Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief [1 ed.] 9781527500785, 9781527518155

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Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief

Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief Edited by

Michael Powelson

Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief Edited by Michael Powelson This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Michael Powelson and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8990-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8990-2

This book is dedicated to the late Michael Mizell-Nelson, New Orleans’ greatest historian

A native of New Orleans, Michael attend public schools in the city and received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD from Tulane University. Michael taught at Delgado Community College before accepting a tenure track position at the University of New Orleans. An activist and scholar, Michael is interested in every aspect of his beloved city, and discovered how the famous New Orleans sandwich, the “Poboy,” got its name. In 1995 Michael produced and directed the excellent documentary Streetcar Stories, which chronicled the history of New Orleans’ iconic streetcar system. After Hurricane Katrina hit, Michael worked to create the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, which collects stories, images, and items related to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Before his untimely death, Michael was working on a book about the history of working-class people in New Orleans. More than anything, Michael was a great, genuine, and kind person. Michael is survived by his wife Cathe, also a great, genuine, and kind person, and their two children, Keely and Arlo. Michael Mizell-Nelson is sorely missed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................ ix Part 1: First Hand Accounts Surviving the Hurricane............................................................................... 2 Mary Gehman Holdout: The Story of a Katrina Survivor ................................................. 42 Michael Howells Surviving the Flood ................................................................................... 52 Eloise Williams Part 2: Saving Lives and Wetlands Public Health Leadership in a Crisis 2014: Themes from the Literature ... 60 Zin Htway and Cassandra Casteel The English Turn Forests: Their Composition and Significance in Post-Katrina New Orleans ..................................................................... 82 Thomas Huggins, Sean Anderson, John Lambrinos and Katie Brasted The Disaster of Disaster Relief .................................................................. 95 Sean Anderson Part 3: Lessons Learned: Looking Forward History Made by a Storm......................................................................... 112 Vanessa van Heerden Tourism Responds to Disaster: The Case of Hurricane Katrina .............. 124 Richard W. Hallett and Judith Kaplan-Weinger Climate Change and Future Katrinas ....................................................... 133 David Klein

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Hurricane Katrina and the Market Response to Disaster ......................... 141 Michael Powelson Resiliency For Whom? Public Housing, Class Struggle, and a Real People’s Reconstruction of Post-Katrina New Orleans ........................... 168 John Arena Notes from the Big Easy.......................................................................... 186 Harry Shearer Postscript ................................................................................................. 202 Index ........................................................................................................ 204

INTRODUCTION

The river rose all day, the river rose all night Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away alright The river have busted through, clear down to Plaquemines Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline “Louisiana 1927” by Randy Newman

Despite the numerous hurricanes and floods that have ravaged the Gulf Coast region over the centuries, in 2005 the area was, once again, entirely unprepared to respond to Hurricane Katrina. In December of that year, four months after Katrina had hit, I visited New Orleans and, as I drove the streets inspecting the damaged homes and still-broken levee system, it was clear to me that this disaster, which cost the lives of over 1,800 people and destroyed thousands of homes, hundreds of apartment buildings, and dozens of businesses, parks, schools, and libraries, was entirely humanmade. The flooding of the city came not from Katrina but from the broken levee system that was poorly constructed and even more poorly maintained. The loss of life was also avoidable, and had the government drawn up a basic evacuation plan and provided the equipment to carry it out, not a single person need have died. Also unnecessary was the dislocation of thousands of housing unit residents and the eventual destruction of all of New Orleans’ public housing units. As a former carpenter, I have a good idea whether or not a structure should be demolished, and after visiting the Saint Bernard housing project I concluded that the buildings did not need to be torn down. In fact, it would have been much cheaper to do the minor repairs needed to make the housing project habitable once again. Since that visit in 2005, I have visited New Orleans a number of times and nothing that I have read, heard, or seen has altered my first impression that the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina did not have to happen. In 2015, on the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, myself and other academics, students, and community activists organized a conference both to study the hurricane and the flooding that followed and understand how such a disaster could have taken place at all. The conference was not called to celebrate New Orleans’ “resiliency” or the city’s supposed determination to “bounce back,” but rather to understand, critically and

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scientifically, how and why such a disaster could have taken place in this uniquely American city, located in the wealthiest nation on the planet. Thus, myself and Dr. Sean Anderson—both faculty members at California State University, Channel Islands, in Camarillo, California—placed a call for papers to be presented at the conference “Disaster on the Delta: Ten Years Since Hurricane Katrina” on October 16, 2015. It is this conference that forms the basis of the current volume. This book is divided into three sections. Section One, “First Hand Accounts,” tells the stories of three New Orleanians who stayed in the city during the hurricane and flooding that followed. Mary Gehman, who is white, tells of her decision to remain in the city and, hopefully, her home. Eventually, Mary was forced to evacuate and so spent a number of days on a freeway overpass with fellow survivors, many of them inmates of the Orleans Parish prison. Mike Howells, also white, describes the ordeal of living in a city without electricity, running water, or even food, while, at the same time recording how human beings in times of crisis are able to band together and help each other out. Finally, Eloise Williams, who is black, recounts the lack of a plan by city, state, or federal officials to provide water, food, shelter, or a plan for evacuation. At the same time, Eloise records some wonderful moments when average New Orleanians— white and black—extended help and protection to other, more vulnerable people. Their stories speak for themselves and contain a range of emotions, from fear, uncertainty, and pain to relief, compassion, and outright joy. Section Two, “Saving Lives and Wetlands,” looks at how, with better organization and planning, the tragedy of Katrina could have been prevented. Zin Htway and Cassandra Casteel argue that poor management and leadership and an inability to adjust actions based on the actual conditions played a big role in turning a major weather event into a full-on disaster. Thomas Huggins, Sean Anderson, John Lambrinos, and Katie Brasted focus on the role that wetland erosion played in making Katrina such a devastating storm. These scholars note that a robust wetland surrounding New Orleans would have slowed down the great surge of water that topped—and in places even toppled—New Orleans’ levee system. Finally, Sean Anderson analyses how years of human engineering and intervention in the ecosystem, flood control, and levee and canal construction conspired to make Katrina an event much more destructive than it would have otherwise been. Section Three, “Lessons Learned: Looking Forward,” considers how the mistakes made in response to Hurricane Katrina can help to avoid them in the future, if only we recognize what those mistakes are. Vanessa van

Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief

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Heerden shows how an informed, government-directed disaster policy that combines human expansion and growth with government polices to protect and revive the ecosystem would benefit most everyone. Richard Hallett and Judith Kaplan-Weiner show how the tourist industry has adjusted to the post-Katrina reality by emphasizing different elements of New Orleans’ famous culture of food, music, and festivals. David Klein predicts that, with global warming, disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are more likely to happen. Dr. Klein argues that, by transitioning out of capitalism and into an economic system known as “ecosocialism,” humanity can maintain a sustainable planet in the near future. In my paper, I argue that relying on market forces during a crisis is the wrong approach, and, in fact, it is during a crisis that the “magic of the market” should be abandoned in favor of a well-planned, government-directed relief effort. John Arena challenges the celebratory nature of both politicians and business people who claim that New Orleans is “coming back” because New Orleanians are “resilient.” In showing how lacking the relief effort was, and continues to be, at every level, Arena offers a very different picture than the boosters that celebrated the tenth anniversary of Katrina. Arena notes that if the response to Katrina was carried out with the intention of benefitting the people, the relief effort was a failure. Only if it was geared to enrich corporations and real estate speculators, argues Arena, can it be declared a success. Finally, actor, comedian, and radio talk show host Harry Shearer, who spends part of his year in New Orleans, provides examples of the mistakes committed by government officials. Shearer also offers alternative solutions in the event that another Katrina hits New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. While this book focuses on an event that occurred over a decade ago in one region of the United States, we hope it will serve to inform peoples all over the US and the world who also live near levees, dams, power plants, sewage treatment plants, oil drilling platforms, high pressure fracking installations, nuclear generators, and a host of other public/private endeavors that could malfunction, as did the levees of New Orleans, and result in an unknown amount of death and destruction. Many people were involved in this project, and I can only name a few of them here. First, thanks go to my sons Eli and Noah, who are a constant source of inspiration to me and whose ideas often become my own. Thanks to Victoria Carruthers, commissioning editor at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and Graham Carter, who copy edited this book. Also thanks to Alison Potter of the California State University-Channel Islands (CSUCI) Department of History, who played such an important role helping to organize the conference that was the origin of this book. Thanks

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also to David Daniels, coordinator of CSUCIs Instructionally Related Activities program (IRA) that provided funding for the conference. Thanks also to Dr. Sean Anderson of CSUCI’s Department of Environmental Science and Resource Management, who jointly sponsored the conference. Also thanks to Dr. James Merriweather, Dr. Frank Barajas, Dr. Rainer Buschmann, and Dr. Scott Corbett, all in the CSUCI Department of History, all of whom provided much needed advice and help—and patiently suffered through my rants. Thanks to CSUCI’s Communication Specialist Kim Gregory who helped publicize the conference and, through her contacts, allowed me to talk about the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on radio station KVTA in Ventura, California. Both Hai Le, Information Technology Consultant and all around good guy, and Kristi O'Neil-Gonzalez of the CSUCI’s FIT Studio were instrumental both in setting up presentations for out-of-state participants and transferring those oral presentations into a printed format. Drs. Nan Yamane, David Klein, and Markar Melkonian, all professors at California State University-Northridge, deserve special thanks for helping to organize and proofread some of the conference papers as well as providing overall good counsel when needed. I also owe much gratitude to my CSU Channel Islands students Bernice Murias-Aispuro and Mikhail Kadyrov, who helped in the sometimes overwhelming job of editing. A special thanks to Farrel Broslawsky, my mentor at Los Angeles Valley College, and a great cheer for my comrade and long-time consigliere Dr. Mike Howells, who so cherishes New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and thus has devoted his life to making the region a better place to live. Finally, a special thanks to Elna Green, for both the good times and the bad, as well as all those times in-between.

