policy and planning issues (e.g., the Integrated Use of Military Capabilities) to operational matters (e.g., Search and Rescue). 2 Three other challenges – Training, Exercises, and Lessons Learned; Homeland Security Professional Development and Education; and Citizen and Community Preparedness – are interconnected to the others but reflect measures and institutions that improve our preparedness more broadly. These three will be discussed in the Report’s last chapter, Transforming National Preparedness.

Some of these seventeen critical challenges affected all aspects of the Federal response. Others had an impact on a specific, discrete operational capability. Yet each, particularly when taken in aggregate, directly affected the overall efficiency and effectiveness of our efforts. This chapter summarizes the challenges that ultimately led to the lessons we have learned. Over one hundred recommendations for corrective action flow from these lessons and are outlined in detail in Appendix A of the Report.

Critical Challenge: National Preparedness

Our current system for homeland security does not provide the necessary framework to manage the challenges posed by 21st Century catastrophic threats. But to be clear, it is unrealistic to think that even the strongest framework can perfectly anticipate and overcome all challenges in a crisis. While we have built a response system that ably handles the demands of a typical hurricane season, wildfires, and other limited natural and man-made disasters, the system clearly has structural flaws for addressing catastrophic events. During the Federal response to Katrina 3 , four critical flaws in our national preparedness became evident: Our processes for unified management of the national response; command and control structures within the Federal government; knowledge of our preparedness plans; and regional planning and coordination. A discussion of each follows below.

Unified Management of the National Response

Effective incident management of catastrophic events requires coordination of a wide range of organizations and activities, public and private. Under the current response framework, the Federal government merely “coordinates” resources to meet the needs of local and State governments based upon their requests for assistance. Pursuant to the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National Response Plan (NRP), Federal and State agencies build their command and coordination structures to support the local command and coordination structures during an emergency. Yet this framework does not address the conditions of a catastrophic event with large scale competing needs, insufficient resources, and the absence of functioning local governments. These limitations proved to be major inhibitors to the effective marshalling of Federal, State, and local resources to respond to Katrina.

Soon after Katrina made landfall, State and local authorities understood the devastation was serious but, due to the destruction of infrastructure and response capabilities, lacked the ability to communicate with each other and coordinate a response. Federal officials struggled to perform responsibilities generally conducted by State and local authorities, such as the rescue of citizens stranded by the rising floodwaters, provision of law enforcement, and evacuation of the remaining population of New Orleans, all without the benefit of prior planning or a functioning State/local incident command structure to guide their efforts.

The Federal government cannot and should not be the Nation’s first responder. State and local governments are best positioned to address incidents in their jurisdictions and will always play a large role in disaster response. But Americans have the right to expect that the Federal government will effectively respond to a catastrophic incident. When local and State governments are overwhelmed or incapacitated by an event that has reached catastrophic proportions, only the Federal government has the resources and capabilities to respond. The Federal government must therefore plan, train, and equip to meet the requirements for responding to a catastrophic event.

Command and Control Within the Federal Government

In terms of the management of the Federal response, our architecture of command and control mechanisms as well as our existing structure of plans did not serve us well. Command centers in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and elsewhere in the Federal government had unclear, and often overlapping, roles and responsibilities that were exposed as flawed during this disaster. The Secretary of Homeland Security, is the President’s principal Federal official for domestic incident management, but he had difficulty coordinating the disparate activities of Federal departments and agencies. The Secretary lacked real-time, accurate situational awareness of both the facts from the disaster area as well as the on-going response activities of the Federal, State, and local players.

The National Response Plan’s Mission Assignment process proved to be far too bureaucratic to support the response to a catastrophe. Melvin Holden, Mayor-President of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, noted that, “requirements for paper work and form completions hindered immediate action and deployment of people and materials to assist in rescue and recovery efforts.” 4 Far too often, the process required numerous time consuming approval signatures and data processing steps prior to any action, delaying the response. As a result, many agencies took action under their own independent authorities while also responding to mission assignments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), creating further process confusion and potential duplication of efforts.

This lack of coordination at the Federal headquarters-level reflected confusing organizational structures in the field. As noted in the Week of Crisis chapter, because the Principal Federal Official (PFO) has coordination authority but lacks statutory authority over the Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO), inefficiencies resulted when the second PFO was appointed. The first PFO appointed for Katrina did not have this problem because, as the Director of FEMA, he was able to directly oversee the FCOs because they fell under his supervisory authority. 5 Future plans should ensure that the PFO has the authority required to execute these responsibilities.

Moreover, DHS did not establish its NRP-specified disaster site multi-agency coordination center—the Joint Field Office (JFO)—until after the height of the crisis. 6 Further, without subordinate JFO structures to coordinate Federal response actions near the major incident sites, Federal response efforts in New Orleans were not initially well-coordinated. 7

Lastly, the Emergency Support Functions (ESFs) did not function as envisioned in the NRP. First, since the ESFs do not easily integrate into the NIMS Incident Command System (ICS) structure, competing systems were implemented in the field – one based on the ESF structure and a second based on the ICS. Compounding the coordination problem, the agencies assigned ESF responsibilities did not respect the role of the PFO. As VADM Thad Allen stated, “The ESF structure currently prevents us from coordinating effectively because if agencies responsible for their respective ESFs do not like the instructions they are receiving from the PFO at the field level, they go to their headquarters in Washington to get decisions reversed. This is convoluted, inefficient, and inappropriate during emergency conditions. Time equals lives saved.”

Knowledge and Practice in the Plans

At the most fundamental level, part of the explanation for why the response to Katrina did not go as planned is that key decision-makers at all levels simply were not familiar with the plans. The NRP was relatively new to many at the Federal, State, and local levels before the events of Hurricane Katrina. 8 This lack of understanding of the “National” plan not surprisingly resulted in ineffective coordination of the Federal, State, and local response. Additionally, the NRP itself provides only the ‘base plan’ outlining the overall elements of a response: Federal departments and agencies were required to develop supporting operational plans and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to integrate their activities into the national response. 9 In almost all cases, the integrating SOPs were either non-existent or still under development when Hurricane Katrina hit. Consequently, some of the specific procedures and processes of the NRP were not properly implemented, and Federal partners had to operate without any prescribed guidelines or chains of command.

Furthermore, the JFO staff and other deployed Federal personnel often lacked a working knowledge of NIMS or even a basic understanding of ICS principles. As a result, valuable time and resources were diverted to provide on-the-job ICS training to Federal personnel assigned to the JFO. This inability to place trained personnel in the JFO had a detrimental effect on operations, as there were not enough qualified persons to staff all of the required positions. We must require all incident management personnel to have a working knowledge of NIMS and ICS principles.

Insufficient Regional Planning and Coordination

The final structural flaw in our current system for national preparedness is the weakness of our regional planning and coordination structures. Guidance to governments at all levels is essential to ensure adequate preparedness for major disasters across the Nation. To this end, the Interim National Preparedness Goal (NPG) and Target Capabilities List (TCL) can assist Federal, State, and local governments to: identify and define required capabilities and what levels of those capabilities are needed; establish priorities within a resource-constrained environment; clarify and understand roles and responsibilities in the national network of homeland security capabilities; and develop mutual aid agreements.

Since incorporating FEMA in March 2003, DHS has spread FEMA’s planning and coordination capabilities and responsibilities among DHS’s other offices and bureaus. DHS also did not maintain the personnel and resources of FEMA’s regional offices. 10 FEMA’s ten regional offices are responsible for assisting multiple States and planning for disasters, developing mitigation programs, and meeting their needs when major disasters occur. During Katrina, eight out of the ten FEMA Regional Directors were serving in an acting capacity and four of the six FEMA headquarters operational division directors were serving in an acting capacity. While qualified acting directors filled in, it placed extra burdens on a staff that was already stretched to meet the needs left by the vacancies.

Additionally, many FEMA programs that were operated out of the FEMA regions, such as the State and local liaison program and all grant programs, have moved to DHS headquarters in Washington. When programs operate out of regional offices, closer relationships are developed among all levels of government, providing for stronger relationships at all levels. By the same token, regional personnel must remember that they represent the interests of the Federal government and must be cautioned against losing objectivity or becoming mere advocates of State and local interests. However, these relationships are critical when a crisis situation develops, because individuals who have worked and trained together daily will work together more effectively during a crisis.

Lessons Learned:

The Federal government should work with its homeland security partners in revising existing plans, ensuring a functional operational structure - including within regions - and establishing a clear, accountable process for all National preparedness efforts. In doing so, the Federal government must:

Ensure that Executive Branch agencies are organized, trained, and equipped to perform their response roles.
Finalize and implement the National Preparedness Goal.

Critical Challenge: Integrated Use of Military Capabilities

The Federal response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that the Department of Defense (DOD) has the capability to play a critical role in the Nation’s response to catastrophic events. During the Katrina response, DOD – both National Guard and active duty forces – demonstrated that along with the Coast Guard it was one of the only Federal departments that possessed real operational capabilities to translate Presidential decisions into prompt, effective action on the ground. In addition to possessing operational personnel in large numbers that have been trained and equipped for their missions, DOD brought robust communications infrastructure, logistics, and planning capabilities. Since DOD, first and foremost, has its critical overseas mission, the solution to improving the Federal response to future catastrophes cannot simply be “let the Department of Defense do it.” Yet DOD capabilities must be better identified and integrated into the Nation’s response plans.

The Federal response to Hurricane Katrina highlighted various challenges in the use of military capabilities during domestic incidents. For instance, limitations under Federal law and DOD policy caused the active duty military to be dependent on requests for assistance. These limitations resulted in a slowed application of DOD resources during the initial response. Further, active duty military and National Guard operations were not coordinated and served two different bosses, one the President and the other the Governor.

Limitations to Department of Defense Response Authority

For Federal domestic disaster relief operations, DOD currently uses a “pull” system that provides support to civil authorities based upon specific requests from local, State, or Federal authorities. 11 This process can be slow and bureaucratic. Assigning active duty military forces or capabilities to support disaster relief efforts usually requires a request from FEMA 12 , an assessment by DOD on whether the request can be supported, approval by the Secretary of Defense or his designated representative, and a mission assignment for the military forces or capabilities to provide the requested support. From the time a request is initiated until the military force or capability is delivered to the disaster site requires a 21-step process. 13 While this overly bureaucratic approach has been adequate for most disasters, in a catastrophic event like Hurricane Katrina the delays inherent in this “pull” system of responding to requests resulted in critical needs not being met. 14 One could imagine a situation in which a catastrophic event is of such a magnitude that it would require an even greater role for the Department of Defense. For these reasons, we should both expedite the mission assignment request and the approval process, but also define the circumstances under which we will push resources to State and local governments absent a request.

Unity of Effort among Active Duty Forces and the National Guard

In the overall response to Hurricane Katrina, separate command structures for active duty military and the National Guard hindered their unity of effort. U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) commanded active duty forces, while each State government commanded its National Guard forces. For the first two days of Katrina response operations, USNORTHCOM did not have situational awareness of what forces the National Guard had on the ground. Joint Task Force Katrina (JTF-Katrina) simply could not operate at full efficiency when it lacked visibility of over half the military forces in the disaster area. 15 Neither the Louisiana National Guard nor JTF-Katrina had a good sense for where each other’s forces were located or what they were doing. For example, the JTF-Katrina Engineering Directorate had not been able to coordinate with National Guard forces in the New Orleans area. As a result, some units were not immediately assigned missions matched to on-the-ground requirements. Further, FEMA requested assistance from DOD without knowing what State National Guard forces had already deployed to fill the same needs. 16

Also, the Commanding General of JTF-Katrina and the Adjutant Generals (TAGs) of Louisiana and Mississippi had only a coordinating relationship, with no formal command relationship established. This resulted in confusion over roles and responsibilities between National Guard and Federal forces and highlights the need for a more unified command structure. 17

Structure and Resources of the National Guard

As demonstrated during the Hurricane Katrina response, the National Guard Bureau (NGB) is a significant joint force provider for homeland security missions. Throughout the response, the NGB provided continuous and integrated reporting of all National Guard assets deployed in both a Federal and non-Federal status to USNORTHCOM, Joint Forces Command, Pacific Command, and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. This is an important step toward achieving unity of effort. However, NGB’s role in homeland security is not yet clearly defined. The Chief of the NGB has made a recommendation to the Secretary of Defense that NGB be chartered as a joint activity of the DOD. 18 Achieving these efforts will serve as the foundation for National Guard transformation and provide a total joint force capability for homeland security missions. 19

The Departments of Homeland Security and Defense should jointly plan for the Department of Defense’s support of Federal response activities as well as those extraordinary circumstances when it is appropriate for the Department of Defense to lead the Federal response. In addition, the Department of Defense should ensure the transformation of the National Guard is focused on increased integration with active duty forces for homeland security plans and activities.

