New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina - Case Study Example

Case Study of New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina Name Institution Course Instructor Date of Submission Mention Hurricane Katrina and what comes to mind is one of the most devastating disaster in America in history. The Category Three hurricane resulted in massive loss of lives and property, and its effects are still felt up to date since 2005 when it occurred. The disaster displaced more than 2 million people while 1,300 lost their lives, as well as a long trend of declining mortality in the United States. In addition, the people hit severely by the effects of the hurricane were the vulnerable African-Americans and the poor people who resided in the levee system protected area. Social scientists believe that hurricanes and other disaster are not natural because they are triggered by human activities. For instance, rise in sea levels, soil erosion of the coastal areas, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather and other factors linked to climate change, whose effect when combined make coastal cities such as New Orleans vulnerable to such hurricanes and associated hazards. As a result, social calculus largely plays a role in determining the causes, preparedness, vulnerability, response, results and reconstructions during a disaster. Overview of New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina New Orleans is a city in the Gulf Coast located below sea level, and thus, it has a high level of physical exposure. It is also located between the Mississippi River and marked by widespread environmental degradation characterized by loss of coastal wetland regions, which acted as buffer for natural storm-surge (Tierney 2012). This together with other forms of environmental degradation left the city vulnerable to hazardous disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina occurred towards the end of August 2008 affecting heavily the Gulf South. Hurricane Katrina was a trigger event that caused failure of federal levees and major flooding in New Orleans. From the effects, it is evident that some areas suffered severely than others, and this could be due to social structure of the city. As a result, the disaster raised serious questions on how class and race influence human and institutional responses to search disasters. The extent of damage in different areas depended on emotional support, evacuation timing, employment situations, housing, as well as plans to move back to pre-storm communities (Hartman & Squires 2006). Therefore, the consequences of the disaster were mostly gravitated by human actions and interactions more than by natural forces. There is no such thing as a natural disaster As Smith (2006:1) suggests, for every disaster there is a distinct phase and aspect, which include preparedness, vulnerability, response, results and reconstruction, as well as social calculus of the place. This is what defines the phrase, ‘there is no such thing as a natural disaster’. The impact of Hurricane Katrina was widely irregular, and as such, class and race deeply manifested in the irregularity of the disaster impacts. This is a clear indication that there were serious challenges regarding governance particularly with regard to social-demographic trends and social inequality. Proper governance requires appropriate integration and response formulation in order to effectively manage a disaster and limit loss of lives and destruction of property (Tierney 2012). Weak states and poorly governed societies are most likely to exhibit serious problems in disaster governance. However, governance failures can also present in societies with stable governance as in the case of Hurricane Katrina. According to Tierney (2012;350), the implications that manifest in disaster management failures arise from economic organization, state-civil society relationships and societal transitions. No doubt, the extent of disaster highly depends on the effectiveness of the governance, and that is why the vulnerable African Americans were mostly affected by the disaster. The extent of damage caused by disasters depends on the social constructions of a given geographical region. Therefore, during the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the social calculus of New Orleans largely determined who passed on and who lived because of the effects of the disaster. For instance, in New Orleans, the city had witnessed adverse economic and social problems that had been pre-existing long before the Hurricane Katrina disaster (Hartman & Squires 2006). As such, serious damage and loss of lives when the hurricane occurred was inevitable among the vulnerable groups. This is because such social and economic conditions pre-existing in the poor and vulnerable communities before the hurricane presented an obstacle when it came to rescue operations and minimizing loss of lives. This also made it difficult for New Orleans to prove a resilient city (Gotham & Campanella 2011). Moreover, the displaced and dispossessed African-Americans occurred in large numbers, and this made it hard to reconstruct New Orleans, especially with regard to social aspect. It is hard to bring people back from the geographical regions that they ran to for shelter, in order to reconstruct the city. However, New Orleans notably has done a marvelous job in reconstructing by bonding the social fabric of the city, as well as the unique geographical feature of the city. For example, the Anglo” African-Americans settled in the neighborhoods such as Treme, Ninth Ward and Bywater (Hartman & Squires 2006). This indicates how resilience and social construction played a major role in reconstructing New Orleans City. Cities are much more than buildings and structures because underneath these, there are social networks and human lives that make up the heart and soul or every city. Therefore, this social fabric is as vulnerable to disasters as the physical infrastructure. Furthermore, the social fabric or the social vulnerabilities present catastrophic effects during disasters, as seen in the case of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Studies performed by NOAA suggest that the destruction caused by the hurricane were not limited to piecemeal engineering and preexisting landscape features (Tierney 2012). It reveals that social factors such as susceptibility of a given social group to the effects of hazards contributed majorly to the destructions, as well as resiliency. Moreover, a warning was issued about the storm and non-evacuees were aware of the fact that powerful storms were heading their direction. This then raises questions as to why there was so much destruction and massive loss of lives, despite the availability of a functioning warning system. Social vulnerabilities reflects social inequalities in the society, as well as other preexisting social factors such as age, race, gender, class, personal factors including awareness and knowledge of evacuation, physical mobility, emergency services, social networks and many more. Individuals or communities with social vulnerabilities lack means to execute self-protective measures and means of evacuation during disasters. For instance, many New Orleans particular African-Americans and other minority groups lacked the means, thus they had no choice, but to weather the storm (Gotham & Campanella 2011). This is majorly the reason why mostly African-Americans and poor people suffered adverse effects than other groups in New Orleans. Hence, limited resources for aid accessible to the socially vulnerable that had preexisting social inequality contributed to the destruction in New Orleans. The different social vulnerabilities primary led to high rates of non-evacuation and high death tolls during Hurricane Katrina. These social vulnerabilities exhibited by the residents of New Orleans were preexisting before the hurricane occurrence, but amplified during the disaster to result in massive loss of lives. The major was that the residents were not able to prepare appropriately for the storm because of these pre-existing social vulnerabilities (Gotham & Campanella 2011). As a result, they could not defend themselves against the floods resulting in high death tolls. Furthermore, for the southeastern residents of Louisiana, evacuation impeded because of lack of protection from the piecemeal hurricane protection system. Notably, there is no such thing as natural a disaster. This is because the disasters that occur such as floods, hurricanes among others are widely due to social aspects of the society and human activities. For instance, hurricanes are due to combined effects of rising sea levels, erosion of coastal soil and other forms of environmental degradation. Evidently, Hurricane Katrina that occurred in New Orleans in 2005 was no different as it resulted from the impacts of climate change. In addition, the social aspect of a city plays a major role in these disasters as they determine the extent of destruction and loss of lives caused during these disasters. In New Orleans, it is clear that social vulnerabilities limited access to aid and chances of evacuations, thus, primarily leading to a shocking loss of lives and destruction of property. As such, the people mostly affected by the disaster were the poor and African Americans who had limited access to resources. References Gotham, K., & Campanella, R. (2011). Coupled vulnerability and resilience: The dynamics of cross-scale interactions in post-Katrina New Orleans. Ecology and Society . Hartman, C. W., & Squires, G. D. (2006). There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina. Routledge. Smith, N. (2006). There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaste. SSRC. Tierney, K. (2012). Disaster Governance: Social, Political, and Economic Dimensions. Environment and Resources , 341-363.             Read More