PART 1: FIRST HAND ACCOUNTS

SURVIVING HURRICANE KATRINA MARY GEHMAN1

Thousands of people remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, which began on August 29, 2005. Those who stayed had their own reasons for choosing not to evacuate before the storm. None of them, of course, could have imagined the flooding of eighty percent of the city, nor that, once evacuated, they would not be able to return for at least a month to homes soaked in floodwaters for two weeks. I stayed through the storm, and was evacuated by boat to an overpass the following day where I spent three days and nights stranded with hundreds of others, with minimal water and food. Finally, on the evening of Friday, September 2, after eight hours in a crushing mob at the Superdome, I boarded a bus for Dallas. This is my story; one I hope will never be repeated in my beloved New Orleans.

August 22–26, 2005: Final Days Before the Storm Hurricane Katrina first appeared on weather tracking maps early in the week of August 22, which was also the first week of classes at Delgado Community College. I mentioned to students that we’d have a Fall break and a Thanksgiving break, unless, of course, a hurricane or two intervened. Little did I know then that we were enjoying our final days before a cataclysmic event that would send us to the far corners of the country and forever alter our lives.

Friday, August 26 At the end of the day there was talk that a hurricane was brewing in the Gulf and building strength, and classes might be cancelled if the storm continued its course towards New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina was predicted to land sometime on Monday and some people were packing their cars and leaving town. Events planned for the weekend were being cancelled, and we felt that we were in for a boring weekend glued to the TV with little to do since everything would be closed. On the way home from school I saw people boarding up their windows and doors and

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decided to stop at the supermarket to load up on canned goods like tuna fish and red beans—things easily eaten cold out of the can. I had plenty of bottled water, batteries, candles, and flashlights. Friends called to ask if I was going to evacuate and I said “definitively not.” We had weathered Hurricane Cindy, a tropical storm with very heavy winds, less than a month before and with no problems.2 I felt my sturdy, century-old house could withstand this storm as it had many before, plus I wanted to be there to carry things upstairs if need be. Also, my two aging outdoor dogs would be difficult to transport.

Saturday, August 27 The day dawned warm and clear with a soft breeze. Coverage of Katrina approaching New Orleans was broadcast on all the TV stations, whipping viewers into a numbing frenzy. I refused to listen because I can never figure out what is hype and what is fact in such cases. This was the big one, they said—the one we had always feared, bearing down straight toward us. A mandatory evacuation was announced by New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin that evening. We all had a stoic view of the situation—better to be at home and able to care for our things and ourselves than off in an evacuation into the unknown. Most people in my neighborhood were poor and had spent whatever government checks or help they received by the last week of the month. Miss Jane, a heavy smoker, was even out of cigarettes. We had all heard about the fiasco of people crowding the Superdome two years earlier during Hurricane George and we were not about to leave our homes for that.

Sunday, August 28 Despite dire news reports of Hurricane Katrina moving quickly and ferociously in our direction, the city was calm and clear as Sunday dawned. The breezes that picked up through the day were welcome in the humid heat. I stayed close to home, checking on my readiness supplies, making sure everything outside my house was secure from high winds. I also spoke with friends over the phone, and a few, like me, had dug in their heels, while others had left the city or were in the process of doing so. Radio news reminded us all day that it was too late to leave— contraflow, where all major roads in and out of the city were directed to flow in the same outbound direction, had ended. We were in it for the long haul.

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Surviving Hurricane Katrina

Feeling conflicted about my decision to stay, I watched the 5:30 pm national news that evening and became concerned. It also didn’t help that several friends who had insisted they would stick it out did not answer their phones. I began to wonder if, given the chance and ability to drive off to Jackson, or at least to Hammond 50 miles north, where I had an invitation to stay, leaving might not be the better part of valor. A friend nearby agreed to keep the dogs for me for a day or two, so I packed a bag and loaded up my Jeep, heading out at dusk on Airline Highway. My gas gauge indicated slightly less than a half tank, and I was sure I could fill up somewhere along the highway before heading out on Interstate 10. Everything along Airline Highway was locked up tight—I couldn’t believe it! No one was out on the streets, only a few police cars passing. It hit me then that it really was too late, that I couldn’t be sure I’d make it to Hammond or even across the miles and miles of low bridges over the wetlands. Getting stuck there in the middle of nowhere when the hurricane hit was not an attractive idea. Somewhat relieved that the decision had been made for me, I turned around and headed home. Because the upstairs floor of my house tends to shake and shudder in heavy winds, I decided to sleep downstairs on the living room couch. I watched TV until 10 pm when the electricity snapped off and everything went dark. There was nothing to do but try to get some sleep while the winds picked up and the rain began to pound the east side of the house.

Monday, August 29: Hurricane Katrina Hits All through the night heavy winds battered the house. Eventually, I was awakened by the noise, snug on my living room couch. I could only hope the upstairs rooms were going to hold tight. Even downstairs, the framework of the two-story shotgun house (a long, narrow, wooden structure) shuddered with each advancing gust, then, as if breathing a sigh of relief, settled into silence while waiting for the next pounding. It was pitch black outside except for some dim lights in the office building across the alley. The loud whir of the office building generator would become part of the background noise for the next 24 hours. Later, I learned it had stopped after the first day because of lack of fuel. A watery mist started to hit me on the couch from the window behind me and I realized that the window frames were not tight enough to stave off the rain being driven in horizontal sheets against the house. From then until the storm ended on Monday afternoon, I ran around up and down the stairs with towels and rags, placing them in strategic places to catch water

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that was being forced in, then wringing out the sopping towels and starting all over again. In the early morning, the winds shifted from east to west and started battering the opposite side of the house. My floor-to-ceiling cypress shutters began clattering upstairs—their hook-and-eye closures were laughable, and the wind opened one and lashed it against the house. I rushed to get some telephone cord from my toolbox, and, using all my strength to hold the shutters closed against that merciless wind, I managed to tie each of the five pairs of shutters tight enough to withstand the battering. It felt good to be there and able to curse the darkness in some small way. The dogs, having managed to spend the night out back in the shed, were ready to come into the house, but I didn’t know how to get them because it was impossible to walk the few yards to the outside shed—I’d be instantly lifted and tossed by the powerful winds. In addition, the backyard was filling with water and I didn’t relish walking through the gooey fluid. I opened the back door and called their names over and over: “Here Judge! Come on Larkey!” Larkey was the first to creep toward the house, his ears back in fright. Serious-looking Judge followed shortly, trembling from the cool air and eying me with newfound relief. I spread out newspapers in the kitchen for them to sit, but they paced the floor, moaning. They didn’t know what it was like to be enclosed in a house, and they were terrified of the clattering sounds all around them. I tried to comfort them, to little avail. By noon the winds diminished. There were another few hours of rain and some gusts but the storm’s fury had been spent. Less water was coming through the window frames, though there was a lot of dripping from the ceilings below the upstairs balcony. I scurried for buckets and pans to catch it. My concern was to protect my hardwood floors, something I later found was futile when the water entered the house without respect for floors, furniture, or anything else. For two hours on Monday afternoon, after the storm had quieted and the rain stopped, I enjoyed a sense of relief and self-righteous victory. I had been right to follow my gut feeling about being able to weather the hurricane. The water outside in the street had risen higher than I had ever seen in my 27 years in New Orleans. The water flowed fast, like a roiling creek, lapping the second step of my porch. But I was confident that, as is usual in such cases, the city’s renowned water pumps would kick in and we’d soon be back to normal. I worried a bit about my Jeep parked in the driveway next door. Water had probably gotten into the floor of it, but not enough to affect the engine.

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With no electricity, phone, computer, or TV, there wasn’t much to do. I eyed the stacks of papers on my desk that needed attention but couldn’t concentrate. My wind-up radio kept reporting that the water was rising in New Orleans. First, they said that the water pumps were under water and not working. Essential personnel to get the pumps working had evacuated and would have to be brought back in by helicopter. It wasn’t clear if there was additional water from a levee break. Experts were on hand, trying to figure it out, but none of this sounded good. My heart began to drop. Maybe we weren’t out of the woods after all.

Monday, August 29: Water Oozes Under the Door By 5 pm Monday evening the creek outside my front steps had turned from a greenish grey to black, and the water was inching up. The flow had slowed somewhat, but there was no sign of it stopping or receding. With a sickening feeling, I watched as it came up to the threshold and began to seep in under the front door. A few minutes later water pressed in through the baseboards: I knew we were in for a fight. The radio reported there had been a massive break in the 17th Street Canal levee and the water would rise even more before it stopped. I sprang into action. Anything on the floor downstairs was put up as high as possible and papers and valuables, like the family Bible and some paintings, had to be hauled upstairs. I set the dining room chairs on the table and piled whatever I could on them. It dawned on me that I might lose my antique French buffet, my winter wardrobe packed into a cedar chest, and the area rug, to name but a few things. The loss of these items played on my mind like an obituary, tears stinging my eyes as I comprehended the scope of this new menace. The dogs had to be moved upstairs. I spread more newspapers in the hall up there for them, coaxing them up the unfamiliar and slick hardwood steps. They were uncomfortable because they refused to relieve themselves in the house, but there was nowhere for them to go outside. Fortunately, the rising water was very slow so I had time to collect my thoughts to organize how to arrange for us to live for what could be days upstairs. Remembering a common tip, I ran the bathtub half full of clean water. By the time darkness fell about an inch or two of water covered the floors. I was so exhausted from putting things downstairs and hauling other things upstairs that I fell instantly asleep. Hopefully, I thought, the water would stop in an hour or two.