Critical Challenge: Communications

Hurricane Katrina destroyed an unprecedented portion of the core communications infrastructure throughout the Gulf Coast region. As described earlier in the Report, the storm debilitated 911 emergency call centers, disrupting local emergency services. 20 Nearly three million customers lost telephone service. Broadcast communications, including 50 percent of area radio stations and 44 percent of area television stations, similarly were affected. 21 More than 50,000 utility poles were toppled in Mississippi alone, meaning that even if telephone call centers and electricity generation capabilities were functioning, the connections to the customers were broken. 22 Accordingly, the communications challenges across the Gulf Coast region in Hurricane Katrina’s wake were more a problem of basic operability 23 , than one of equipment or system interoperability . 24 The complete devastation of the communications infrastructure left emergency responders and citizens without a reliable network across which they could coordinate. 25

Although Federal, State, and local agencies had communications plans and assets in place, these plans and assets were neither sufficient nor adequately integrated to respond effectively to the disaster. 26 Many available communications assets were not utilized fully because there was no national, State-wide, or regional communications plan to incorporate them. For example, despite their contributions to the response effort, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service’s radio cache—the largest civilian cache of radios in the United States—had additional radios available that were not utilized. 27

Federal, State, and local governments have not yet completed a comprehensive strategy to improve operability and interoperability to meet the needs of emergency responders. 28 This inability to connect multiple communications plans and architectures clearly impeded coordination and communication at the Federal, State, and local levels. A comprehensive, national emergency communications strategy is needed to confront the challenges of incorporating existing equipment and practices into a constantly changing technological and cultural environment. 29

The Department of Homeland Security should review our current laws, policies, plans, and strategies relevant to communications. Upon the conclusion of this review, the Homeland Security Council, with support from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, should develop a National Emergency Communications Strategy that supports communications operability and interoperability.

Critical Challenge: Logistics and Evacuation

The scope of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, the effects on critical infrastructure in the region, and the debilitation of State and local response capabilities combined to produce a massive requirement for Federal resources. The existing planning and operational structure for delivering critical resources and humanitarian aid clearly proved to be inadequate to the task. The highly bureaucratic supply processes of the Federal government were not sufficiently flexible and efficient, and failed to leverage the private sector and 21st Century advances in supply chain management.

Throughout the response, Federal resource managers had great difficulty determining what resources were needed, what resources were available, and where those resources were at any given point in time. Even when Federal resource managers had a clear understanding of what was needed, they often could not readily determine whether the Federal government had that asset, or what alternative sources might be able to provide it. As discussed in the Week of Crisis chapter, even when an agency came directly to FEMA with a list of available resources that would be useful during the response, there was no effective mechanism for efficiently integrating and deploying these resources. Nor was there an easy way to find out whether an alternative source, such as the private sector or a charity, might be able to better fill the need. Finally, FEMA’s lack of a real-time asset-tracking system – a necessity for successful 21st Century businesses – left Federal managers in the dark regarding the status of resources once they were shipped. 30

Our logistics system for the 21st Century should be a fully transparent, four-tiered system. First, we must encourage and ultimately require State and local governments to pre-contract for resources and commodities that will be critical for responding to all hazards. Second, if these arrangements fail, affected State governments should ask for additional resources from other States through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) process. Third, if such interstate mutual aid proves insufficient, the Federal government, having the benefit of full transparency, must be able to assist State and local governments to move commodities regionally. But in the end, FEMA must be able to supplement and, in catastrophic incidents, supplant State and local systems with a fully modern approach to commodity management.

The Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with State and local governments and the private sector, should develop a modern, flexible, and transparent logistics system. This system should be based on established contracts for stockpiling commodities at the local level for emergencies and the provision of goods and services during emergencies. The Federal government must develop the capacity to conduct large-scale logistical operations that supplement and, if necessary, replace State and local logistical systems by leveraging resources within both the public sector and the private sector.

With respect to evacuation—fundamentally a State and local responsibility—the Hurricane Katrina experience demonstrates that the Federal government must be prepared to fulfill the mission if State and local efforts fail. Unfortunately, a lack of prior planning combined with poor operational coordination generated a weak Federal performance in supporting the evacuation of those most vulnerable in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast following Katrina’s landfall. The Federal effort lacked critical elements of prior planning, such as evacuation routes, communications, transportation assets, evacuee processing, and coordination with State, local, and non-governmental officials receiving and sheltering the evacuees. Because of poor situational awareness and communications throughout the evacuation operation, FEMA had difficulty providing buses through ESF-1, Transportation, (with the Department of Transportation as the coordinating agency). 31 FEMA also had difficulty delivering food, water, and other critical commodities to people waiting to be evacuated, most significantly at the Superdome. 32

The Department of Transportation, in coordination with other appropriate departments of the Executive Branch, must also be prepared to conduct mass evacuation operations when disasters overwhelm or incapacitate State and local governments.

Critical Challenge: Search and Rescue

After Hurricane Katrina made landfall, rising floodwaters stranded thousands in New Orleans on rooftops, requiring a massive civil search and rescue operation. The Coast Guard, FEMA Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Task Forces 33 , and DOD forces 34 , in concert with State and local emergency responders from across the country, courageously combined to rescue tens of thousands of people. With extraordinary ingenuity and tenacity, Federal, State, and local emergency responders plucked people from rooftops while avoiding urban hazards not normally encountered during waterborne rescue. 35

Yet many of these courageous lifesavers were put at unnecessary risk by a structure that failed to support them effectively. The overall search and rescue effort demonstrated the need for greater coordination between US&R, the Coast Guard, and military responders who, because of their very different missions, train and operate in very different ways. For example, Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) teams had a particularly challenging situation since they are neither trained nor equipped to perform water rescue. Thus they could not immediately rescue people trapped by the flood waters. 36

Furthermore, lacking an integrated search and rescue incident command, the various agencies were unable to effectively coordinate their operations. 37 This meant that multiple rescue teams were sent to the same areas, while leaving others uncovered. 38 When successful rescues were made, there was no formal direction on where to take those rescued. 39 Too often rescuers had to leave victims at drop-off points and landing zones that had insufficient logistics, medical, and communications resources, such as atop the I-10 cloverleaf near the Superdome. 40

The Department of Homeland Security should lead an interagency review of current policies and procedures to ensure effective integration of all Federal search and rescue assets during disaster response.

Critical Challenge: Public Safety and Security

State and local governments have a fundamental responsibility to provide for the public safety and security of their residents. During disasters, the Federal government provides law enforcement assistance only when those resources are overwhelmed or depleted. 41 Almost immediately following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, law and order began to deteriorate in New Orleans. The city’s overwhelmed police force–70 percent of which were themselves victims of the disaster—did not have the capacity to arrest every person witnessed committing a crime, and many more crimes were undoubtedly neither observed by police nor reported. The resulting lawlessness in New Orleans significantly impeded—and in some cases temporarily halted—relief efforts and delayed restoration of essential private sector services such as power, water, and telecommunications. 42

The Federal law enforcement response to Hurricane Katrina was a crucial enabler to the reconstitution of the New Orleans Police Department’s command structure as well as the larger criminal justice system. Joint leadership from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security integrated the available Federal assets into the remaining local police structure and divided the Federal law enforcement agencies into corresponding New Orleans Police Department districts.

While the deployment of Federal law enforcement capability to New Orleans in a dangerous and chaotic environment significantly contributed to the restoration of law and order, pre-event collaborative planning between Federal, State, and local officials would have improved the response. Indeed, Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials performed admirably in spite of a system that should have better supported them. Local, State, and Federal law enforcement were ill-prepared and ill-positioned to respond efficiently and effectively to the crisis.

In the end, it was clear that Federal law enforcement support to State and local officials required greater coordination, unity of command, collaborative planning and training with State and local law enforcement, as well as detailed implementation guidance. For example, the Federal law enforcement response effort did not take advantage of all law enforcement assets embedded across Federal departments and agencies. Several departments promptly offered their assistance, but their law enforcement assets were incorporated only after weeks had passed, or not at all. 43

Coordination challenges arose even after Federal law enforcement personnel arrived in New Orleans. For example, several departments and agencies reported that the procedures for becoming deputized to enforce State law were cumbersome and inefficient. In Louisiana, a State Police attorney had to physically be present to swear in Federal agents. Many Federal law enforcement agencies also had to complete a cumbersome Federal deputization process. 44 New Orleans was then confronted with a rapid influx of law enforcement officers from a multitude of States and jurisdictions—each with their own policies and procedures, uniforms, and rules on the use of force—which created the need for a command structure to coordinate their efforts. 45

Hurricane Katrina also crippled the region’s criminal justice system. Problems such as a significant loss of accountability of many persons under law enforcement supervision 46 , closure of the court systems in the disaster 47 , and hasty evacuation of prisoners 48 were largely attributable to the absence of contingency plans at all levels of government.

The Department of Justice, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, should examine Federal responsibilities for support to State and local law enforcement and criminal justice systems during emergencies and then build operational plans, procedures, and policies to ensure an effective Federal law enforcement response.

Critical Challenge: Public Health and Medical Support

Hurricane Katrina created enormous public health and medical challenges, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi—States with public health infrastructures that ranked 49th and 50th in the Nation, respectively. 49 But it was the subsequent flooding of New Orleans that imposed catastrophic public health conditions on the people of southern Louisiana and forced an unprecedented mobilization of Federal public health and medical assets. Tens of thousands of people required medical care. Over 200,000 people with chronic medical conditions, displaced by the storm and isolated by the flooding, found themselves without access to their usual medications and sources of medical care. Several large hospitals were totally destroyed and many others were rendered inoperable. Nearly all smaller health care facilities were shut down. Although public health and medical support efforts restored the capabilities of many of these facilities, the region’s health care infrastructure sustained extraordinary damage. 50

Most local and State public health and medical assets were overwhelmed by these conditions, placing even greater responsibility on federally deployed personnel. Immediate challenges included the identification, triage and treatment of acutely sick and injured patients; the management of chronic medical conditions in large numbers of evacuees with special health care needs; the assessment, communication and mitigation of public health risk; and the provision of assistance to State and local health officials to quickly reestablish health care delivery systems and public health infrastructures. 51

Despite the success of Federal, State, and local personnel in meeting this enormous challenge, obstacles at all levels reduced the reach and efficiency of public health and medical support efforts. In addition, the coordination of Federal assets within and across agencies was poor. The cumbersome process for the authorization of reimbursement for medical and public health services provided by Federal agencies created substantial delays and frustration among health care providers, patients and the general public. 52 In some cases, significant delays slowed the arrival of Federal assets to critical locations. 53 In other cases, large numbers of Federal assets were deployed, only to be grossly underutilized. 54 Thousands of medical volunteers were sought by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and though they were informed that they would likely not be needed unless notified otherwise, many volunteers reported that they received no message to that effect. 55 These inefficiencies were the products of a fragmented command structure for medical response; inadequate evacuation of patients; weak State and local public health infrastructures 56 ; insufficient pre-storm risk communication to the public 57 ; and the absence of a uniform electronic health record system.

In coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and other homeland security partners, the Department of Health and Human Services should strengthen the Federal government’s capability to provide public health and medical support during a crisis. This will require the improvement of command and control of public health resources, the development of deliberate plans, an additional investment in deployable operational resources, and an acceleration of the initiative to foster the widespread use of interoperable electronic health records systems.

Critical Challenge: Human Services

Disasters—especially those of catastrophic proportions—produce many victims whose needs exceed the capacity of State and local resources. These victims who depend on the Federal government for assistance fit into one of two categories: (1) those who need Federal disaster-related assistance, and (2) those who need continuation of government assistance they were receiving before the disaster, plus additional disaster-related assistance. Hurricane Katrina produced many thousands of both categories of victims. 58

The Federal government maintains a wide array of human service programs to provide assistance to special-needs populations, including disaster victims. 59 Collectively, these programs provide a safety net to particularly vulnerable populations.

