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Community Impacts of Hurricane Katrina

In an alley in the French Quarter - New Orleans, Louisiana
Photo credit: Courte Voorhees

Introduction

A major theme of disaster and forced displacement and resettlement research is reconstitution of community, which can be defined both physically and socially. Survivors are displaced from their neighborhoods and community ties and social networks are often strained or broken. Their place attachments and identities are disrupted, causing both emotional and material loss. Conflict within the community often ensues. In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and caused the largest displacement of whole communities in U.S. history.

An interdisciplinary research team based in the Center for Community Studies at Vanderbilt University is conducting a study to examine these issues. Our current study explores which factors determine the form, duration, and success of community rebuilding (both socially and physically) following disasters and other forced relocations. In terms of physically-defined community, the voices of long-term residents of diverse and unique neighborhoods are essential to the reconstruction of their neighborhoods to preserve the character and community that form such an integral part of their identity.

John Vick and Brian Christens conducting research in New Orleans
Photo credit: Rose Vick

We examined what neighborhood elements citizens want preserved, what they want changed, and who they feel should have control over the rebuilding process. In terms of socially-defined community, we examined loss of community, social disconnect, and neighborhood identity in the wake of disaster. Most of the social research on disasters in the U.S. has focused on short-term and potential long-term, stress-related individual psychological impacts or regional and national economic impacts, but few have examined the impact of displacement and resettlement on the community per se, which is critical to individuals' and families' ability to cope and adjust and to their decision to return and rebuild. Based largely on the existing international research, communities are often surprisingly adaptive and resilient-new leadership structures emerge, new organizations form to meet new challenges, relationships with external agents (government, relief and other nonprofit organizations) develop and evolve.

Methods

Qualitative interviews were conducted with evacuees of Hurricane Katrina currently residing in New Orleans, Louisiana and Nashville, Tennessee. Interviews were conducted approximately six months after the disaster, which provided an opportunity for those affected to assess their situation post-disaster and identify their needs and concerns, reflect on their experiences, and consider their plans for the future. Five neighborhoods with varying levels of damage and demographics (race, income, age) were chosen for the study. Convenience and snowball sampling was utilized in New Orleans, accomplished by researchers approaching people in parks, cafes, bars, on the street, and knocking on the doors of homes in the neighborhood. This procedure resulted in a sample that was diverse in terms of economic class, ethnicity, age, and amount of damage to home. In Nashville, individuals were recruited from developments housing evacuees from New Orleans. In order to be interviewed, individuals must have been residents of New Orleans before and during Hurricane Katrina. The interview protocol was semi-structured and included both open-ended and closed-ended questions, with most interviews lasting between 20 and 40 minutes. Questions were broken out into six categories: 1) neighborhood and family, 2) future plans, 3) community involvement, 4) reconstruction, 5) media representation, and 6) demographics.

John Vick interviewing a Katrina survivor in his New Orleans home
Photo credit: Rose Vick

Preliminary Findings

Preliminary analysis of the interview responses indicate that the greatest difficulty people are currently facing is housing. Those who are back in New Orleans are having difficulty getting money to rebuild their homes, while those who have less damage are having difficulty finding workers to fix the damage. Many individuals who have not returned don't have the resources to repair their home or purchase a new one, and rent in the city has become so expensive post Katrina (tripled, according to several accounts on the ground) that most people cannot afford it, preventing those who rented in the city before the storm from returning. One surprising finding was that jobs are easy to find; there are more jobs than people to hire. Most people want to have some type of input on how their neighborhoods and New Orleans as a whole are rebuilt, but few had specific plans of action. The two things people wanted most to change as a result of the rebuilding process were 1) leadership and 2) crime. Nearly everyone interviewed wanted a change in leadership, mostly on the local level. Many people spoke about the city's crime being dramatically reduced as a result of Katrina, and feared that it might return as rebuilding progresses.

As a result of the disaster, people said they would like to become, or have already become, more active in their community, even those who were highly active before the disaster. People also emphatically stated that individuals in their communities pulled together and helped each other out during and after the storm. Some general trends found across interviews were a strong place attachment to homes, neighborhoods, and cities; a strengthened sense of community after the storm; resilience and positive attitude of those back in the city contrasted with depression and anxiety of those still displaced; and the media not being an accurate source of information during and after the storm.

Friends and family in a park in New Orleans
Photo credit: Courte Voorhees

Project Publications
Voorhees, C. W., Vick, J., Perkins, D. D. (in press) "Came hell and high water": The intersection of Hurricane Katrina, the news media, and poverty. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.

Project Presentations
Vick, J. Rebuilding Community among Residents Displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Paper presented at the Southeast ECO Conference, September 9, 2006.

Vick, J., Perkins, D., Christens, B., Nelson, M., & Speer, P. Rebuilding Community Among Residents Displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Urban Affairs Association, April 20, 2006.

Vick, J., Perkins, D., Christens, B., Nelson, M., Conway, P., & Speer, P. Citizen Participation in the Face of Conflict: Community voices on the rebuilding and planning of neighborhoods in the wakes of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Environmental Design and Research Association, May 4, 2006. Symposium Organizer.

Voorhees, C., Vick, J., & Prilleltensky, I. Seeing eye to eye: Media representation versus perspectives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, March 29, 2006.

"Believe in New Orleans"
The French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, post-Katrina
Photo credit: Rose Vick