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Tuesday, August 30 I awoke at 3 am and was catapulted into one of the worst days of my life. Had I known what was to come, I would very probably not have gotten out of bed. The dogs greeted me with canine expectation, seeming a bit less nervous than before. I remembered the rising water downstairs and grabbed the flashlight, shining it down the winding stairwell. Water had risen to cover the second step—I knew I would be doomed if I didn’t immediately go down to the first floor and collect all the fresh water, food, and other items that I could. As I eased down the hardwood stairs, the water came up above my knees to mid-thigh, well over two feet deep. The flashlight flickered in the thick, humid darkness. Why hadn’t I bothered to load new batteries? I scolded myself and went back upstairs to get a lit candle and set it on the stairs as a reference point. This was not the time for panic. The floor boards were slippery, coated by a film of oil and filth. I was barefoot in order to feel my way better and maintain a grip. Already, the floorboards were beginning to warp and the linoleum on the kitchen floor was soggy under my feet. What to grab from the mess downstairs? Systematically, I reached for essential items: five one-gallon jugs of fresh water, packaged snacks, canned goods, and several apples left on the kitchen table. The refrigerator would be hard to open due to the water so I could only speculate what was left to rot inside it. Ice cubes from the top freezer unit were dumped into a cooler floating near the stove. Who knew how many days I’d be stranded with eating as my only diversion? The dog food came next with a box of dog biscuits and more newspaper. Twice in my haste I took a nasty spill on the slippery steps, once nearly dropping my keyring into the murky water. I hit my tailbone and elbow and already felt bruises forming. I couldn’t afford to break a limb! The flashlight kept flickering and threatened to quit on me. Somehow, I hadn’t figured it would take this much time, planning, and energy to complete such a simple task. It was nearly 5 am as I finished bringing up as many items as I could from downstairs. The shelves of books would have to stay downstairs, as would my grandson’s toys. The water was now over three feet, just even with the top of the dining room table. After washing my feet and legs in the clean water in the bathtub, I remembered that I had left my camera in the cabinet downstairs and so I waded back down to retrieve it. Back up the stairs I took a few shots of the side entrance foyer of my furniture standing stoically in the dark, sparkling water. My eyes were blurred by

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obstinate tears—I could not believe I had lived to see such a scene. Already I was beginning to disassociate myself from the comfortable house and life I held so dear and worked relentlessly to maintain, and I told myself that it was still all salvageable if the water went down in a day or two. Upstairs, I untied the tall cypress shutters and walked out on to the balcony. A silent watery sunrise greeted me. All around, the buildings swam in a lake of dark, foreboding water. It had not yet begun to reek of raw sewage, but that was obviously coming. Voices wafted across the water from around street corners in eerie displacement. Someone yelled for Dana and someone else, presumably Dana, called back from a distance. A motorboat churned down Tulane Avenue. The dogs wanted to come out on the balcony, and it occurred to me that if they went to the far corner at the end of the house they’d relieve themselves. I was right—they were immediately calmer. Too bad I hadn’t thought of that the night before.

Tuesday, August 30: Saving Miss Jane from Drowning Helicopters crisscrossed the skies overhead. Between their noisy flights a woman’s voice was audible on the balcony from several houses down the alley. It startled me to realize that Ms. Jane was still in her house, barely visible as she stood in the front doorway in water up to her midriff. Why hadn’t she left when the water started coming in? There was no access to the attic of her one-story house, and even if there had been she was not strong enough to axe her way through the roof. “I’ve been standing here for hours, calling for help,” she sniffled. “My legs are tired. I have to sit down.” Immediately, I called to a man who stood on a covered parking garage across the alley to help rescue my neighbor. A mini-police center had been set up in the garage. The man said he had heard her and was trying to get a boat for her. Thank goodness the generator of that ten-story building had run out of fuel and shut off, otherwise we wouldn’t have heard a thing. For the next two hours I was out on the balcony assuring Ms. Jane that help was on the way if she could just hold on a little longer. She could swim, she said, but we couldn’t figure out where she should swim to and whether, given her age and heavy smoking, she’d make it. Several boats filled with passengers passed by the avenue and promised to return, but we waited without much hope. I tied a white t-shirt to a long stick and waved it from the balcony, hoping to catch the eye of a helicopter, but to no avail. The water must have stopped rising because Ms. Jane was not sinking deeper into the water. I wracked my brains thinking of a way to save her.

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She could stay with me upstairs if only I could get her over the balcony railing, because there was no way she could get in downstairs. Just as I was starting to feel hysterical, like a mirage an inflatable dinghy from the sheriff’s office rounded the corner of Tulane and headed down the alley. Many more people in the office building were yelling for a boat and they steered the rescuers to Ms. Jane, who nearly collapsed as she was pulled like a sack of potatoes over the side of the dinghy. We all clapped and hooted as the boat took off. I have no idea what happened next for Ms. Jane, nor if I will ever see her again. I realize now that the immense panic and sadness one feels in the face of helplessness, topped for me by equally immense relief to see my neighbor rescued, were emotions tumbling around inside me much like clothes inside an electric dryer. Like those clothes at last dry, I felt warm and cleansed in spite of the uncertainty of what lay ahead. For hours that Tuesday afternoon I listened to the wind-up radio to decide what to do next. I wanted to stay with the dogs and stick it out until the water receded. We had enough food and water, and if pushed to do so I could always go downstairs for more. There was no more running water, and the prospect of being the only person on the block, a lone woman at that, bothered me, especially given the reports of looting, pot shots at police, and general sense of lawlessness. Night-time was pitch black, and even the dogs would be useless in facing down a determined intruder, especially if he or they had guns. The commentators on WWL radio kept saying that the water was still rising in some parts of the city and that the levee break could not be repaired for days or maybe weeks, and that anyone who was still in New Orleans should get out. How we should do this, however, was not clear. The Superdome4 was full and there were people standing on overpasses in various places. As I lay on the bed in the quiet heat with no fan to cool me, I thought that my family must be wondering about me and I realized that there was no way to let them know I was okay. I also heard another woodcracking sound like I had heard during the storm, then another coming from a new line opening up in the plaster on the far wall of my bedroom. It dawned on me that the water downstairs could be putting extra stress on the structure of the house, and I had visions of the upper floor collapsing in the middle of the night. This was not at all what I had imagined toughing it out would be like!

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Tuesday, August 30: Deciding to Evacuate By the afternoon of August 30 I had made up my mind to get out, but what to do about the dogs was the one remaining block. I knew the boats and helicopters that were picking people up were not taking large dogs, and, given the uncertainty of where I would go and the conditions of evacuation, it didn’t seem wise to add two old dogs to the mix. Their lives for the past six or seven years had been dictated by me, and I had the responsibility of protecting them now—but how? Abandoning them on the balcony to an agonizing death of starvation and dehydration was unthinkable. I thought I should maybe kill them. But how? I had no weapon, not even a knife, and anyway I could not have brought myself to such an act. A strange thing happened in the fifteen minutes that I concentrated on the dogs. The concept of losing them, unthinkable a quarter hour before, became thinkable and even acceptable. I was in survival mode. These were not ordinary times, I kept telling myself. I had to protect my own life. I glanced at the photos of my sons, with their wives and my grandchildren, on my nightstand and thought how useless I’d be to them were I to be found dead, my two old dogs keeping guard over me. No. I had to prioritize things in a rational manner. With that decision made I went into high gear, packed my laptop computer in my schoolbag, grabbed a few important papers (will, copy of passport, key to bank deposit box), and made sure I had some cash in my purse. A change of clothing was stuffed into the schoolbag and I was ready to go. News reports mentioned buses taking evacuees out of town to Baton Rouge, Houston, or Atlanta. I was sure wherever I landed there would be the Red Cross with minimal aid until I could get in touch with family and re-join them in Jackson, Mississippi. Almost as an afterthought, I stuck a small bottle of water into the schoolbag. How naïve I was! Had I known what was about to transpire, I might have paused and reconsidered. That too could have been fatal. Fortunately for me I acted out of ignorance, which probably saved my life. Out on the balcony I could not look at the dogs, not even as I set out a bucket of water and a dish of food for each. Judge’s deep-set eyes haunted me even on normal days, as if he knew too much. How would I ever be free of those eyes and their sensitive gaze? I blocked this out by thinking about how to catch the attention of a boat or helicopter. Using the white tshirt tied to a long stick, I climbed over the railing of the balcony and scrambled on to the peak of the house roof beside mine—the houses were only three feet apart, their gutters along the side touching. It was very hot

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and uncomfortable, but at least I could wave and shout from that vantage point. One of the men in the parking garage across the alley chatted with me. He wondered if my family knew where I was. I told him no, and that I had no way to call them, and he offered to try to get through with one of the very few cell phones that were working. A half hour later he called to me from the tenth-floor roof and said he had called and there was no answer, so he left a message. I wasn’t convinced he had actually left a message and that perhaps he sensed my anxiety and was telling me what I wanted to hear to comfort me. People are like that. Another man across the way asked if I was taking my dogs with me and I told him no, asking if he would please shoot them after I left. He looked surprised. “Ah no, you don’t want me to do that,” he said. “Dogs know how to survive. They’ll make it. We’ll toss them some food. Don’t worry.” I dropped the subject, my voice cracking so hard I couldn’t respond.