The Emergency Support Function 6 (ESF-6) Annex to the NRP assigns responsibility for the emergency delivery of human services to FEMA. While FEMA is the coordinator of ESF-6, it shares primary agency responsibility with the American Red Cross. 60 The Red Cross focuses on mass care (e.g. care for people in shelters), and FEMA continues the human services components for ESF-6 as the mass care effort transitions from the response to the recovery phase. 61 The human services provided under ESF-6 include: counseling; special-needs population support; immediate and short-term assistance for individuals, households, and groups dealing with the aftermath of a disaster; and expedited processing of applications for Federal benefits. 62 The NRP calls for “reducing duplication of effort and benefits, to the extent possible,” to include “streamlining assistance as appropriate.” 63

Prior to Katrina’s landfall along the Gulf Coast and during the subsequent several weeks, Federal preparation for distributing individual assistance proved frustrating and inadequate. Because the NRP did not mandate a single Federal point of contact for all assistance and required FEMA to merely coordinate assistance delivery, disaster victims confronted an enormously bureaucratic, inefficient, and frustrating process that failed to effectively meet their needs. The Federal government’s system for distribution of human services was not sufficiently responsive to the circumstances of a large number of victims—many of whom were particularly vulnerable—who were forced to navigate a series of complex processes to obtain critical services in a time of extreme duress. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, the Disaster Recovery Centers (DRCs) did not provide victims single-point access to apply for the wide array of Federal assistance programs.

The Department of Health and Human Services should coordinate with other departments of the Executive Branch, as well as State governments and non-governmental organizations, to develop a robust, comprehensive, and integrated system to deliver human services during disasters so that victims are able to receive Federal and State assistance in a simple and seamless manner. In particular, this system should be designed to provide victims a consumer oriented, simple, effective, and single encounter from which they can receive assistance.

Critical Challenge: Mass Care and Housing

Hurricane Katrina resulted in the largest national housing crisis since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The impact of this massive displacement was felt throughout the country, with Gulf residents relocating to all fifty States and the District of Columbia. 64 Prior to the storm’s landfall, an exodus of people fled its projected path, creating an urgent need for suitable shelters. Those with the willingness and ability to evacuate generally found temporary shelter or housing. However, the thousands of people in New Orleans who were either unable to move due to health reasons or lack of transportation, or who simply did not choose to comply with the mandatory evacuation order, had significant difficulty finding suitable shelter after the hurricane had devastated the city. 65

Overall, Federal, State, and local plans were inadequate for a catastrophe that had been anticipated for years. Despite the vast shortcomings of the Superdome and other shelters, State and local officials had no choice but to direct thousands of individuals to such sites immediately after the hurricane struck. Furthermore, the Federal government’s capability to provide housing solutions to the displaced Gulf Coast population has proved to be far too slow, bureaucratic, and inefficient.

The Federal shortfall resulted from a lack of interagency coordination to relocate and house people. FEMA’s actions often were inconsistent with evacuees’ needs and preferences. Despite offers from the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA), Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Agriculture (USDA) as well as the private sector to provide thousands of housing units nationwide, FEMA focused its housing efforts on cruise ships and trailers, which were expensive and perceived by some to be a means to force evacuees to return to New Orleans. 66 HUD, with extensive expertise and perspective on large-scale housing challenges and its nation-wide relationships with State public housing authorities, was not substantially engaged by FEMA in the housing process until late in the effort. 67 FEMA’s temporary and long-term housing efforts also suffered from the failure to pre-identify workable sites and available land and the inability to take advantage of housing units available with other Federal agencies.

Using established Federal core competencies and all available resources, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in coordination with other departments of the Executive Branch with housing stock, should develop integrated plans and bolstered capabilities for the temporary and long-term housing of evacuees. The American Red Cross and the Department of Homeland Security should retain responsibility and improve the process of mass care and sheltering during disasters.

Critical Challenge: Public Communications

The Federal government’s dissemination of essential public information prior to Hurricane Katrina’s Gulf landfall is one of the positive lessons learned. The many professionals at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center worked with diligence and determination in disseminating weather reports and hurricane track predictions as described in the Pre-landfall chapter. This includes disseminating warnings and forecasts via NOAA Radio and the internet, which operates in conjunction with the Emergency Alert System (EAS). 68 We can be certain that their efforts saved lives.

However, more could have been done by officials at all levels of government. For example, the EAS—a mechanism for Federal, State and local officials to communicate disaster information and instructions—was not utilized by State and local officials in Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama prior to Katrina’s landfall. 69

Further, without timely, accurate information or the ability to communicate, public affairs officers at all levels could not provide updates to the media and to the public. It took several weeks before public affairs structures, such as the Joint Information Centers, were adequately resourced and operating at full capacity. In the meantime, Federal, State, and local officials gave contradictory messages to the public, creating confusion and feeding the perception that government sources lacked credibility. On September 1, conflicting views of New Orleans emerged with positive statements by some Federal officials that contradicted a more desperate picture painted by reporters in the streets. 70 The media, operating 24/7, gathered and aired uncorroborated information which interfered with ongoing emergency response efforts. 71 The Federal public communications and public affairs response proved inadequate and ineffective.

The Department of Homeland Security should develop an integrated public communications plan to better inform, guide, and reassure the American public before, during, and after a catastrophe. The Department of Homeland Security should enable this plan with operational capabilities to deploy coordinated public affairs teams during a crisis.

Critical Challenge: Critical Infrastructure and Impact Assessment

Hurricane Katrina had a significant impact on many sectors of the region’s “critical infrastructure,” especially the energy sector. 72 The Hurricane temporarily caused the shutdown of most crude oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico as well as much of the refining capacity in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. “[M]ore than ten percent of the Nation’s imported crude oil enters through the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port” 73 adding to the impact on the energy sector. Additionally, eleven petroleum refineries, or one-sixth of the Nation’s refining capacity, were shut down. 74 Across the region more than 2.5 million customers suffered power outages across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. 75

While there were successes, the Federal government’s ability to protect and restore the operation of priority national critical infrastructure was hindered by four interconnected problems. First, the NRP-guided response did not account for the need to coordinate critical infrastructure protection and restoration efforts across the Emergency Support Functions (ESFs). The NRP designates the protection and restoration of critical infrastructure as essential objectives of five ESFs: Transportation; Communications; Public Works and Engineering; Agriculture; and Energy. 76 Although these critical infrastructures are necessary to assist in all other response and restoration efforts, there are seventeen critical infrastructure and key resource sectors whose needs must be coordinated across virtually every ESF during response and recovery. 77 Second, the Federal government did not adequately coordinate its actions with State and local protection and restoration efforts. In fact, the Federal government created confusion by responding to individualized requests in an inconsistent manner. 78 Third, Federal, State, and local officials responded to Hurricane Katrina without a comprehensive understanding of the interdependencies of the critical infrastructure sectors in each geographic area and the potential national impact of their decisions. For example, an energy company arranged to have generators shipped to facilities where they were needed to restore the flow of oil to the entire mid-Atlantic United States. However, FEMA regional representatives diverted these generators to hospitals. While lifesaving efforts are always the first priority, there was no overall awareness of the competing important needs of the two requests. Fourth, the Federal government lacked the timely, accurate, and relevant ground-truth information necessary to evaluate which critical infrastructures were damaged, inoperative, or both. The FEMA teams that were deployed to assess damage to the regions did not focus on critical infrastructure and did not have the expertise necessary to evaluate protection and restoration needs. 79

The Interim National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) provides strategic-level guidance for all Federal, State, and local entities to use in prioritizing infrastructure for protection. 80 However, there is no supporting implementation plan to execute these actions during a natural disaster. Federal, State, and local officials need an implementation plan for critical infrastructure protection and restoration that can be shared across the Federal government, State and local governments, and with the private sector, to provide them with the necessary background to make informed preparedness decisions with limited resources.

The Department of Homeland Security, working collaboratively with the private sector, should revise the National Response Plan and finalize the Interim National Infrastructure Protection Plan to be able to rapidly assess the impact of a disaster on critical infrastructure. We must use this knowledge to inform Federal response and prioritization decisions and to support infrastructure restoration in order to save lives and mitigate the impact of the disaster on the Nation.

Critical Challenge: Environmental Hazards and Debris Removal

The Federal clean-up effort for Hurricane Katrina was an immense undertaking. The storm impact caused the spill of over seven million gallons of oil into Gulf Coast waterways. Additionally, it flooded three Superfund 81 sites in the New Orleans area, and destroyed or compromised numerous drinking water facilities and wastewater treatment plants along the Gulf Coast. 82 The storm’s collective environmental damage, while not creating the “toxic soup” portrayed in the media, nonetheless did create a potentially hazardous environment for emergency responders and the general public. 83 In response, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Coast Guard jointly led an interagency environmental assessment and recovery effort, cleaning up the seven million gallons of oil and resolving over 2,300 reported cases of pollution. 84

While this response effort was commendable, Federal officials could have improved the identification of environmental hazards and communication of appropriate warnings to emergency responders and the public. For example, the relatively small number of personnel available during the critical week after landfall were unable to conduct a rapid and comprehensive environmental assessment of the approximately 80 square miles flooded in New Orleans, let alone the nearly 93,000 square miles affected by the hurricane. 85

Competing priorities hampered efforts to assess the environment. Moreover, although the process used to identify environmental hazards provides accurate results, these results are not prompt enough to provide meaningful information to responders. Furthermore, there must be a comprehensive plan to accurately and quickly communicate this critical information to the emergency responders and area residents who need it. 86 Had such a plan existed, the mixed messages from Federal, State, and local officials on the reentry into New Orleans could have been avoided.

Debris Removal

State and local governments are normally responsible for debris removal. However, in the event of a disaster in which State and local governments are overwhelmed and request assistance, the Federal government can provide two forms of assistance: debris removal by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) or other Federal agencies, or reimbursement for locally contracted debris removal. 87

Hurricane Katrina created an estimated 118 million cubic yards of debris. In just five months, 71 million cubic yards of debris have been removed from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In comparison, it took six months to remove the estimated 20 million cubic yards of debris created by Hurricane Andrew. 88

However, the unnecessarily complicated rules for removing debris from private property hampered the response. 89 In addition, greater collaboration among Federal, State, and local officials as well as an enhanced public communication program could have improved the effectiveness of the Federal response.

The Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency, should oversee efforts to improve the Federal government’s capability to quickly gather environmental data and to provide the public and emergency responders the most accurate information available, to determine whether it is safe to operate in a disaster environment or to return after evacuation. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security should work with its State and local homeland security partners to plan and to coordinate an integrated approach to debris removal during and after a disaster.

Critical Challenge: Managing Offers of Foreign Assistance and Inquiries Regarding Affected Foreign Nationals

Our experience with the tragedies of September 11th and Hurricane Katrina underscored that our domestic crises have international implications. Soon after the extent of Hurricane Katrina’s damage became known, the United States became the beneficiary of an incredible international outpouring of assistance. One hundred fifty-one (151) nations and international organizations offered financial or material assistance to support relief efforts. 90 Also, we found that among the victims were foreign nationals who were in the country on business, vacation, or as residents. Not surprisingly, foreign governments sought information regarding the safety of their citizens.

We were not prepared to make the best use of foreign support. Some foreign governments sought to contribute aid that the United States could not accept or did not require. In other cases, needed resources were tied up by bureaucratic red tape. 91 But more broadly, we lacked the capability to prioritize and integrate such a large quantity of foreign assistance into the ongoing response. Absent an implementation plan for the prioritization and integration of foreign material assistance, valuable resources went unused, and many donor countries became frustrated. 92 While we ultimately overcame these obstacles amidst the crisis, our experience underscores the need for pre-crisis planning.

Nor did we have the mechanisms in place to provide foreign governments with whatever knowledge we had regarding the status of their nationals. Despite the fact that many victims of the September 11, 2001, tragedy were foreign nationals, the NRP does not take into account foreign populations (e.g. long-term residents, students, businessmen, tourists, and foreign government officials) affected by a domestic catastrophe. In addition, Federal, State, and local emergency response officials have not included assistance to foreign nationals in their response planning.

Many foreign governments, as well as the family and friends of foreign nationals, looked to the Department of State for information regarding the safety and location of their citizens after Hurricane Katrina. The absence of a central system to manage and promptly respond to inquires about affected foreign nationals led to confusion. 93

The Department of State, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, should review and revise policies, plans, and procedures for the management of foreign disaster assistance. In addition, this review should clarify responsibilities and procedures for handling inquiries regarding affected foreign nationals.

Critical Challenge: Non-governmental Aid

Over the course of the Hurricane Katrina response, a significant capability for response resided in organizations outside of the government. Non-governmental and faith-based organizations, as well as the private sector all made substantial contributions. Unfortunately, the Nation did not always make effective use of these contributions because we had not effectively planned for integrating them into the overall response effort.

Even in the best of circumstances, government alone cannot deliver all disaster relief. Often, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the quickest means of providing local relief, but perhaps most importantly, they provide a compassionate, human face to relief efforts. We must recognize that NGOs play a fundamental role in response and recovery efforts and will contribute in ways that are, in many cases, more efficient and effective than the Federal government’s response. We must plan for their participation and treat them as valued and necessary partners.

The number of volunteer, non-profit, faith-based, and private sector entities that aided in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort was truly extraordinary. Nearly every national, regional, and local charitable organization in the United States, and many from abroad, contributed aid to the victims of the storm. Trained volunteers from member organizations of the National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD), the American Red Cross, Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), as well as untrained volunteers from across the United States, deployed to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Government sponsored volunteer organizations also played a critical role in providing relief and assistance. For example, the USA Freedom Corps persuaded numerous non-profit organizations and the Governor’s State Service Commissions to list their hurricane relief volunteer opportunities in the USA Freedom Corps volunteer search engine. The USA Freedom Corps also worked with the Corporation for National and Community Service, which helped to create a new, people-driven “Katrina Resource Center” to help volunteers connect their resources with needs on the ground. 94 In addition, 14,000 Citizen Corps volunteers supported response and recovery efforts around the country. 95 This achievement demonstrates that seamless coordination among government agencies and volunteer organizations is possible when they build cooperative relationships and conduct joint planning and exercises before an incident occurs. 96

Faith-based organizations also provided extraordinary services. For example, more than 9,000 Southern Baptist Convention of the North American Mission Board volunteers from forty-one states served in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. These volunteers ran mobile kitchens and recovery sites. 97 Many smaller, faith-based organizations, such as the Set Free Indeed Ministry in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, brought comfort and offered shelter to the survivors. They used their facilities and volunteers to distribute donated supplies to displaced persons and to meet their immediate needs. 98 Local churches independently established hundreds of “pop-up” shelters to house storm victims. 99

More often than not, NGOs successfully contributed to the relief effort in spite of government obstacles and with almost no government support or direction. Time and again, government agencies did not effectively coordinate relief operations with NGOs. Often, government agencies failed to match relief needs with NGO and private sector capabilities. Even when agencies matched non-governmental aid with an identified need, there were problems moving goods, equipment, and people into the disaster area. For example, the government relief effort was unprepared to meet the fundamental food, housing, and operational needs of the surge volunteer force.

The Federal response should better integrate the contributions of volunteers and non-governmental organizations into the broader national effort. This integration would be best achieved at the State and local levels, prior to future incidents. In particular, State and local governments must engage NGOs in the planning process, credential their personnel, and provide them the necessary resource support for their involvement in a joint response.

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Appendix E - Endnotes »

June 2, 2020

Flooding Disproportionately Harms Black Neighborhoods

The impacts of floods can exacerbate existing racial and social inequality

By Thomas Frank & E&E News

Palazzolo Simmons, 49, looks out over his home neighborhood for the first time since Hurricane Katrina in the mostly poor and black Lower Ninth Ward section of New Orleans on October 2, 2005. While New Orleanians in more upscale neighborhoods were being urged to return home, their counterparts from the poorest areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina were forced to sneak past police checkpoints to see for the first time the remnants of their life.

Robyn Beck Getty Images

When Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas in 2017, the neighborhood that suffered the worst flood damage was a section of southwest Houston where 49% of the residents are nonwhite.

When Hurricane Katrina hit southeast Louisiana in 2005, the damage was the most extensive in the region’s African American neighborhoods.

Of the seven ZIP codes that suffered the costliest flood damage from Katrina, four of them had populations that were at least 75% Black, government records show.

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Flooding in the U.S. disproportionately harms African American neighborhoods, an E&E News analysis of federal flood insurance payments shows.

The concentration of flood damage in urban areas with large Black populations may contrast to images of hurricanes hitting affluent coastal areas and riverine floods swamping rural, largely white communities.

But urban flooding and its disproportionate impact on minorities and low-income residents are becoming a growing concern as climate change intensifies floods. At the same time, urban development is creating more impervious surfaces in cities, and aging municipal sewer systems are overwhelmed by the increasing water.

“The [flood] risk to the nation is concentrated in the metro areas,” flood expert Doug Plasencia said yesterday at a national conference on flooding. “Socially vulnerable populations add to the complexity.”

A major concern about flooding in cities is that the residents who are most vulnerable—those who live in the lowest-lying areas or in neighborhoods without green space to absorb water—are often poor and members of minority groups.

“The reality is that you typically find in our floodplains many of society’s vulnerable populations,” Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said at the conference yesterday. “When you look at the entire urban community, there are profound impacts due to urban flooding that go beyond physical property damage [and include] the risk of injury and loss of life.”

Urban flooding has the potential to exacerbate the racial inequality that is an undercurrent of the nationwide protests over the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a black man in custody by Minneapolis police. Some protesters have denounced broad and persistent societal inequalities including the disproportionate number of Blacks dying from COVID-19.

Climate-related issues also can have disparate impacts.

“Urban flooding is a growing source of significant economic loss, social disruption and housing inequality,” Texas A&M University flood expert Sam Brody told yesterday’s flood conference.

Research has shown that in states such as Illinois and Michigan, the costliest flood damage occurs in Chicago and Detroit—major cities with large black populations.

A report published in March 2019 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that while urban flooding affects a wide range of demographics, it is most harmful to minorities, low-income residents, and others without the resources to handle the damage and disruption.

“While severe storms fall on the rich and poor alike, the capacity to respond to and recover from flooding is much lower in socially vulnerable populations that even in the best of times are struggling to function,” the report concluded.

In Houston, the researchers found that “the poorest residents are most likely to live on the lowest-lying land, and so are most subjected to higher flood exposure.”

In Chicago, residents of a middle-income black neighborhood told researchers that they “receive less flood protection and are given lower priority.”

The study was requested by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in an effort to understand the causes and impacts of urban flooding.

A 2018 report on urban flooding by the University of Maryland and Texas A&M’s Galveston campus found that many city sewer systems “are in poor condition” and unable to handle excess water from rainfall or river overflows.

Flood damage is “especially problematic in low-lying urban areas, where stormwater infrastructure deterioration, population growth, and development have accelerated over the last several decades,” the study found.

E&E News analyzed $31 billion in claims for flood damage paid by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program between January 2010 and August 2019 and the ZIP codes in which the flood damage occurred.

The analysis found that nearly 20% of the claim dollars were paid in ZIP codes where at least one-quarter of the residents are black.

Those ZIP codes, however, made up only 13% of the U.S. population, suggesting that flooding disproportionately affects neighborhoods with a substantial Black population.

The disparity was particularly acute in Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina notoriously destroyed many Black neighborhoods such as New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward.

E&E News analyzed flood insurance payments related to Katrina and found that homeowners in just seven ZIP codes received nearly half of the $13 billion in flood claims. Four of those ZIP codes had populations that were at least 79% black, E&E News found.

The flood insurance data does not include properties that were damaged by floods but were not insured. Many people who live in flood zones do not have flood insurance.

“Urban flooding definitely merits national attention,” said Berginnis of the floodplain association. “We are going to have worsening urban flooding problems due to development and climate change.”

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

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Int J Environ Res Public Health

Vulnerability of Coastal Communities from Storm Surge and Flood Disasters

Disasters in the form of coastal storms and hurricanes can be very destructive. Preparing for anticipated effects of such disasters can help reduce the public health and economic burden. Identifying vulnerable population groups can help prioritize resources for the most needed communities. This paper presents a quantitative framework for vulnerability measurement that incorporates both socioeconomic and flood inundation vulnerability. The approach is demonstrated for three coastal communities in Mississippi with census tracts being the study unit. The vulnerability results are illustrated as thematic maps for easy usage by planners and emergency responders to assist in prioritizing their actions to vulnerable populations during storm surge and flood disasters.

1. Introduction

Coastal communities are commonly attributed with lower geographic elevations and are often associated with higher population densities than that of inland communities [ 1 ]. For example, in 2010, over 123 million people, or 39 percent of the American population, lived in coastal counties representing less than 10 percent of the United States (U.S.) land area (excluding Alaska). From 1970 to 2010, an average 39% population increase in coastal counties has been recorded. The average US coastal counties population density of 446 persons per square mile (in 2010) is expected to increase by 37 persons per square mile by 2020, whereas the entire US population density will only increase by 11 persons per square mile [ 2 ]. Unfortunately, most coastal counties are vulnerable to natural disasters, particularly from intense hurricanes. Over the past decade, the U.S. Gulf Coast has been severely affected by multiple hurricanes, including Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Ike and many others. Recently, Superstorm Sandy devastated the New York/New Jersey region. North and South Carolina faced significant economic loss, environmental degradation and public life disruption from hurricane Joaquin. These coastal storms, combined with rising populations, often challenge disaster managers and city planners in protecting public property and human life [ 2 ].

Public health, both physical and mental, is expected to be impacted not only during an active disaster but also after the disaster [ 3 ]. For example, hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf Coast of America have shown chronic mental health effects. However, the extent of the effect was related to the extent of distribution to where people live and work as well as their family structure and social engagement [ 4 , 5 ]. In the case of the oil spill disaster, mental health problems persisted even one year after the spill. Anxiety and depression were clinically significant, particularly for people who continued to sustain spill-related income loss [ 6 , 7 ]. The literature demonstrated that elderly, female, African Americans, less educated, and non-home owners (or the poor) are more vulnerable and are disproportionately affected by Katrina-induced health problems years after the storm [ 3 , 7 ]. It is undoubtedly true that there are a number of contributing factors that are likely to impact coastal communities. For example, in 2005, hurricane Katrina destroyed wetlands, leading to elimination of crucial buffer zones, leaving once protected infrastructure and neighborhoods exposed to more intense future storms. Among these populations, many residents are elderly, a group that is particularly vulnerable to coastal storms and flooding [ 8 ]. For example, nearly 85% of people killed during, and in the immediate aftermath of, Hurricane Katrina were aged 51 and older, and almost half were older than 75 years of age. In addition, climate change is expected to accelerate flood risks in the coming decades as the sea levels rise due to global warming, which will further intensify storm surges [ 1 , 9 ]. The extent of the impact from climate change may also depend on local conditions as well as the severity of climate change projections. For example, existing coastal neighborhoods may encounter increased and frequent localized flooding; drainage systems are likely to be overloaded more frequently and severely (as the dated drainage systems are not build for projected climate change), causing backups and street flooding; and people’s mobility may be hindered due to inundation of low-lying feeder roads in coastal areas [ 10 ].

Proper coastal management to protect populations and community resources from potential flood damage requires a systematic assessment of vulnerability. Measuring the vulnerability of an area or a targeted population has been studied for decades to help community planning and emergency management. Vulnerability, often expressed using a vulnerability index, has been conceptualized in many different ways. When resources become scarce, such as during massive disasters, vulnerability measures are very important for effective allocation of resources to mitigate hazards (e.g., land use practices and building construction practices), improve emergency preparedness practices (e.g., detection and warning systems), help emergency response (e.g., food and medical assistance) and for recovery preparedness practices (e.g., diversified investments and hazard insurance). A number of previous studies have demonstrated various approaches for coastal vulnerability assessment (e.g., [ 9 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]). These assessments are done at multiple spatial (global to local) and temporal (short term to long term) scales. Typically, a vulnerability matrix is developed with available data suitable to a specific problem [ 9 ]. Unfortunately, no single universal metric or measurement tool can be developed or applied to fit all criteria. Developing any such tool is challenging due to ever-present definitional ambiguity, along with the dynamic nature of the temporal and spatial scales of analyses [ 18 ].