Tuesday, August 30: Rescue Boat Arrives It was dusk by the time a flat-bottomed boat manned by Bossier City, Louisiana firefighters pulled up to the alley by the house where I was perched on the roof peak. I scrambled down, grabbed the schoolbag and my purse, pulled the tall window shut behind me, and handed my things down to the man in the boat. The Red Cross would provide food and water, I thought, so no need to take more than the absolute minimum. The dogs pressed against me and I petted them for the last time, my eyes welling with tears while the men in the boat reached out for me. One had climbed up on the porch roof of the house beside mine and helped me down the ten or so feet to another man in the boat. At last I was seated in the boat and we were moving. “Your dogs!” someone yelled from across the alley, thinking I had forgotten them. I told the firefighters that I couldn’t take them with me, sobbing now as we rode away on the dark lake. One man put his arm around me, not knowing what to say. Through my sobs I told him I had asked a policeman to shoot them but he refused. “They’re old. They can’t make it without me. I don’t want them to suffer.” The words tumbled out of me like water from my tears. The uniformed man with his arm around my shoulder asked if he should come back and do it the next day. I nodded yes and, looking me straight in the eyes, he promised me he would. Whether he did or not, I will never know. I want to believe he did. I wanted to believe that when I finally got back to my house there would be no trace of dogs. It would be an immensely humanitarian act on his part. I

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dare not contemplate the possibility that he did not complete his promise. All I know is that on my return to the house, five weeks later, there was no trace of them. The boat made its way down the alley and through the parking area behind the corner house where it stopped to pick up five more people— neighbors who lived in D. Primm’s Christian mission, a drug rehabilitation facility. Earl, a man who lived with Ms. Ruth in the house next to the mission, got into the boat beside me. He had trimmed the yards of my rental houses for years and I knew him well. These people had been on the roof of Primm’s house earlier that day, waving t-shirts and trying to catch the attention of the helicopters. They were more than happy to be moving out before night fell.

Tuesday, August 30: Landing on the Broad Street Overpass We moved slowly up Broad Street past the Tulane intersection, moving around submerged trees and cars in the lake around us. The boat continued up Broad toward the I-10 overpass and stopped once it hit concrete. We got out of the boat and walked a few feet up to high ground. Clothed in orange outfits, about one hundred prisoners from the Orleans Parish Prison were seated cross-legged on the overpass roadbed, watched over by armed sheriff’s deputies.5 We filed past them to the crest of the hill. I sat down on the curb along with some other newly evacuated people. Buses would be coming to take us out of New Orleans, one evacuee said. The Superdome was full, so buses were picking up evacuees wherever they could find higher ground. It made sense to me, but little could I have known that it would be the first of many lies and broken promises we were to be told in the days ahead. Indeed, there was a string of white buses with heavy wire over the windows lined up on the overpass, and their sides read “Angola State Prison.” I assumed the busses were there to take the prisoners to Angola or other prison facilities out of harm’s way. It took us all a while to figure out the situation atop the overpass. We were about three hundred or so civilians, with more arriving constantly, along with the ever-changing group of prisoners who were fairly orderly and sitting cross-legged on the concrete roadway. Guarding and herding the prisoners were armed men and women in dark uniforms with prison insignia; they were sheriff’s deputies assigned to oversee the evacuation of inmates. There was a fourth group made up of, it only became clear to me the following day, the deputies’ families who were camped out in their vehicles on the overpass along with the other evacuees. The evacuees

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included babies and the elderly who were prepared for at least a few days, having brought water, food, and bedsheets with them. In total, we were probably at least six hundred people at any given time, spread out over close to a quarter-mile of on and off ramps and the overpass itself. Except for the inmates, we moved around throughout the day, chatting, exchanging stories, scrounging for food and water, and in general just hanging out. It was nearly dark. We sat along the curb, watching the prisoners march by, handcuffed by pairs, and being loaded onto the buses. I looked around at the odd collection of humanity—not just the prisoners but the evacuees who included many elderly, a few babies, and people with dogs. One old woman was not allowed to bring her wheelchair on the boat, but someone had somehow moved a red upholstered arm chair on to the overpass, and the woman sat in it, unmoving. Two hours passed. We looked around for food or water, but there was nothing. I walked around and came across several people I knew from walking my dogs in the neighborhood. One young woman, Linda, called to me. Linda was the sister of one of my new tenants in the building I had just bought on Gravier Street, and she told me that the ceiling had collapsed during the hurricane. “You don’t worry about nothin’ out here, Ms. Mary,” she told me. “I’m a take care of you.” I was a bit surprised that, in the face of total uncertainty, most people seemed resigned to whatever happened, and they also primarily focused on family or neighborhood groups for support and morale. A man in his 60s sat beside me and told me that he had just gotten out of Angola State Prison after serving a 30-year sentence. He recognized some of the prisoners filing by and called out greetings to several of them. What was my name, he wanted to know? I made up a first name and started planning to move away from him just as Earl came up to me and said I should come sit over with Primm’s little enclave. They had brought some food with them, along with some water, pillows, and sheets. “I thought we’re supposed to be getting on buses,” I said and Earl laughed. “You wait on them buses, Miss Mary, you be awake all night!” Earl handed me a dirty pillow so I could lay on the concrete nearby to catch some sleep. I went off to see about toilet facilities before turning in for the night and soon realized there were none but that there had been an ad hoc agreement for people to keep their movements as far down the off ramp as possible, near the water. There was no privacy except for the darkness, and already the area smelled bad. It began to sink in that we were in for what could be a long haul, though I still hoped we would be bused out the next morning.

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Tuesday, August 30: Trouble in the Prison Complex There seemed to be trouble brewing in the prison complex to our right. At about nine o’clock that evening the generator that lit the tall detention building in the distance apparently quit. The prison and the entire area became completely dark and we heard a loud roar that went on for several minutes, and the sounds of clanging and banging. When we asked a nearby deputy what was going on, he said the inmates were afraid they would be left behind. Already the air inside was really bad, he told us, due to lack of air conditioning, and some windows had been punched out by the inmates desperate for air. “They trashin’ the place. People been killed in ‘ere,” the deputy said, refusing to give more details.6 Shortly we saw smoke coming from the building and saw what appeared to be a mattress on fire hanging out a window. Inside the prisoners were chanting “Help! Help!” Their voices floated across the water in eerie cacophony. Civilian onlookers beside me on the overpass began muttering that “a lot of prisoners gonna die,” and someone mentioned having a son “up in ‘ere.” We all felt ill at ease. As tenuous as our fate was, the prisoners’ fate was even worse. Our only solace was that the prisoners were wards of the state, and one thing we knew was that the city would not allow a slew of lawsuits for cruelty and neglect. The buses marked “Angola State Penitentiary” had been filled and so drove off. A large contingent of female prisoners was led out on to the roadway, stirring some interest from the men among us. I was tired from the events of the day and joined Earl and the Primm group along the curb, grabbing the dirty pillow that had been offered me, which was a good bit better than nothing at all.

Wednesday, August 31 It was a fitful sleep that night on the very uncomfortable concrete curb of the overpass. I kept my wallet, which contained several hundred dollars, under my neck as a brace, and the schoolbag that held my laptop was beside me. I woke several times to the sounds and lights around me. My tailbone had been bruised from my falling down the stairs at home, and it made it impossible to find a good position on the unforgiving surface. Helicopters circled overhead throwing long, bright streams of light over the motley group gathered around us. We assumed they were watching the hundreds of prisoners who continued to sit cross-legged on the roadway. At one point, I awoke to the sound of cascading water nearby. I raised myself up to peer over the low rail and saw farther down the overpass a

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long line of male prisoners lined up along their piece of railing all relieving themselves over the edge at the same time! It was not with joy that we watched the dawn yield to hot daylight. We felt thirsty, dirty, and cramped, and there was not a bus in sight for anyone. One of the women in Primm’s group brushed her teeth, using the gallon of drinking water carefully—I looked at my own small water bottle, now empty, and thought for the first time about the scarcity of water in light of the hot day ahead of us. Once up and circulating among the civilians who had shared the same restless night, I was able to collect information— some of it helpful, most of it depressing. We were not supposed to be there, and the boats had dropped us off there because it was the only high ground nearby. The deputies and their families had limited food supplies, and there was some water and food for the evacuating prisoners, but nothing for us. The deputies had nothing to do with us; their mandate was to supervise the prisoners. There was no one in charge of us and no one able to make calls and get someone to pay attention to us. Once the prisoners were all gone we’d be evacuated, the deputies declared. The deputies were overworked, exhausted, and demoralized. Sheriff Marlin Gusman, only a few months in office, ordered his deputies to work for the duration and told them to bring their families with them rather than have them evacuate.7 Sheriff Gusman was, of course, nowhere to be seen. The families had been in the prison during the storm in quarters near the prisoners, and had been escorted out with them through the waist-deep water on Tuesday morning. The small children were fussing while grandparents were happy to leave the cramped jail quarters in favor of leaving cars and trucks parked along the overpass. Some were sick and needed medical attention. Word spread that until the last prisoner was removed from the overpass, the deputies’ families would not be taken anywhere. With tempers flaring it was difficult to tell who was with whom. There were still shouts coming from the detention building. Towels were dangled from the windows by anonymous hands and arms, waving from several floors. There were also stories about prisoners drowning on the bottom floor of the prison where solitary confinement was located, and of prisoners trying to escape only to be shot and their bodies tossed into the water. Inmates were rioting out of panic, breaking windows so they could get some air, burning mattresses to get attention, afraid they would be left behind. What little food there was for the inmates was bad and insufficient. A deputy reported that one baloney sandwich and a small bottle of water per day were all they received in rations. Buses intended to remove the prisoners could not get to the overpass because of deep water at either end. They were parked in long lines on the I-10 Interstate below.

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We could see them from where we stood, waiting for the water to recede so the prisoners could be evacuated.

Wednesday, August 31: Wrong Place at the Wrong Time Two hours passed and finally some motorboats and airboats arrived to ferry the inmates in groups of four or five from the foot of the overpass, down Broad Avenue for a U-turn, and then down along the overpass to the I-10 where, hand-cuffed in pairs, many of them middle aged, they had to somehow get over a three-foot-high lane separator and finally on to the waiting buses. It took forever! Meanwhile, those of us displaced by the rising water and stranded on the overpass began to take a long and serious look at our own plight. We were sure the powers that be were aware of our presence. Someone on the overpass reported that the television news reported thousands of people stranded on various overpasses in the city. But no help was available for any of us. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Until the prisoners were evacuated, there was no aid for any of us, although the deputies heard that buses were taking evacuees out of New Orleans. Where such buses were located, however, they could not say. By 10 am the sun was beating down on us and there was no shade anywhere. I used a cardboard box over my head to protect my face and neck from the brutal rays, but still I developed a nasty sunburn, especially on my feet, ankles, and legs. We had nothing to eat since the evening before and were starting to feel real hunger. Thirst was even more important since we knew we could manage without food but not water, especially given the heat and exposure to direct sunlight. I scrounged around among the refuse that was fast accumulating along the curb sides of the overpass and found a few remnants of MREs (meals ready to eat) in their signature taupe-colored heavy plastic pouches—a serving of strawberry jelly here, a half-eaten pasta meal there. It added up to enough sustenance to keep me going for a while. Someone explained that the MREs were left over from prisoner supplies by the deputies. Not knowing when or where the next food or water was coming from at first bothered me, but soon began to consume me. Stranded on the overpass I saw the above-mentioned Linda standing in a family group and greeted her. Linda offered me a bottle of water and I didn’t bother to ask where she had gotten it as I was only too grateful to have the water to soothe my overwhelming thirst. Linda smiled and asked how I was doing. There was a sick child in her group; everyone’s attention was focused on how to get help for the little one. Behind the ramp a man in his 60s was moaning. I

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went to him as he sat alone, a life vest only partially fastened to his torso. He was diabetic, he explained, and needed insulin or at least some water. I poured half of my new bottle into his empty one and watched him chug it down. He could not thank me enough. I asked about the life vest. Earlier, I had noticed him with the vest on and leaning heavily on an aluminum cane, barely able to walk, dragging a small plastic bag with him. “My sister lives just down the way a bit, on Washington Avenue,” he said with effort, straightening himself on the hard curb. “She doesn’t know I’m here. If I can get to her, I’ll be all right.” “But how can you get through the high water to get there?” I asked. He looked at me with amusement. “Why do you think I got this life vest?” That made sense for a man in good health but not for someone barely able to walk. Anticipating my comment, he added, “In the water my legs work fine. I can make it, I’m sure.” I left him, unable to think of anything else to say. We each had our own troubles. The old woman in the bright red upholstered armchair sat there as if in nature’s living room, observing the passing scene. Next I came across a group of Guatemalans, two women and three men in their early twenties. I had noticed them before, quiet and keeping to themselves. When I spoke to them in Spanish, they brightened up and started asking questions. How long before we got help? Where was food, water? They had nothing to eat or drink. I told them I wished I knew the answers, explaining that all of us were in the dark about why we had been abandoned. The Guatemalans shared with me that they were undocumented aliens and wondered if they would be denied help because of that. I replied that immigration status would appear to be a low priority, given the circumstances. But what did I know? In any case, I’d keep them posted as to news and when food was available. It was hard to imagine being in this predicament and not able to understand the language.

Wednesday, August 31: A Desperate Search for Food and Water The sun was brutal. My thirst was so severe that I was reduced to rummaging through empty water bottles tossed to the side. Now and then, one had a discernible amount left in it. By tipping that little bit into my own empty bottle, I could collect a swallow or two, enough to assuage the worst thirst. An hour or so later a shipment of supplies arrived via two strong young men who had waded through the water up to their necks and

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acquired bottled water, packaged snacks, and canned goods from a superette on Washington Avenue.8 They divided out the much-in-demand items to immediate family and friends and then offered to sell what was left. I was near the front of the fast-gathering crowd, money in hand. Water was going for $1 a bottle, but canned goods were higher. One man held up a can of Dole fruit salad and I asked “How much?” “Five dollars,” he barked back at me. Finding that too high, I told him I didn’t have that much on me. He eyed me suspiciously, then in some act of meagre mercy lowered the price to three dollars. It would be all I’d have for the rest of the day, so I grudgingly paid it and snapped off the top to let the sweet juice in the can trickle down my parched throat. The same salesman was barking “five dollars” to a Hispanic woman with two small children for a can of the same fruit salad, and it angered me to see her fork out the money. For a moment, I thought that it was only fair for the men to be compensated, since they had gotten soaked in the grimy water by steering two large Igloo coolers for their families. I didn’t mind being gouged a little. But then it occurred to me that the items had been “liberated” from the superette and that the so-called salesmen were common thieves. Of course, “looting” seemed a wrong word in this context, and anyway, the morsels of grape, pineapple, and apple that slid down my throat tasted far too good for me to complain. I noticed a thin white woman with a green shirt draped over her head for protection from the sun. Her name was Laura, and she lived only a few blocks from me, though I had never seen her before our meeting on the concrete overpass. At first I took her for a nun or at least a missionary of sorts, but she explained that she was an artist and had purchased her modest shotgun house in the area because it was affordable, much for the same reasons that had brought me into this diverse neighborhood. Predictably, we had both found many fine people among our neighbors and learned to fit in, and even to belong in some sense of the word. She had acquaintances among the overpass crowd but, like me, was on her own. I was especially interested in hearing the local news on her portable radio, though she played it sparingly, afraid to run down the batteries. More than once I kicked myself for not having brought along my trusty transistor radio. Laura and I struck up a friendship that would take us to the end of this ordeal together. We were even mistaken for each other several times. It was nice to have a reliable friend in such a difficult place, and Laura seemed to be a cross between one of my best friends, Mary, and a teacher at Delgado Community College, also named Laura, who shared an office with me. I took it as a consoling sign from my guardian angel to have

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brought those two fine women together in a new friend on the overpass. Contrary to media reports and images, there were a lot of white people stranded in New Orleans right alongside the majority of blacks that were stranded. There were at least a dozen of us on the Broad Street overpass, for example, along with about ten Hispanics. I didn’t sense any overt hostility between the various racial and ethnic groups. In reality, we were all too busy just trying to stay alive. After the brutal sun of Wednesday, I took to calling us pale faces “melanin challenged,” since it was obvious that we suffered from exposure to the sun more than our darker-skinned friends. Wednesday night approached with its grim prospect of a second uncomfortable sleep on the concrete curb. To my surprise, my toothless neighbor Earl showed up, since I thought he and the rest of the Primm clan had left the overpass for good, as they said they were going to. Earl filled me in on their journey: they had waded through the water up to their stomachs and stopped near the Superdome. “You don’t want to go there,” he told me. “Nobody should go there.” Earl’s group foraged for food and water and “found” supplies of both at a store near the Greyhound bus station. Eventually, they had wandered back to the overpass since it was the only place they could be out of the water for the night. He handed me several much-welcomed bottles of water and some crackers with peanut butter from the group’s stash. Later, I caught some news on a battery-operated radio farther down the ramp; it mentioned rapes and murders going on at the Superdome and gave the impression that things there were totally out of control.9 The deputies looked like zombies as they waved their night sticks with half-hearted force. We could see they were exhausted and at their wit’s end. Their families too were complaining and some had left the overpass, although we couldn’t figure out how. But we appreciated the sheets, pillows, and other items they had left behind and put them to good use. A young female deputy had a shouting match with a male colleague—her black, him white—that quickly escalated into a race issue. The woman had to be constrained, finally walking away and throwing her badge down on the roadway. “I quit!” she yelled over her shoulder, followed by a string of epithets. There were reports that other deputies had quit or simply not shown up for duty. The low morale of the deputies and the gathering nightfall made us all uncomfortable. It would be no fun for us civilians to be left alone with parish prisoners and a crew of sheriff’s deputies that appeared to be in chaos.

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Wednesday, August 31: A Good Night’s Sleep on Concrete Around 8 pm, after eating the crackers, with Earl’s help I found a quiet spot behind a car on the curb and bedded down for the night. He promised to keep an eye on me and my bag. There was still all the chaos of the helicopters, the airboats, and the prisoner evacuations farther down toward the Tulane Avenue end, but I was so exhausted and weakened from the day’s events that I fell asleep quickly and didn’t awake until early morning. Maybe it was the cardboard mat we had fashioned that helped ease the discomfort, or the pillow I made out of the rolled-up shirt and pants from my schoolbag; whatever it was I slept soundly and without dreaming, something that amazed me upon waking nine hours later.