Socioeconomic indicators in a community are most commonly used in measuring social vulnerability. While it is important to characterize population by broad categories of dominant socioeconomic indicators, it is also important to understand how each indicator combines with others to generate interactive vulnerabilities [ 19 ]. This is noted by Cutter, et al . (2009) [ 19 ] as, “ selecting a single variable (e.g., race, gender, or poverty) does not adequately capture communities described as African American female-headed households below the poverty level, because not all African Americans are in poverty; not all female-headed households are African American; and not all people in poverty are females or female-headed households ”. Previous research has shown that some of the commonly used socioeconomic indicators are strongly correlated. Thus, it is important to use either a composite measure of social vulnerability or a subset of these indicators to measure the vulnerability of a community [ 19 , 20 ].

The vulnerability of a community to a flood hazard is commonly measured using socioeconomic indicators or calculating physical flood extents, however, their combined impact is often ignored. Geographical Information System (GIS) based approaches have been used to understand the coastal flood vulnerability by overlaying the hydrodynamic models predicted flood areas over land surface elevations. However, this approach does not incorporate socioeconomic vulnerability [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. There are few studies that consider combined socioeconomic and physical vulnerability [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. The vulnerability assessment is often complex, requiring significant amounts of data, such as surface elevation surveys and development of detail hydrodynamic models, which are expensive.

In this paper, we proposed a simple approach that combines socioeconomic indicators as well as physical flood extents in measuring the combined vulnerability of an area. Our approach of vulnerability measurement is demonstrated for coastal counties of Mississippi as a case study. To date, no comprehensive studies have been carried out to explore the impact of flooding on infrastructure and public health for these three coastal counties in Mississippi where thousands of vulnerable populations are exposed to periodic and intense storm flooding. Preparing for the broad range of anticipated effects of coastal storms and floods may help reduce the public health burden. Thus, the focus of this paper is to identify critical populations vulnerable to disasters in order to help planners and communities better understand the baseline health status of neighborhoods. While the vulnerability of Mississippi’s coastal community to current flooding conditions are presented in this paper, future research needs to explore the vulnerability of public health from projected climate change (e.g., sea level rise) and anticipated future flood scenarios.

2. Data and Methods

2.1. study area.

The study area represents three coastal counties (Jackson, Harrison and Hancock) in Mississippi. Jackson County encompasses approximately 736 square miles and borders Alabama (AL) in the east. Harrison County, in the middle, encompasses an area of approximately 976 square miles, while the Hancock County encompasses an area of approximately 485 square miles and borders Louisiana (LA). Harrison County, which encompasses the Biloxi urban area, is the most populous among the three counties. The major roads in the study area are Interstate Highway 10 and U.S. Highway 90, both of which serve primary east–west traffic, while state highways provide north–south access. Portions of Jackson County have elevation in excess of 100 feet (NGVD 29) while the coastal ridge in the City of Bay St. Louis is has an elevation of approximately 20 feet (NGVD 29), which drops to nearly sea level in some parts of Hancock County. Pascagoula River and Pearl River are two major river systems. The primary reason for choosing these three counties is due to their proximity to the coast, which is exposed to historical storms. For example, a storm in 1909 caused a surge height of about 8 to 12 feet along the Mississippi coast costing 150 lives, while the hurricane in 1915 had a surge height of about 11.8 feet in parts of Hancock County to about 9.0 feet in Harrison County costing 175 lives. Following the 1909 and 1915 events, a seawall with elevation four feet to eight feet was built to minimize wave and surge damage from hurricanes [ 28 , 29 ]. Among the several hurricanes and coastal floods noted over the past century, hurricane Katrina, which struck in August 2005, was the most powerful and deadliest of all. Hurricane Katrina struck low-lying coastal plains that are particularly vulnerable to storm surge flooding, damaging 130,000 homes and took over 200 lives in Mississippi; most of which were along the three coastal counties [ 30 , 31 ].

In total, there are 81 census tracts in these three counties, which are used in this study. Figure 1 illustrates the study area along with the census tracts. Table 1 shows selected socioeconomic variables of the different counties.

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Object name is ijerph-13-00239-g001.jpg

Study area showing census tracts in three MS coastal counties.

Key demographic information of the study area (Source: American Community Survey (ACS)) [ 32 ].

Statistic	Jackson County	Harrison County	Hancock County
Total Population	139,430	188,110	44,044
Non-White Population	37,259	54,794	5244
Female Population	70,740	94,766	22,401
Population < 18 years	35,338	46,078	10,423
Population > 65 years with Disability	7859	9476	2373
Population Below Poverty	21,238	33,162	8572
Average Household Income	47,266	42,060	42,028

2.2. Methodology

Vulnerability assessment is used to analyze the elements of exposure, susceptibility and resilience of any system to a hazard [ 1 ]. In this study, the vulnerable areas are identified as those census tracts that are occupied by demographic segments that are both socioeconomically disadvantaged and are most vulnerable to flood disasters. The vulnerable people in a community can be expressed in three closely linked ways: (1) social vulnerability (race, ethnicity, etc. ); (2) economic vulnerability (income level); and (3) the climatological vulnerability (flood exposure). The first two vulnerabilities are combined as socioeconomic vulnerability and the third uses flood simulation data. This assessment is accomplished using GIS by overlaying socioeconomic data (e.g., poverty, minority populations and low education status) combined with hazard exposure ( i.e. , flooding). The vulnerability of a community can be influenced by many factors, including socioeconomic factors such as demographics, income and education level, and the extent of hazard exposure. This indicates that not all people in hazard-exposed area are equally affected [ 20 ]. Our approach for calculating vulnerability of a census tract is to calculate average socioeconomic vulnerability normalized between 0 and 1, based on selected socioeconomic indicators of population in that tract. Flood exposure vulnerability is calculated based on the extent the tract is flooded during a flood disaster. The combined vulnerability of socioeconomic and flood vulnerabilities is calculated as an average of the two numbers. The socioeconomic indicators used and the methodology is discussed in the following sections.

2.2.1. Socioeconomic Vulnerability Indicators

Socioeconomic or social vulnerability arises from the potential for disaster to cause changes in people’s routine and lifestyle and their families based on their socioeconomic conditions [ 28 ]. As described by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Fundamentals of Emergency Management (AEMRC) [ 33 ] document, the socioeconomic vulnerability arises from various components, some of which can be predicted by demographical characteristics such as gender, age, education level, income, and ethnicity. GIS can be used to conduct disaggregated (e.g., census tract-level) spatial analyses to identify the demographic segments most likely to be vulnerable to disaster impacts. In addition, as the emergency managers, including health workers, have very limited access to direct measures of social vulnerability, geographic analyses of social vulnerability are conducted on Census data, preferably at the lowest possible level of aggregation (e.g., block-group or tract) [ 33 ].

People with the fewest psychological, social, economic, and political resources often disproportionately occupy the most hazardous geographical areas and the oldest, most poorly maintained buildings, which results in the greatest physical impacts such as casualties and property loss during a disaster [ 34 ]. The poor are less likely to have the income or assets needed to prepare for a possible disaster and for recovery efforts. While wealthy people may have higher monetary value of economic and material losses, the losses sustained by the poor are far more devastating in relative terms [ 19 ]. Similarly, people with higher education are expected to better prepare for a disaster and are less vulnerable to disaster impacts. Vulnerability of women increases not only due to their low income, in general, but also from their higher responsibilities because of their roles as mother and caregivers, which limits their ability to seek safety while caring for children and very old people who require assistance [ 19 ].

People that need physical help, especially those who are living in assisted living facilities (primarily people age 65 and more), and dependent children less than 18 years of age are the most vulnerable during a disaster cycle [ 34 ]. Lack of fluency in English language to understand disaster communication makes many immigrants, especially in rural communities, which attracts immigrates for agricultural and farming activity, more vulnerable to disasters [ 20 , 35 ]. Mobile homes, which are usually isolated with limited or no access to public transportation or highways, are more vulnerable to a hazard and such typical structures with no strong basement increases their vulnerability to severe weather and flooding [ 36 ]. Similarly, people living in multi-unit housing and high-rise apartments are more vulnerable due to their dense population limiting access and ability to evacuate [ 37 , 38 ]. No personal vehicle or access to public transportation restricts evacuation and hence is expected increase vulnerability to hazards. Overall, poor and minority populations (generally, non-white populations), and elderly nursing home residents, are more likely to lack transportation during disasters [ 39 ]. These populations often have a high prevalence of chronic health problems, which increases their vulnerability to other storm-related hazards [ 40 ].

Table 2 is presents a list of socioeconomic indicators adopted in the present study. Information related to socioeconomic indicators in the study area at census tract level is gathered from an ACS survey conducted in 2012. Each socioeconomic indicator was standardized (normalized) by dividing the indicator value for a tract by maximum value of the indicator in the study area. Standardization of indicators’ value is expected to create a comparative proportions among the indicators. An aggregate value of socioeconomic vulnerability of tracts was calculated as the average of standardized indicators values using the following Equation (1):

where SSEI 1–11 are standardized values for the 11 indicators listed in Table 2 .

Socioeconomic vulnerability indicators adopted in this study.

1	Total Population
2	Non-White Population
3	Number of Female Households
4	Population Under 18 Years
5	Population 65 Years and Older or Disabled
6	Households with No Vehicle
7	Housing Units in Mobile Homes
8	People in Group Quarters
9	People Below Poverty in Past 12 Months
10	Population 18 Years and Over with No Diploma
11	No One Age 14 and Over Speaks English Only or Speaks English “very well”;

This yields aggregate vulnerability normalized between zero and one, which is also the same approach used in contemporary research [ 25 ].

2.2.2. Flood (Climatological) Vulnerability Indicators

Geospatial data reported in FEMA’s National Flood Risk Report is used as an input data for computing flood hazard areas. Flood hazard areas on the (FIRM) are identified as a Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs). SFHA are defined as an area that will be inundated by a flood event having a one-percent chance or a 100-year storm event, of being equaled or exceeded in any given year. The one-percent annual chance flood is also referred to as the base flood or 100-year flood. SFHAs are labeled as Zone A, Zone AO, Zone AH, Zones A1–A30, Zone AE, Zone A99, Zone AR, Zone AR/AE, Zone AR/AO, Zone AR/A1–A30, Zone AR/A, Zone V, Zone VE, and Zones V1–V30. Flood zones A, AO, AH, A1–A30, AE and A99 are high flood risk areas for 100-year flood. Zone AR represents areas with temporarily increased flood risk due to the building or restoration of a flood control system (such as a levee or a dam). Zones AR/AE, AR/AH, AR/AO, AR/A1–A30, and AR/A are dual flood zones that, because of flooding from other water sources that the flood protection system does not contain, will continue to be subject to flooding after the flood protection system is adequately restored. Zones V, VE and V1–V30 are areas along coasts subject to inundation by the one-percent-annual-chance flood event with additional hazards due to storm-induced velocity wave action. The areal extent of each flood zone (for FEMA flood, Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) by specific zones (e.g., A, AE, A1, A30, AH, AO, AR, A99, V, VE, and V1–V30) within each study census tract units was calculated through a spatial intersect process. Flood exposure area was calculated as the amount of land area within the 100-year flood zone as a fraction of the total land area in each census tract. These fractional values of the census tracts are assigned to represent the flooding vulnerability of the tracts.