Thursday, September 1 It was a rude awakening at dawn on Thursday to find myself still on the overpass with no hope of getting off. There was talk the night before of boats that would be coming for us that day, but all I could see was the long expanse of the overpass, more prisoners, the same ragged civilians, and the same helicopters circling overhead. The men and women who were herding and guarding the prisoners had changed, and they appeared to be a fresh crew that wore white shirts with dark blue bulletproof vests. Several carried long rifles, and their shouted commands to their prisoners were considerably harsher than what we had been hearing from the earlier group. When I asked one about the changing of the guard, he explained that probation and parole officers from around the state had been called in to relieve the overworked deputies. There was also a scaffold that had been constructed under the crest of the overpass to allow for prisoners to be marched up there, hoist themselves over the railing, and climb down the steps to the waiting buses below. What a great idea! I wondered why no one had thought of it before. The plan worked well for the younger inmates, but soon the airboats started up again to augment the evacuation process and handle the older men. It also meant that we civilians had to stay clear of much of the roadway from the Tulane end to the crest. I started my rounds of visiting, much like a doctor on a hospital floor. Alice, a woman with a large yellow-haired Labrador mix she called Baby (because the dog was her only “child,” and went everywhere with her), had survived the night. Her friend and neighbor Bill, an older man with a heart condition, also had a dog, this one with serious case of mange which he wrapped in wet towels much of the time. The two dog lovers had cast their fate together and it was all they could do to keep bodies and dogs

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together. Alice and Bill argued over how best to ration the little dog food they had between them. I saw Alice break off a large piece of a roll she had found and feed it to Baby rather than nourish herself. When it had gotten so hot the day before, Alice had resorted to bathing Baby in the putrid water that surrounded us—better that than let the dog die of heatstroke. The five Guatemalans were very thirsty and begged me to help them find water, a difficult request until someone passed with a load of bottled water. Just as the water was being distributed a deputy stepped in and handcuffed one of the salesmen. We had all been warned that selling bottled water was a crime because it was “stolen” from the prisoners’ supply. An angry group formed quickly to protest the arrest. If it was a crime to steal the prisoners’ water, was it not also a crime to let us die of dehydration? We had sick people among us, we shouted, and babies! Nothing helped. The logic was so contorted that I had trouble containing my frustration. I met a Cuban fellow I’d seen in the neighborhood before who said he swam 20 blocks to reach the overpass. He had $3,000 in cash, several gold chains, and all his personal papers carefully sealed in a plastic bag that was wrapped around his wrist. Somehow, during his struggle to get through the deep water, the bag came off his arm and disappeared. He had told a policeman friend of his to be on the lookout for it and seemed oddly certain the bag would be found intact. Meanwhile, he had no money, not even a dollar to buy some water. I dug into my wallet and gave him a $20 bill, figuring he’d need something for the bus and thereafter. He thanked me profusely. It was more than I should have parted with, but I thought less about my own needs in such a case. I honestly believed that generosity for its own sake was rewarded in life, especially on an overpass in the middle of a Kafkaesque scene such as this. By noon the rain begun, just as Laura and I and a few other “white” people were setting up a tent-like structure of sheets to avoid another day of broiling in the sun. A wonderfully cool breeze kicked up and a fine mist fell like an angel’s blessing on us. I was busy helping a tall, dark-skinned, deep-voiced man with an incredibly long greying beard and wild hair to set up a protective shelter over his mother’s head. She was much lighter skinned than he and of fragile age and health. I had watched the day before how, during the sun’s awful glare, this man sat patiently beside her all day, holding up a black plastic bag above her bowed head, cooing to her, almost like a bird to its offspring, the child now the parent. The tenderness and affection of this tall, imposing man impressed me as it personified in so many ways the Creole spirit of New Orleans, of families caring for each

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other, no matter the sacrifices. The black plastic bag had been lost and we were looking for a new one, or something similar. Eventually, one was fashioned out of cardboard and a strip of canvas.

Thursday, September 1: Reciting in the Rain As the rain came down harder, I found a swath of bright yellow canvas from the same billboard that had been shredded during the hurricane and crawled under it to shield myself and my bag. As I lay there on a piece of cardboard, a strong voice sounded from farther down the railing. I peered out to see the bag lady from Canal Street and Broad Avenue reading from a Bible. The woman had become a fixture at that location and was always dressed in layers of sweaters, scarves, and skirts and surrounded by several shopping carts heaped with black plastic bags bulging out over them. It amazed me to see her, minus her shopping carts, firmly planted on the overpass. Oblivious to the rain, she read one Bible verse then stopped to launch into a diatribe of foul language: “You mother f-----, who the f--you think you are? You pick up that stick you threw down there. F--- you, can’t do anything f---ing right!” This went on for a full minute or two. Then, suddenly, it stopped, and without taking a breath the bag lady read another Bible verse: “Ye shall know them by the fruits of their labor.” The sermon was followed by a totally different voice, like she had clicked on another button in her brain. This voice was conciliatory and soft as it told of a young girl playing in a park with her friends. It was well put together, almost literary, as though read from a page in a novel or memorized verbatim. I wondered if the bag lady was reading from a scripted work, but her face was turned upward toward the sky, her eyes closed. I heard the bag lady say “and she walked along the path where deer and other wild animals trod, her heart skipping to the breeze of the late afternoon.” This recitation continued for a minute or two, then the abrupt switch to another Bible verse: “Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil.” The voice that followed this verse was matter of fact. It told a story of crocodiles sold at the Riverwalk10 and consisted of one half of a conversation with a customer, something about crocodiles, not alligators, even though crocodiles are not found in Louisiana swamps. I couldn’t determine if the speaker was the salesperson or the customer. Actually, I wasn’t paying attention to her long harangue until the words “crocodiles” and “Riverwalk” came around the second time and I realized she was repeating herself and that these voices were part of her mental repertoire which she recited time and time again, probably every day.

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The rain let up a bit and the sky cleared, so I climbed out from under the canvas swath to stretch and converse with people nearby. Everyone was wet but thankfully so because the coolness was clean and fresh and quite a change from the muggy heat and stench of a city covered with putrid water. Some overpass dwellers wiped the water across their soiled faces, trying to wring out the last bit of comfort. The bag lady sat there like a gentle mound of dark fabric, her Bible open before her. When I ducked under the canvas ten minutes later as the storm continued, the bag lady launched into another, fourth voice, this one indignant but not obscene. It was addressed to an imagined passer-by who had tossed an Egg McMuffin from the nearby McDonald’s restaurant at her feet. “You could hand it to me, you know. I’m a human being too. Oh sure, you think you’ve done your good deed for the day. Well, let me tell you about good deeds.” Then followed another Bible verse and the reappearance of the foul parent voice berating a young child. As if the constant buzz of the airboats below ferrying the prisoners and the helicopters guarding them from above were not enough interference in the rain, I had to listen to this mad woman! Finally, the rain stopped and the afternoon yielded to scrounging for food and water again. Around 3 p.m. I was seated on the curb, my bag beside me, and my head in my hands. It occurred to me that at this time in the afternoon I would normally be having the second cup of coffee for the day. How good a steaming cup of chicory coffee would taste at that moment! To my right only two blocks away I could almost see the roof of my house, though it seemed one hundred miles away now. I also wondered why, having done nothing all day for two days in a row, I was not bored. I learned at that instant a very important lesson: people who are in survival mode spend all their time and energy on how to procure their next meal or how they can scheme to have a place to bed down for the night. People in survival mode scrounge and forage to keep body and soul together, to find something so that their children will stop complaining of thirst or hunger. Middle class people often view the homeless or poor with pity but, at the same time, wonder why the poor don’t take a class to get a job skill. We in the middle class wonder what keeps them from finding at least a minimal job. What we don’t understand is that poor people are busy just figuring out how to get to the next food line! Someone walked past with a fresh bottle of water, and I was off to find out where it had come from.

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Thursday, September 1: Boy Prisoners Becoming Men Further down the overpass, toward the Tulane Avenue end, a long line of juvenile male prisoners were being led to the scaffold and down to the buses below. A small group of us stood to the side, watching them pass, thinking how young they were to be in handcuffs. Bringing up the end of the line was a slim kid, shaved head bowed. A woman from our group cried out, “there’s Little G! Back there at the end! Got his hair cut, looks different.” Several voices rang out “Hey Lil’ G!” and the boy at the end of the line looked up briefly, allowed a grin of recognition to pass his face, then he quickly lowered his head again. The woman who had first identified him stood with several young children at her side and called out, “Lil’ G! Last time I seen you, you was a boy. Now you a man!” I cringed at the message her words were marking indelibly on the minds of the children beside her. But I decided to withhold judgment, figuring this might be the one and only contact between the child-man and his family in a long, long time. Jumbled among hundreds of other images and impressions of the overpass, Lil’ G still haunts me a month later. As evening came someone arrived with a cooler full of liquors and wines. They were selling for good prices, though far below market retail. I was sitting with Earl and his group and he bought a fifth of scotch, and one of the women bought some whiskey. They began to down the bottles and we all knew a drunken free-for-all was coming. The woman started getting loud and cursing President Bush. “Sending us to Texas—enemy territory!” she exclaimed. “Bush thinks he can send us all to f---ing Texas!” I wandered off at that point, not wishing to witness the confrontation that was sure to follow. According to Earl the next morning, as he was coming out of his hangover, it had been a crazy time and both he and the woman friend had to be constrained. He shrugged it all off as just another day in his life. An announcement was made toward dusk that boats were coming to pick us up. Indeed, all the prisoners were finally gone, leaving tons of plastic bags with their personal belongings at the Tulane Avenue end of the overpass. We started to sort through the bags as we waited for the boats to arrive. It was the ultimate indignity to deprive the inmates a chance to carry their few personal items like letters, photos, toothbrushes, combs, Bibles, or Korans. All these things now lay scattered about, picked over by strangers; once in a while, one of us snatched up a photo, recognizing the faces in it. Earlier, the prisoners had been allowed to take their plastic bags with them on the buses; presumably there wasn’t any

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way to check for contraband later on, so the bags were left behind. I looked carefully through a cache of letters, thinking I might later try to return them to their owner. But I scrapped the idea when I realized how hard it would be to track down anyone after what had happened to all of us. I was beginning to understand how all our lives had been turned upside down to a greater extent than I cared to think about. All sorts of rumors were whirling around, and it was hard to give any of them credence. Some were told by deputies, others by people on the overpass. One rumor was that hundreds of prisoners had been killed inside the jail in a riot, their bodies tossed into the water (though we saw no such bodies). Another was that inmates trapped in their cells had drowned in the rising waters. Sheriff Gusman appeared on the overpass for a brief encounter with the local press (although I missed him completely). Others said Gusman had not met with the deputies and had stepped off a helicopter in hip boots to see how the evacuation was going, as though he had traipsed through the water with his underlings. I heard a rumor that one of the deputies had been fatally shot by his own gun that was wrested from him by an inmate, and that the deputy’s son, also a deputy on duty, had come to the overpass very distraught, but I did not see or hear him. The boats came, but only a few, and they admitted on board only the families of the sheriff’s deputies, although the rest of us all crowded around after waiting with expectation for several hours. We continued to stand around and wait for more boats, as we had been promised, but none came and by 9 o’clock we gave up and began to find places to bed down for another night under the stars. It was strangely quiet with all the airboats gone. Only a few helicopters continued their rounds above us. There was more water available, some from a stash of bottles left behind by the deputies. I settled in with our small group, the man and woman with the two dogs, the woman who had bought a house on Palmyra Street near my own home, and a man in a wheelchair who had a radio that he played for several hours, which was the first real news we had received. I moved closer to him so I could hear, even though the stench of urine along that stretch of curb nearly choked me. Help was on the way, the radio commentator said, for all the evacuees in the Superdome, the Convention Center, and on the overpasses. The National Guard had arrived fresh from duty in Iraq. There were thousands of Red Cross workers, whole battalions of Army and Navy troops, including the Navy Seals. They were securing the city from looters with a “shoot to kill” order from the governor herself.11 This military force was evacuating stranded people to buses where they were sent out of New Orleans. The whole nation was aghast at the suffering and deprivation of the people abandoned in New Orleans,

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and like us, the stranded ones, they too were asking what the hell happened to delay the aid for so long! It was comforting to hear that at last we might get some attention, though when and by what means were still unclear. A tall uniformed man, Mr. Francois, presumably a deputy, came by and spoke with us, his rifle resting jauntily on his knee. Boats were coming later that evening, he assured us. Even after nightfall, we wondered. Yes, Mr. Francois assured us, we would be taken out of the city and put on buses bound for Texas or Arkansas. The Superdome had been evacuated, he said, and we were next. We thanked him for the information, and then he disappeared, and all the deputies were gone. No boats could be seen or heard anywhere. That’s the way it would remain throughout the night.

Thursday, September 1: The MRE’s Have Landed I tried to find a spot to stretch out for the long night, but the agitation of the day wore on me and I couldn’t sleep. Military helicopters continued to pass overhead and beam their long rays of light over our tattered group. With the prisoners gone, what they were looking for or whom they thought they were guarding eluded us. At midnight, just as we were huddled in near sleep there was a tremendous ruckus at the crest of the overpass, and we watched as a helicopter lowered itself and hovered noisily above, its eerie blue and red lights flashing. Some of us, still awake and ready for adventure, started running up to the scene of the commotion. The scene reminded me of the movie ET where the space vehicle lands, and I was ready for aliens to appear. Instead, there was lots of noise, heavy wind from the chopper’s blades that whipped up refuse around us, and some silvery things rolling down the overpass incline. People were rushing to pick up the shiny objects, and suddenly I saw they were grabbing plastic bottles of water tossed out of the helicopter. Then there were several large cartons dropped from above, amazingly none landing on any unsuspecting heads. Strong young men rushed forward out of the darkness and into the surreal flashing lights to grab the heavy cartons and take them back to family and friends as the big mechanical bird lifted off into the sky. Someone beside me yelled, “We want some too! We’re hungry just like everyone else!” The cartons contained MREs, and I rushed to the closest distributor to snag one for myself. Back at the curb where several of us were camping together, the two of us who had managed to get an MRE each opened them and shared the contents with several other friends. This MRE batch was particularly

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good, being barbecued beef and pasta in a tasty sauce, some crackers, a can of juice, and, most treasured of all, a small container of applesauce and cranberry. The taste of that sweet mixture reminded me of happier, lesshungry times. Having that little cup of dessert to myself was a true luxury. One of the women gave her dog a bite or two of the meat—an extravagant gesture that we chose to ignore. With that bit of sustenance in my stomach, and unable to sleep, I got up and wandered to the top of the overpass where I stood looking out over the dark skyline of New Orleans. There were no lights except from generators near the Superdome, lending it a sadly dramatic backlit effect. Clouds of smoke rose from several angles, and there was an acrid stench coming toward us. I felt I was viewing a graveyard—the demise of a once vibrant and beautiful city, reduced to nothing. In that incredible sadness was also mixed uncertainty and fear as to what would become of all of us. Would we also go down with the city we so loved? Laura joined me and then Arturo, her friend, a Honduran who I had seen several times before but not met formally. Earl, shrugging off a hangover, showed up and sprawled out on the curb nearby. We formed an oddly familiar group, all focused on the fires burning downtown, wondering how it would all end. Laura asked Arturo for his battery lamp and said she was heading off on a “restroom run.” Arturo and I became engrossed in a conversation about racism in New Orleans. Dark skinned, he was always assumed to be African American, but his accent told the blacks with whom he associated that he was not one of them. He described the difficulty in trying to maintain his own identity and the problems he had with the attitudes of many blacks here who blame their shortcomings on whites, history, and a country rigged against them. Well-educated and from a culture very different from many New Orleans “brothers,” Arturo related several episodes where his love of the city and its people had caused conflicts. We realized almost simultaneously that Laura had been gone too long and had not returned the light. Arturo immediately started out to find her, and I followed close behind. It was very dark. Along that isolated stretch of railing a woman could easily be snatched into the darkness and attacked. For the first time on the overpass I felt fear. What if something sinister had happened to her? Why couldn’t we see the glimmer of the lamp anywhere? Another man along the railing joined us in our search, but we all had to turn back and look for her in the other direction. I sensed danger, my heart near my throat. As we walked back toward the crest of the overpass, there was Laura sitting on the curb as if nothing had happened. What a relief to see her! Our nerves were wearing thin.

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Friday, September 2 Night was yielding to dawn and another hopeless day. Maybe there would be more water and MREs dropped from the sky. Or maybe not. We were a forlorn, ragtag collection of people wandering and stumbling into Friday morning. From about three hundred civilians, our numbers had dwindled to half that number. Presumably some had given up and, like Primm and his entourage, waded off in search of food and shelter. Helicopters whirred above but gave no indication that they saw us, and though we noted a few boats in the water nearby, none were coming in our direction. We couldn’t believe that we would be abandoned for another hot, tiring day. At the Tulane Avenue end of the overpass a white sheriff’s van sat with its doors wide open and a hugely obese woman sprawled inside, hyperventilating. Her daughter, a sheriff’s deputy, would not leave without her. Tears streaming down her cheeks, the daughter stood there begging anyone who would listen for help. I suddenly thought to myself, what if that were MY mother dying in the hot van? What would I do?

Friday, September 2: The Message: Dying, Help! Laura and I decided to act. In the face of total hopelessness, I sensed that if we could just get the attention of one of the helicopter pilots there was a chance he’d land on the overpass. Far more difficult things were possible in times of war, so why not try? We scrounged as many felt-tip markers and crayons as we could, begging them from children and anyone else that we could. We found a large piece of white canvas from what had been a billboard before the winds shredded it, and we began to sketch out two words in letters as large as we could make them: “DYING. HELP!” Someone wanted to put “PLEASE” before the word “HELP,” but ever the English teacher I pointed out that courtesy was not the objective. Besides, we’d be lucky to have enough ink in the several markers to fill in the letters of two words, let alone three. With the help of several children and their crayons our mission was accomplished, and so we waited until the next chopper passed overhead and then jumped up and down, around the canvas on the roadway, waving our arms, t-shirts, hats, or whatever we could find. It was hard to believe that no one seemed to notice us, and for the next hour we watched out for approaching helicopters and marshalled the troops each time one passed. Very few of the people left on the overpass joined us to get the attention of a passing helicopter or boat. When I tried to arouse enthusiasm from a group of women seated nearby, they looked despondent. “All we can do is

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pray,” one of them offered. I told her praying was fine but we needed to act as well if we hoped for relief. A young man in a wheelchair came over and sat by the sign for a while, but the sun was so hot that soon he had to take cover under a cardboard canopy he had managed to construct. We were hot, tired, and thirsty and about to give up when a miracle occurred; one of the helicopter pilots lowered his vehicle enough to motion to us to clear the top of the overpass where one of the street lights with its pole was missing so he could land. He made several attempts, each time coming closer, lower. Several men sprang into action and physically pushed people out of the way so that the blades of the chopper would have enough clearance. There was a rush of chaos with our meagre belongings blowing every which way, but at last, and to great applause, the helicopter pilot maneuvered the aircraft into a landing position. We shed tears of joy and gratitude. Perhaps there was an end to our long ordeal after all. The sickest among us were put aboard that first flight, with others to follow. Meanwhile, several motorboats manned by Texas Wildlife Rangers arrived, and I was among the twenty or so evacuees to climb into one of them. We were almost too exhausted to appreciate the exhilaration of the moment. What happened to the obese mother who had moved us to action wasn’t clear. I have to assume she was rescued soon after. There is also no information available on the several people who nursed dogs during those long, difficult days, nor the old lady in the red upholstered chair. Even the bag lady with the disparate voices in her head has not returned to her former perch at Canal Street and Broad Avenue. I wonder what shelter took her in, or even if a shelter took her in. In the rush to leave the overpass, there was no time for goodbyes. Whether our small effort to get that pilot’s attention was the only reason we were finally evacuated off the overpass isn’t clear. Surely the deputies, once they got off the overpass, had reported our plight as they promised they would. Maybe FEMA12 or whatever power was in charge had at last gotten around to dealing with us. I don’t know and probably never will, but I savored the fantastic relief of being in a moving boat going to what we had been told was a bus that would take us out of New Orleans to a shelter. As the boat motored down Broad Avenue and turned right onto Tulane Avenue, which was now a lake rather than a road, I looked down the alley and saw my house still standing. A lump rose in my throat as I strained to see signs of my dogs on the balcony but there were none. In the past few days I had not allowed my spirit to be crushed by thinking about them. Now, I wasn’t sure if it was relief or horror that gripped me. Quickly I

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turned to chat with a friend on the boat. Six or seven of us had become comrades in arms and would stick together through whatever awaited us. We never said this but it was understood; considering the challenges ahead, it was a wise decision for us to stick together.