2.2.3. Interactive Vulnerability Mapping

GIS mapping to generate thematic maps and the socioeconomic and climatological vulnerability scores is an effective way to visually identify areas of varying vulnerabilities. Similar to the approach summarized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the literature [ 41 ] for social vulnerability categories identification, normalized Z-scores of aggregate vulnerably values are used to identify tracts by vulnerability groups (Very Low, Low, Intermediate, High, and Very High). Final vulnerability score for each tract has been calculated as an average of the two vulnerability values (Socioeconomic and climatological). It is user specific to choose Z-score ranges to categories census tracts into individual vulnerability groups, which makes it easy to regroup the tracts into vulnerability groups depending on what is desired. For Z-scores distribution illustrated in Figure 2 , tracts with Z-score of ≥1.5 and 0.5 < Z-score < 1.5 are assigned very high and high vulnerability, respectively, while all other tracts are intermediate to very low vulnerability. The Z-scores approach can help determine how close or far (standard deviations) a selected tract’s vulnerability is distributed compared to the mean vulnerability of tracts. For example, if the Z-score of a tract is –2.0, it indicates that the particular tract has two standard deviations lower vulnerability than the mean vulnerability of tracts in the study area. The same ranges of Z-scores shown in Figure 2 are used to assign tracts into vulnerability groups for the study area of coastal MS.

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Use of Z-scores to determine vulnerability groups.

As described in the methodology, an aggregate value of vulnerability for each census block has been calculated as an average of standardized indicators values normalized between zero and one. A final vulnerability score for each tract was calculated as the average of the two vulnerability values (socioeconomic and climatological). A thematic vulnerability map illustrating vulnerability of census tracts is shown in Figure 3 . The interpretation of the thematic map is that, during a flood event, red or dark brown-colored census tracts are at higher risk than the tracts with light colors. In this particular case, there are seven census tracts found to be very highly vulnerable (Z-score ≥ 1.5), whereas 20 tracts are found to be highly vulnerable (0.5 ≤ Z-score < 1.5). The majority of tracts (32) are in the intermediate vulnerability group (−0.5 ≤ Z-score > 0.5), 16 tracts are in low vulnerability group (–1.5 ≤ Z-score < –0.5) and 16 tracts are in very low vulnerability group (Z-score < −1.5).

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Relative vulnerability of tracts developed using normalized Z-score approach for coastal communities in MS.

Inland flooding caused by Pearl River, which drains to Gulf of Mexico, combined with higher population apparently cause the higher vulnerability of tracts in Jackson County relative to the other tracts along the Mississippi Coast. Although the most coastal tracts in Harrison County have considerable flooding, the overall combined vulnerability of these tracts is primarily low as the people in those tracts are mostly white, in the age group of 18 to 65, live in permanent structures and are educated. The majority of tracts in Hancock County are also highly vulnerable not only because of their lower elevation but also the population in the county is primarily under-educated and are low income people, who cannot afford to live in permanent housing or own a vehicle.

The methodology presented in this paper for identifying vulnerable groups is very flexible. For example, the census tracts can be divided into four levels of vulnerability instead of the five presented in Figure 3 . The vulnerability intervals can also be determined as equal quadruples of Z-scores or by other user specified criteria, which might produce varying vulnerability levels. For example, for the vulnerability assessment of the three coastal communities presented in this paper, if the vulnerability groupings were reassigned with Z-score ≥ 1.0 as very high vulnerability, 0.25 ≤ Z-score < 1.0 as high vulnerability, −0.25 ≤ Z-score < 0.25 as medium vulnerability, −1.0 ≤ Z-score > −0.25 as low vulnerability, and Z-score < –1.0 as very low vulnerability, the resulting tracks in each group would be 13, 20, 16, 19 and 13, respectively.

The vulnerability of a community exposed to a flood hazard determined based on a single indicator might be different than the actual vulnerability that is influenced by other factors. For example, the extent of disaster exposure may not be the only determining factor to assess the vulnerability of people in a community. Interaction of socioeconomic factors and the exposure to flood hazard are expected to impact the overall vulnerability. For example, vulnerability of census tracts taking only one indicator at time is illustrated in Figure 4 . As a note, vulnerability of census tracts indicated in Figure 4 change from dark brown shaded census tracts being the highest vulnerability to pale yellow shaded tracts with lowest vulnerability. The 100-year flood exposure as fraction of census tracts flooded (flood vulnerability) is presented in Figure 4 a. Based on flood exposure as the only vulnerability indicator, most of the census tracts in Harrison County are relatively highly vulnerable, which is different than the combined vulnerability of socioeconomic and flood vulnerability shown in Figure 3 . Similarly, normalized non-white population distribution among census tracts is shown in Figure 4 b, indicating the census tracts in Harrison County are found to have medium to high level of vulnerability. However, the combined vulnerability presented in Figure 3 indicated primarily medium to low vulnerability in Harrison County. Similarly, vulnerabilities of other socioeconomic indicators are presented in Figure 4 c–l. How individual variables indicate vulnerability of a community is discussed Section 2.2.1 .

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Relative vulnerability maps showing flood vulnerability and individual socioeconomic indicators vulnerability, with each indicator considered separately to measure vulnerability.

The information presented in Figure 4 is not only useful for insight into the drivers of overall vulnerability of an area but is also useful to planners, emergency responders and others involved throughout a disaster cycle to target their actions if a specific indicator is of their interest. For example, if there is an epidemiological outbreak in which older (senior citizen) people are deemed to be impacted, then the medical emergency team can use the vulnerability map of indicator 65 years and above ( Figure 4 f) to prioritize their emergency actions. As another example, during a high wind event, the cluster of mobile home units ( Figure 4 h) will be of interest for decision makers and responders.

4. Conclusions

Post disaster, especially post Katrina, it was found that not all people are affected to same extent during and after a hazard [ 20 ]. For example, even a decade later, debate about the varied effects of Katrina and the failure of planning and response in certain demographical communities of the disaster area is still ongoing. The debate is on a claim that the communities that are primarily populated with minorities and low-income people were more heavily impacted from Katrina and thus these areas should have received priority in disaster response and mitigation efforts. This past experience shows that several socioeconomic factors, such as race and ethnicity, income, living conditions and education level, are some of the important indicators of vulnerability of people to a disaster. In addition, pre-existing health conditions are also expected to determine the extent of health related impacts from a hazard. Communities with pre-existing a health history will be more vulnerable than other communities. In that sense, the combined vulnerability as a result of interaction between socioeconomic, health and flood extent are expected to be different than the vulnerability arising due to any individual indicator.

Historically, studies have demonstrated various approaches for coastal vulnerability assessment. These studies have often determined the vulnerability of a community based on a single socioeconomic indicator or in some cases a combination of socioeconomic indicators. For flood disasters, agencies most commonly assign the vulnerability of communities simply based on projected flooding of communities, ignoring socioeconomic conditions of the communities. There is limited information on community vulnerability assessment that combines socioeconomic and flood vulnerabilities. In this paper, we presented an assessment framework that combines socioeconomic vulnerability with flood vulnerability in determining the overall vulnerability of a community from flood disaster. This framework can be potentially incorporated into the development of more advanced decision support techniques. As a case study, the vulnerability assessment framework presented in the paper is demonstrated through calculation of vulnerability of census tracts in three Mississippi coastal counties and the results are presented as a thematic vulnerability map. Such thematic maps are useful for decision makers as well for the first responders who often make rapid decisions on needed action with limited access to data sources.

The approach used in this paper is based on a set of socioeconomic indicators that were used in contemporary research focusing on vulnerability from coastal floods. Often the socioeconomic indicators are expected to be interdependent with variation in one indicator’s value affecting the other indicator in the group. However, the framework presented in this paper is expected to minimize the bias that might arise from correlated indicators, as the framework includes calculating composite scores of socioeconomic indicators before combining with flood vulnerability score. In addition, the actual selection of indicators to apply for a given vulnerability assessment is expected to depend on many factors, most notably the purpose and scale of the vulnerability assessment and data availability. The socioeconomic indicators considered in this paper for assessing vulnerability for three coastal counties are primarily based on the fact that they are the most commonly used indicators in the literature for socioeconomic vulnerability assessment as well the data for these indicators are readily available from ACS. Users may select indicators that are relevant to their community. Each community has certain characteristics that make some indicators more suitable than others. For example, if a community has few or no mobile homes, then the people living in mobile homes may not be a required indicator in the community vulnerability assessment. Similarly, if the interest of assessment is to understand chemical or toxins exposure vulnerability during a flood disaster, then one need to consider presence of toxic material storage facilities, solid waste storage units, wastewater treatment units and hazardous chemical processing industries and their material storage locations in assessment. Some other socioeconomic and health indicators of interest may include accessibility of roads, availability of healthcare facilities, number and location of assisted living facilities, college student dormitories and workers dormitories, emergency shelters, etc.

The socioeconomic vulnerability calculation approach presented in this paper assumes all indicators are weighted equally in the vulnerability assessment. However, if the user has specific information that confirms that, for their community, some indicators have higher vulnerability than other, then the user can assign appropriate multiplication factors to adjust for higher vulnerability of some indicators over others.

As the framework presented in this paper is based on indicators, the accuracy of combined vulnerability depends on the accuracy of the indicators’ data. It is also important that potential discrepancies in the results be noted. However, as the approach allows for relative vulnerability comparison among the study units, uncertainties are assumed to be equally weighed. In this way, uncertainty is not removed, but is integrated into the assessment. Overall, the successful assessment of vulnerability is predicated on the generation of a comprehensive set of vulnerability metrics that fully and accurately describe the exposure [ 41 ].

As a continuation of the current research presented in this paper, we plan to explore quantification of vulnerability in public health sector from projected climate change scenarios. Climate change is an area of intense research and has gradually evolved into a multidisciplinary field. In the public health sector, impact from climate change can be influenced by many factors, including the severity as well as other characteristics of storms, such as the exact timing and location of impact and the unique geographic and topographic characteristics of the affected area. The next phase of our study is to augment the systematic approach that we developed here with future climate change scenarios of coastal communities. The focus of our planned research will be to identify public health indicators (such as existing diseases, age, etc. ) and health infrastructure in coastal counties to assess the public health vulnerability from projected climate change scenarios.

Acknowledgments

This pilot project is partially supported by the Research Center in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Grant no. G12MD007581 (October 2013–March 2015) and Army Research Office (ARO) Grant No. 634A67 (April 2013–April 2016). The authors thank Ms. Bennetta Robinson for her support in initial data setup for the project.

Author Contributions

Jejal Reddy Bathi compiled the data, undertook the methodology development, performed data analysis and interpretation and drafted the paper. Himangshu S. Das conceptualized the study and methodology, and contributed to drafting the paper. Both authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Understanding Katrina

The Evacuation of Older People: The Case of Hurricane Katrina

In this paper, I focus on the process of evacuation and how, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, this casts light on the position of older people in contemporary western society.

All the evidence I draw on I have gleaned from the Internet. I have not interviewed anyone by phone or email. Most of the material I have collected are newspaper and media reports, but increasingly there is a body of official documentation reviewing what went wrong and how similar disasters might be avoided. In order to keep this unfunded study manageable I have limited it to text and not included visual images of the disaster.

I have organised the paper around four aims:

to briefly summarise the impact of Katrina on New Orleans
to consider the significance of age in how people respond to mass evacuations
to describe how the evacuation of older people from New Orleans was managed
to reflect on the wider significance of the disaster.

The impact of Katrina

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans early in the morning of Monday 29th August 2005. The population of the city was around half a million and most of those affected were residents of the city, living in their own homes. Some however were in institutions at the time: the prison, hospitals and nursing homes.

According to statistics from the 2000 US census, the population of New Orleans was 485,000, of whom 7,400 were aged 85 or more. A total of 17,600 were living in non-households, of whom 2,500 were older people resident in nursing homes. There were about 1,800 hospital beds. These statistics imply that the majority, probably the large majority, of the 7,400 people aged 85 or more were living in ordinary, non-institutional, households.

Table 1 summarises the sequence of key events marking the arrival of Katrina and the evacuation of the city. The Hurricane was formed on Tuesday, the 23rd, and two days later it arrived in Florida. Prior to its arrival, people in Louisiana were faced with two scenarios: leaving or staying put. Some had no means of escaping: 38,000 households had no car. Others could have escaped but chose not to, but most fled over the course of the weekend.

At 5.00 pm on Saturday, the 27th, the Mayor of New Orleans called for a voluntary evacuation of the city and this was made mandatory the following morning at 9.30 am. At midday, recognising that many were unable to leave, he designated the Superdome and a number of other locations as ‘refuges of last resort’.

It has been estimated that by the time Katrina arrived on Monday morning, 85% of the population of New Orleans had escaped, primarily in vehicles. Of the remaining 70,000, 25,000 took refuge in the Superdome. Later that day the first levee was breached and this led to large parts of the city centre being flooded. On Tuesday, following global exposure on television, the evacuation of the Superdome and other refuges was ordered, and this was completed five days later, the following Sunday.

The television images from the Superdome and elsewhere were predominantly of hungry, distressed and angry African-Americans and the connection with race and poverty was made explicit in many of the accompanying commentaries. The BBC for example, ran a story on 4th of September which read:

Images from the stricken city of New Orleans show that many of those suffering in its streets and shelters are black and poor. The plight of those stranded amid the filth and the dead has highlighted a side of the city most tourists do not see – one in which two-thirds of its residents are black and more than a quarter live in poverty.

These images have set the agenda for subsequent debates, both in the media and in the social sciences. There has been much critical comment about the failure of the federal government, and in particular FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to respond quickly and effectively. The critique has focused upon the impact of the hurricane on the city as a whole, and the plight of those in the Superdome in particular. In this way the population that suffered has been portrayed as poor and black.

The classic measure of disasters is mortality. How many people died as a result of Katrina, and who were they?

At the present time (August 2006), it has been estimated that Katrina was responsible for the deaths of 1,836 people. There is an interesting debate underway on marginal cases – people who were killed in road accidents while escaping, or who subsequently have committed suicide, for example. Also 141 people are still registered as missing. Authoritative statistics are unavailable.

A provisional analysis undertaken for Knight Ridder newspapers late last year concluded that, if anything, death rates were higher among whites than among African-Americans, and that there were few significant differences in death rates between poor and wealthy neighbourhoods. These figures questioned the popular image of Katrina’s victims as poor and black.

What the analysis also reported was that nearly half the deaths were of people aged 75 or more. Table 2 is based on details of 729 victims whose bodies were taken to one of the two main morgues (I accessed this list on 21 December). It shows that 50% were in their 70s or 80s. The oldest victim was a woman aged 102. Only 39 people under 40 years of age died, less than 6% of all victims listed.

So the disaster primarily affected older people. As John Mutter, of Columbia University, has commented: “When it comes to deaths, this was an age-selective disaster far more than it was race-selective”. Insofar as mortality is an appropriate indicator of disaster, then Katrina was unprecedented because of a failure to protect or evacuate older people effectively.

The relevance of age

How relevant then is age in how people respond to the prospect of disaster and, in particular, to calls to evacuate? There are three distinct ways in which age may be seen as relevant.

The first is that age is statistically associated with illness and mobility problems . Note that this is not referring solely to people over a certain age. Throughout adulthood, older people are statistically more likely than younger people to have difficulty in moving quickly. They are more likely to be ill or incapacitated.In addition, older people may be less inclined than younger people to escape, because they perceive the risks involved in undertaking long and stressful journeys to be greater. In the case of Katrina, heat, dehydration and the need for medication were all mentioned as disincentives for older people. Older people were less willing than younger people to risk getting caught up in the heat and frustrations of gridlock.Thus, both objectively and subjectively, age counts in this statistical sense, and this makes evacuation more problematic for all concerned.
Secondly, age is also relevant because of experience and biography .People who have lived in a particular area a long time are familiar with the annual cycle of weather. People have to learn to cope. Those who can cope take each year as it comes. People who can’t cope, tend to leave. So it would follow that the inclination of long-time residents of New Orleans would be to stay put. As one put it, “I grew up with hurricanes. I’m used to them”.Conversely, it is plausible that older people are more attached to their homes and neighbourhoods and less able than younger people to transport their valued possessions to safe places. They may feel more threatened with the loss of their home and by the possibility of being robbed. Who will look after their pets? One newspaper report focused on two 83-year-old twin sisters who insisted on remaining in New Orleans to care for their pets: a dog, cat and bird. Older people may be more inclined than younger people to think of evacuation as abandoning their friends, their home and indeed their city. Arguably the prospect is much more disruptive biographically.
Thirdly there are policies and attitudes to age and, in particular, ‘the elderly’ and their ‘special needs’. In many areas of life, ageism has the effect of setting ‘the elderly’ apart, stereotyping them by assuming that they require specialised attention to meet their ‘special needs’. Although on occasions they may benefit from being earmarked in this way, there may be the reverse effect: being denied the benefits of more ordinary services and opportunities, and separating them from younger people. According to the Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan, for example, ‘specialized shelters should be established for people with special medical needs’. But, when residents enquired on the Saturday before Katrina where these shelters were, they discovered that there were two in the state, both over 200 miles from New Orleans.

At times of desperation, ‘the elderly’ can suddenly be seen as unmanageable ‘burdens’ for the authorities. Consider the following dramatic claim published in the New York Times :

Yet the breadth of the collapse of one of society’s most basic covenants – to care for the helpless – suggests that the elderly and critically ill plummeted to the bottom of priority lists as calamity engulfed New Orleans.

Setting aside the rhetoric, the claim here is that ‘society’ had failed as a result of bureaucratic practices relating to ‘the elderly’ and their ’needs’.

The evacuation of older people from New Orleans

How then was the evacuation of older people from New Orleans managed?

To date, there is little systematic information. Most of what I have obtained through the internet originates in eye-witness accounts produced, or collected, by journalists. As always of course newspapers have an eye for the ‘good story’ and age often features in these. Older people tend to be portrayed as victims rather than heroes.

These are the four settings from which older people had to be evacuated: from their own homes, from nursing homes, from hospitals and from other institutions.

I have limited evidence about evacuation from other institutions . The prime example, one that has recently been featured on British television, is the prison: the New Orleans Parish Prison. It was also investigated by Human Rights Watch in September last year. There would have been 7,500 to 8,000 inmates in the prison when Katrina struck. As it began to flood, it was abandoned by the guards. There were several reports of dead bodies being seen but, to date, no deaths have been officially reported. One month after Katrina struck, the Department of Corrections spokesperson reported that 517 inmates were still missing. The television film revealed a more phlegmatic and stoical response to the crisis from the older inmates.

Turning to the experience of older people living in their own home , there is little evidence, even anecdotal, of how they responded or of the sequence of decisions they may have faced in seeking refuge. All the internet offers are glimpses of how some people responded and coped.

Many older people will have escaped in advance of the arrival of Katrina. In the preceding week they will have travelled to stay with family in other parts of the USA. Others may have fled, perhaps with their family, over the previous weekend. Even though they were able to leave New Orleans behind, they may have found it a testing experience.

The restaurant critic of the New Orleans daily newspaper, for example, described how a well known restauranteur had set out with his wife, two children and 91-year-old mother-in-law to stay with his sister in Florida. The highway east was closed so they headed to his brother’s farm in Alabama. That proved impossible so they landed on fellow restauranteurs in Jackson, Mississippi. There was no power there however, so they moved on to Oxford, Mississippi, joining other evacuees from what was described as ‘New Orleans’ professional class’.

Others had probably resolved to stay in their own home but, when the floodwaters began to rise, they either evacuated ‘upwards’ perhaps to be rescued from their roof, or they set out from their homes in search of safety:

As a blazing sun and stifling humidity took their toll, 65-year-old Faye Taplin rested alone on the steps of the Christ Cathedral … Rising water had finally chased her from her Central City home. She clutched two plastic bags containing bedding, a little food and water and insulin to treat her diabetes.

There is some evidence that some older people were rescued by people passing by. One report describes how a truck had driven a couple in their 90s from eastern New Orleans and dropped them off outside a convention centre, one of the refuges of last resort. The husband however was already dead and his wife was sitting munching crackers, seemingly unaware of the tragic drama around her.

Other older people sought rescue alongside their neighbours. A newspaper reporter writing on the day Katrina hit New Orleans described how he had heard of a house where a dozen people including ‘some elderly people and a pregnant woman’ were desperate for help.

There is some limited evidence of how older people were denied places on buses. One man told a reporter that he had tried to get his parents on to a bus. His father was 78 and blind, and his mother 75 and crippled with arthritis

I couldn’t get them on because the young people, the healthy people were pushing and fighting to get on the bus. I couldn’t put them in that situation.

This happened repeatedly as buses appeared, filled up, and left. And then, when a bus arrived that was designated for ‘the elderly and disabled’, he and his 62-year-old aunt were not allowed on to accompany his parents.

Many older people were bussed to the Superdome. A geriatrician working there speculated that those who had made it were ‘tough’. She suspected that many of the dead bodies would be “frail elderly who couldn’t sit in the sun for 48 hours”. The implication of this comment is that some will indeed have spent two days in the open air waiting to be rescued.

She described how many were in a confused state as they stepped off the buses. Some needed help to get to food or to a toilet. Some couldn’t hear the loudspeaker announcements. Another evacuee, she said, “shepherded” older people to one area in the Superdome “so they could be together” and so social workers could check their needs.

In contrast to evidence about how people were evacuated from their own homes, we are learning much about the plight of people who were in institutions when Katrina arrived. Legal action is being taken and, in that context, detailed if conflicting accounts are being reported.

Evacuation of nursing homes

The following are the key points about the evacuation of nursing homes in New Orleans.

Under-resourced homes
Unclear responsibilities
Inadequate plans
Insufficient transport
Unprepared refuges
Unexpected crises when forced to relocate

For several years the nursing home industry in Louisiana has been under attack. Recently, for example, the state was sued by nursing-home residents and potential residents who said they could live in their own homes with help. They claimed the state, by not providing community-based services, was unconstitutionally forcing them into nursing homes. This should be borne in mind in reflecting upon how these homes were evacuated.

Of all the 51 states in the USA, Louisiana has the highest rate of beds per 1,000 persons aged 85 or more – 550 per 1,000 – and a lower than average occupancy rate. Some homes in New Orleans were only half full. Indicators of inequality place Louisiana high in the rankings and so there will be nursing homes serving wealthy people that are well-resourced and well able to cope with crises. Several, for example, hired helicopters to evacuate their residents. Others however will have targeted the less wealthy market and it is likely that some of these homes will have been under-resourced and ill-prepared to deal with unexpected floods.

Although all nursing homes in Louisiana were required to have evacuation plans, it was unclear how these were supposed to relate to mandatory evacuation orders such as that issued by the Mayor. This touched on the delicate questions of timing, costs and responsibilities. Had the Mayor insisted on all nursing homes being evacuated then the costs to the authority could have been immense.

Out of 60 nursing homes in New Orleans, 21 had evacuated their residents in advance of Katrina. In fact, the first hurricane-related deaths occurred the day before Katrina struck when three residents died whilst being evacuated to Baton Rouge.

In contrast, over half the nursing homes in New Orleans decided against early evacuation. It was widely felt that many residents would not survive evacuation, and so no preparations were made. One, for example, unlike many others, had a back-up generator on its roof and plans for emergency power if needed. After two days however, it was clear that “things weren’t going to get better soon”, and it was decided to evacuate. In a similar way, all but three homes were ‘forced to relocate’ in the early aftermath of the storm.

A critical aspect of evacuation plans is transport and refuge. Too many homes, it was said, were contracted with the same bus companies. Homes had to wait, and then, when residents were bussed out, it was often to locations that were no better, if not worse, and, as with the Superdome, secondary evacuation became necessary.

One account, for example, describes how a party of people “in their 70s, 80s and 90s” had been found in a “school turned cesspool”. They had been taken there and abandoned. They had medicines and oxygen and this suggests they had been bussed there from a nursing home. According to those who found them, most were unable to move without help. They were there for two nights before being rescued. This evidence suggests that buses being used to empty nursing homes rather than to provide a safe evacuation.

Allegedly, some residents were abandoned by owners and staff. The plight of residents in St. Rita’s home, for example, created an early public outcry. Of 60 residents, 34 were found dead in the home. Neighbours described how they had rescued some of the residents by floating them away on mattresses. A report in the New York Times described how bodies were still in the home a week later; “draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of muck”. The owner of St. Rita’s has since been charged with negligent homicide. He claimed that “most of the families had decided to keep their relatives there”. One wonders at what point these decisions were taken and conveyed to the owner.

What this suggests is that most nursing homes had wholly inadequate plans for evacuation. One comment was that their state-mandated plans “fell spectacularly apart”.

Evacuation of hospitals

The hospitals were explicitly exempt from the Mayor’s mandatory evacuation order. A spokesman said “Hospitals don’t evacuate. Hospitals stay in place.” Rather they were required to have enough emergency provisions to operate for two to three days during a disaster.

Many people, however, were outside seeking refuge and they saw hospitals as tall, solid buildings. And some of these people had friends or relatives currently receiving treatment. Initially people were allowed in. As a result, there were claims that 2,000 people became trapped in the Memorial Medical Centre, a 339-bedded hospital. However, it lost power when its back-up generators failed. The elevators and the air conditioning stopped working. One local resident who had escaped there told a reporter of the “heroic” efforts of nurses to keep patients cool by wafting them with cardboard for hours.

Currently, legal action is underway concerning events on the seventh floor of the hospital. This was leased to a private company that provides long-term patient care. Escape was only possible at the first floor level, six floors below, where boats were transporting patients to helicopters. On the first floor however, the odour was ‘horrendous’ as a result of the stifling heat and the backed-up sewers. Moreover helicopters were scarce and the Federal Emergency Management Agency was intervening. According to the New York Times :

When private companies dispatched helicopters, trucks and buses to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes, officials from FEMA commandeered some of them for other uses … The rescue of those who had remained in their homes, or were sheltered in an increasingly chaotic Superdome, became a priority.

On Wednesday evening, police officers arrived at the hospital to evacuate all non-essential staff. As a result, some patients became separated from members of their families who had come to be with them. The following day, a decision was taken to abandon the hospital and to evacuate all living patients. Only the dead remained.

The doctors and nurses were faced with few options. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly, evacuations were sporadic and security was compromised. Staff agonized whether to attempt to transport critically ill patients who might not survive the arduous evacuation. It appears another choice was considered: whether to end the lives of those who could not be moved.

The actions of one doctor and two nurses have become another on-going legal case. Allegedly they had been engaged in acts of euthanasia. Thus the policy that hospitals should not evacuate but should be able to cope with emergencies had failed and staff were placed in an iniquitous position. There were no plans for a ‘no alternative but to escape’ scenario.

In summary there are six key issues in the on-going debates and legal actions associated with nursing homes and hospitals:

the existence and status of evacuation plans
deciding whether and when to evacuate
the availability of transport
the preparation of refuges
the responsibilities of staff in managing an evacuation
the practice of euthanasia.

Lessons to be learnt

It is too early to draw any firm conclusions from Katrina. The available evidence however casts some light on how age is relevant to the organisation of mass evacuations and the position of older people in western societies. The most obvious point is that the media focus on race and poverty has tended to mask the issue of age.

The significance of the statistical association of physical capacity and age is confirmed. It is clear that on average older people are slower, less resilient and less inclined to escape. This is, and should be, taken into account in the planning of evacuations.

Secondly, past experience and personal biographies are relevant. The real disaster in New Orleans was not the hurricane itself, but the breaching of the levees and the subsequent flooding of large parts of the city. Had the levees not been breached then it is possible that there would have been far fewer deaths. Possibly most of the deaths of older people would have been due to the stress of evacuation, rather than the trials of sitting out the hurricane. The mistake of many was to think that Katrina was ‘just another hurricane’.

Finally, the concept of ‘special needs’ is a double-edged sword. Several commentators noted that the highest rates of Katrina-related deaths were among hospital patients and the residents of nursing homes.

Some might react to this by arguing that the elderly and critically ill were at the end of their lives and, when faced with such a calamitous situation, the young should come first. But as one grandson commented: “My grandmother wasn’t supposed to die like this”.

A paper presented at the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers, London, 31 August 2006.

Study: Significantly more US hurricane-related deaths among vulnerable

Hurricanes in the U.S. the last few decades killed thousands more people than meteorologists traditionally calculate and a disproportionate number of those victims are poor, vulnerable and minorities, according to a new epidemiological study.

A team of public health and storm experts calculated that from 1988 to 2019 more than 18,000 people likely died, mostly indirectly, because of hurricanes and lesser tropical cyclones in the continental United States. That's 13 times more than the 1,385 people directly killed by storms that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration figures, but the study authors said those numbers aren't directly comparable.

Instead of just looking at people who drowned, were hit by debris or killed directly by the storm, the study in Wednesday's journal Science Advances examines changes in a storm-hit county’s overall number of deaths just before, during and after a hurricane and compared those to normal years. Researchers attributed the excess deaths to the storm, using a standard public health technique.

"It's the difference between how many people died and how many people would have died on a normal day" with no hurricane, said study lead author Robbie Parks, an environmental epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

After a storm, deaths spike because of heart and lung problems, infections, injury and mental health issues, Parks said. It's a stressful time with clean-up and rebuilding.

Parks said meteorologists do an admirable job counting people killed during the height of the storm, but so many people die indirectly and especially after the storm, he said "it does seem to be an undercount" that misses the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

SEE MORE: More extreme heat expected in the Pacific Northwest this week

"People who have the least means suffer the most," said study lead author Robbie Parks, an environmental epidemiologist at Mailman. "It’s a good opportunity to put a number on that."

Using the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability index, Parks divided American counties into the least vulnerable third, the most vulnerable third and the middle, categories that often correlate with the richest, poorest and middle income people. In the case of the heaviest hurricane winds, the most vulnerable third had 57% of the excess deaths and least vulnerable had 6%.

"Conceptually the results of the study make sense, as tropical cyclones often leave communities vulnerable for long periods of time after impact," National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said in an email.

The hurricane center has noticed this when their experts study storm sites, so the center is trying to increase community engagement to more socially vulnerable populations and expand translation of storm warnings into other languages, Brennan said.

"It does not surprise me, but deeply saddens me that excess mortality is largest among the most vulnerable segments of our population," said MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel, who wasn’t part of the study. "It is the poorer people with fewer places to evacuate to and fewer means to get out who take the brunt of the suffering."

After a storm, people need to have money "to do more than just survive from day to day," which is why the poorer, more vulnerable survive less, said former NOAA hurricane scientist Jim Kossin of the climate risk nonprofit First Street Foundation, who also was not part of the study.

Finding out how many people are really killed because of a storm is much more challenging to quantify than merely counting direct deaths reported in the media, Kossin said.

For example, the National Hurricane Center estimates that 1,200 people died in 2005's Hurricane Katrina, but using deaths before, during and after and comparing them to 30 years of normal death rates for those places at that time of year, Parks and colleagues figured a death count of 1,491.

Parks' team found bigger gaps between official death counts and what they calculated for 2012's Superstorm Sandy, where the hurricane center said 147 people died. Parks put the death toll at 1,193. And the largest gap was for 2017’s Irma, where NOAA said 92 people died directly or indirectly in the United States, while Parks counted 1,202.

The National Hurricane Center's Brennan said his agency writes official reports on storms that use fatality statistics based on information from government officials, medical examiners and the media within several months of landfall. The center doesn't have access to the longer-term statistical studies used to calculate "indirect" deaths, but tries to bring them in when able, such as in the case of 2005's Katrina and 2017's Maria.

In a separate report for the American Meteorological Society, the National Hurricane Center analyzed how people died in direct hurricane deaths the last 10 years and compared them to earlier. It found that a much lower percentage of people are being killed by storm surge, but a higher percentage of Americans are dying in freshwater flooding.

From 1963 to 2012, storm surge was responsible for almost half of the hurricane deaths. NOAA has made a concerted effort to improve storm surge forecasts, warning and education of residents on the coast. Since 2013, only 11% of the hurricane deaths were storm-surge related, the hurricane center said.

But freshwater flooding deaths went from 27% of the deaths to 57% of all hurricane deaths, a figure that may be skewed by 2017's Hurricane Harvey, when there were 65 freshwater flooding deaths. Rip current and surf deaths went from 6% of the hurricane deaths to 15%.

SEE MORE: NOAA upgrades Atlantic hurricane prediction to 'above-normal'

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Hurricane experts available to discuss storms, emergency preparation, disaster response, and recovery

15 Jul 2024

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Virginia Tech has experts available to speak on topics surrounding the 2024 hurricane season including the increase in severe storms, coastal flooding risks, flooding prediction models, disaster resilience, storm preparation, and response.

To schedule an interview, please contact [email protected] .

Stephanie Zick studies tropical meteorology, tropical cyclones (hurricanes), precipitation, numerical weather prediction, and model forecast verification. Her research focuses on using spatial methods to better understand tropical cyclone dynamics and structure with a particular focus on hurricane landfall. More specifically, she harnesses the intimate link between the anatomy of a hurricane and its physiology, or the physical mechanisms that fuel the storm. Zick is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography.

Manoochehr Shirzaei is an environmental security expert and associate professor of geophysics and remote sensing in the College of Science. His research interests include sea level rise, land subsidence, and flooding hazards. Shirzaei’s team at the Virginia Tech Earth Observation and Innovation Lab monitors and analyzes the environmental impact of hurricanes and creates flooding maps as well as other data to help first responders, policymakers, and the public locate the worst impact. They also are working to create a policy briefing that will be published by the United Nations by the end of this hurricane season. The lab integrates remote sensing, Earth observation data, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics.

Robert Weiss develops computer models and uses analytics to examine the impact of coastal hazards in the past, present, and future. For the geologic past, his work attempts to translate the geologic record into insights that improve the understanding of coastal hazards today. For predicting future hazard impacts, he uses high-performance computing to better characterize the effect of climate change impacts and their uncertainty on how coastal hazards, such as tsunamis and hurricanes, will affect future coastal areas. Weiss is a professor of natural hazards in the Department of Geosciences.

Jennifer Irish studies coastal flooding and engineering solutions to minimize its impacts. Her work emphasizes the characterization of storm surge likelihood, barrier island response to coastal storms, mitigation potential of coastal forests and wetlands, and the influence of sea level rise. Irish is a professor of coastal engineering in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Anamaria Bukvic 's research is focused on coastal hazards and disasters, adaptation, resilience, and population relocation. She studies the impacts of coastal flooding on migration dynamics and displacement in coastal settings and the reasons behind the willingness to consider permanent relocation in rural and urban communities. She also studies the flood risk of older coastal populations and other socially vulnerable groups. Bukvic is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography.

Liesel Ritchie is a disaster resilience expert and professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Ritchie has studied a range of disaster events, including the Exxon Valdez, BP Deepwater Horizon, and Mauritius oil spills; the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash release; Hurricane Katrina; and earthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand. Her focus has been on the social impacts of disasters and community resilience, including conducting social impact assessments with an emphasis on technological hazards and disasters, social capital, and rural renewable resource communities.

Christopher Zobel ’s research is focused on helping decision-makers improve their ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters. He particularly is interested in using analytical modeling and computer simulation to help understand the complex nature of disaster resilience. Zobel is a professor of business information technology in the Pamplin College of Business.

Dan Goerlich serves Virginia Cooperative Extension as associate director for economy, community, and food. In this role, Goerlich provides leadership to Extension’s emergency preparedness and response efforts, among other responsibilities. Extension offers valuable research-based information to support communities preparing for and recovering from disasters. Goerlich is a Virginia Tech representative on the Extension Disaster Education Network, a collaborative multistate effort by Cooperative Extension Services across the country to improve the delivery of services to citizens affected by disasters. He also serves on the advisory board for the Virginia Tech disaster resilience and risk management graduate certificate program.

About Virginia Tech Center for Coastal Studies

Nearly half of the world’s population lives in the coastal zone and is, therefore, exposed to the impacts of terrestrial and marine processes. The Center for Coastal Studies’ mission is to inspire societally relevant solutions to the complex challenges emerging in the coastal zone. Sea level rise, urbanization, and other stressors threaten important nodes of the global economy, critical infrastructure for civil and national security, and fragile ecosystems. Human and ecosystem well-being, economic prosperity, and security are interdependent and form a complex coupled network, defining a nexus of resource limitation, opportunity, and vulnerability from which knowledge crucial for the design of sustainable solutions can emerge – the Center for Coastal Studies overarching goal.

About Virginia Cooperative Extension

Virginia Cooperative Extension is a partnership of Virginia Tech, Virginia State University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local governments. Extension operates out of 107 offices, 11 Agricultural Research and Extension Centers, and six 4-H centers across the Commonwealth. Agents, specialists, and volunteers work to assist farmers, empower youth, guide responsible resource management, and advance the well-being of all Virginians.

Margaret Ashburn

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