Friday, September 2: Off the Overpass, Into Obscurity Along the dozens of blocks that we travelled down Tulane Avenue every building had taken on massive amounts of water. Laura pointed out her house, second in from the corner at South Rocheblave. It too was still standing, in six to seven feet of water. Her neighbors, an elderly couple on the second floor above a shop on Tulane Avenue, had hung a simple banner made from a bedsheet bearing the words “Need Rescue” in runny ink. The woman waved to us through the front window and asked when the boat would be coming for her and her ailing husband; she was assured that the rangers would be back for them. It was disorienting not to recognize familiar buildings and streetscapes. We had to navigate over the median and around parked cars submerged to their rooftops because it was impossible to see where the actual street was. That ride convinced us all of the magnitude of the flooding and sobered us about what was to become of our city after so much of it sat pickling in the brackish water—part lake, part storm, part sewage—for another week or two. It was unimaginable. We felt lucky to be leaving the death and destruction all around us, yet there was an unbearable sadness to knowing we might never see our homes again. The reality that life would never be the same post-Katrina hit us hard, and took precedence even over our fatigue and hunger. The boat dropped us off in front of the Public Library at Tulane and Loyola avenues. We were instructed to wade across the street and wait on the neutral ground (the local term for a grass median) for a bus. The water was mid-thigh in height and smelled of salt and vomit. Bedraggled and dripping wet, we scrambled up on to the median and waited in the broiling sun for a bus. More boatloads followed and their passengers joined us. What bus? After 30 minutes a National Guardsman came by and asked what our ragtag group of about 50 souls were waiting for. There was no bus coming for us, he explained. The only way out of New Orleans was by bus, true, but the only buses were in front of the Hyatt Regency Hotel farther up Loyola Avenue, and to get on one of those we’d have to go to the Superdome. My heart dropped when I heard that fateful word “Superdome.” Besides the atrocities that were supposed to have been committed in the Superdome, getting there would require wading several

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blocks. I didn’t think I could carry my heavy bag with the laptop in it above the water for that long of a stretch. My friend Earl had somehow managed to join us, and he graciously saved the day by hoisting my bag over his head as he tromped through the water. We switched off and stumbled down the long two-and-a-half blocks, feeling our way up and down curbs and steps, since the water was pitch black. Several people in our group fell along the way. Eventually, we reached the up ramp to the Superdome beside the New Orleans Center, only days earlier a posh shopping mall. A chain was draped across the entrance at the end of the ramp. There were no signs, and no one to ask directions. The line to get on the buses wound several times around the dome, and we were told that it would take four days before we could board a bus, and that to get in line we’d have to wade through the water that filled the street to the other side of the Superdome. After having been told nothing but false information for the past four days, this casually imparted news did not sound convincing. Ignoring the speaker, we took some planks of wood from the debris scattered all around and fashioned the semblance of a ramp to help us scale a four-foot wall. By pulling each other over the wall we gained access to the large veranda-like plaza around the dome where thousands of people were milling about. Willie, a 90-year-old gentleman, mustered all his strength and, supported by his son Will, managed to scale the wall. Another member of our group, Harold, a rotund man in his 50s, gave up. He sat down on the ramp and declared he wasn’t going a foot farther. He’d simply die there. We shared his sentiments but were unable to convince him to try it again. Though we had to leave him there, it was wonderful to see him rejoin us 15 minutes later. He had tried to wade through the deep water around the dome but fell and went under. In light of that danger, scaling a four-foot wall was apparently not as daunting. Harold was doing what we all were doing: pushed beyond endurance, he found reserves of courage and strength that surprised both him and the rest of us.

Friday, September 2: In the Bus Line at the Superdome Once on the plaza we could see a single line of several hundred had formed for the buses. We took our places at the end and prepared for a long wait in the direct sun. It was about 2 pm. Bottled water was available but no food. We were told that MREs would be passed out at a checkpoint off to the side at 5 pm. Of course, that involved losing one’s place in line! The line moved in mysterious ways, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. We had to be vigilant about moving quickly ahead so as not to lose our spot.

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At first Earl was in on our group, but he quickly tired of the sun and heat and, after striking up a conversation with an acquaintance on the sidelines, he decided to stay at the Superdome for the night. I asked him why he didn’t want to get on the bus? Earl looked at me with a quizzical tilt of his head and gave the most rational statement I had heard all week. “Miz Mary,” he said, “what am I gonna do on a bus going to somewhere I don’t know, where I never been, with no money? Nope. That’s not for me.” And with that he turned to the bottle of beer in his hand and continued chatting with his friend. “I’ll take care of your dogs, don’t you worry about them,” he called after me. I thanked him and said goodbye, that I’d see him back in the neighborhood soon. I didn’t think that he’d actually look in on my dogs, but it was nice of him to offer. We spent the next few hours in line, the small group of us who had decided to tough it out together. It didn’t make sense to have all six or seven of us standing in the hot sun, so we rotated keeping two people in the line to push our pile of bags along while the rest of us found chairs in the shade under the overhang of the Superdome. When not on line duty we visited and we rested. The people both in front and behind us were told what we were doing and they approved of it. A confrontation over space rights in the line was the last thing any of us wanted. As long as we moved our things quickly when the line moved, everyone was mellow. We were all pretty well exhausted and also anxious as to whether or not we’d get far enough in line to get on a bus by nightfall. One of the women who had befriended us on the overpass showed up suddenly after we had held our place in line for nearly an hour. Some of us objected to allowing her to join us while others were too tired to argue. There were just too many irrational and crazy things going on that our sense of right and wrong began to warp. In the absence of any serious opposition, she stayed in the line with us. I was trying to make some sense out of it all. National Guardsmen— back fresh from the war in Iraq, we were told—walked around the perimeter of the dome, their rifles very much in view. Someone told us there were five lines in front of the New Orleans Center, each waiting for a bus, but we could locate only one long line. I asked a soldier who walked by about the lines and he confirmed there were five lines but only after a certain point, and where that point was he was not able to say. “You’re fine where you are,” he assured me. I asked the next soldier that passed us who said that there was really only one line—the one we were in. He also told us that 50 people were allowed to get on the buses at a time, and that there were enough buses for everyone who wanted to leave. Though I wanted desperately to believe him, the young man behind us said he had

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waited the entire previous day without getting on a bus, and the buses stopped running when night fell. This stranger thought he had a better chance of getting on a bus today, but wasn’t sure. Nothing surprised me after all the stories we had been told over the past few days. On one of my rotations off the line I had time to take a look around me. Besides the absolutely putrid odor emanating from the large doors of the Superdome that stood open to allow for ventilation, there was little indication of the horrors that had been reported about the facility. Several card games were going on. Children romped outside on the large open space where makeshift tents of towels and sheets dotted the view. Many of the individuals sitting or walking around me were mental cases or seriously disabled, some talking to themselves, others drooling. Off to the side, two dark-skinned young men were dancing, leaping into the air and shouting. At first I thought it might be a Mardi Gras dance, but their erratic moves and shouts were more those of someone coming off drugs cold turkey. The evacuation had interrupted thousands of drug deals and dealer networks, leaving former customers to fend for themselves. From the looting of stores with their stocks of liquor there was also considerable evidence of drunkenness. I wondered where all these people would go, and what would become of them. Several people who had survived three or four days at the dome told us differing stories. Night time was the worst; there were no lights and people prowled the aisles. There had been at least one rape, that of a young girl when she went down a ramp to relieve herself in the darkness, and at least one suicide by a young man who leaped from a railing several floors high. There had been shots fired, but how many people killed and by whom no one could say. It definitely wasn’t hundreds as had been reported in the national media. The survivors seemed more tired and frustrated than afraid.13

Friday, September 2: A Pushing, Crushing Mob It was about 6 pm when our spot in the line reached the open plaza that slopes down into the New Orleans Center shopping mall. Gradually, the line oozed out to the sides and people filled the plaza so there was no longer one clearly defined line but rows of people pushing their way to the front. In the absence of signs, barricades, or someone to keep order, it became each for themselves. The family group ahead of us had a huge flatbed cart piled high with their belongings but were soon forced to abandon the cart because of the crush of people. Our small group stayed

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together as best we could. Whereas earlier we had thought about having one or two of us go through a line at a table off to the side to procure MREs, we decided it was better to stay together and forgo eating. In the heat and crowd, it was hard to breathe. We pushed ahead alongside elderly people helped by their children, babies in strollers, pregnant women, and people almost too sick to stand up. It was our worst nightmare come true. The memory of the next two hours spent in that crowd is blurry in my mind, partly because it is painful to remember the pointless agony of it all. Not only were we jammed into a suffocating hot and fetid mob of desperate people, but we also had to climb over at least a foot-and-a-half of debris, made up of mattresses and bedclothes with curtains, all of which appeared to have been blown out of the Hyatt Regency Hotel during the hurricane four days before, folding chairs and military cots abandoned by whomever, and hundreds of empty water bottles. It was very hard to find one’s footing, especially for anyone pulling a heavy schoolbag as I was, or for the elderly who had already been standing for hours without relief. A middle-aged woman stood to my right, apparently alone, bracing herself stoically, tears falling silently down her cheeks. At that moment, I could not think of a word of comfort to offer her. Nothing made any sense. Only sheer endurance kept her going. Eventually, we were close enough to a National Guardsman to ask him why no one was controlling the crowd or cleaning away the debris. A man in the crowd had just had a vomiting episode and was shunted to the side to catch some fresh air. When he was told that he could exit at the side stair but would lose his place in line, his family pulled him back into the anonymous crowd. The Guardsman turned his attention to my question and looked at me blankly. “The Army is in charge of getting you all out of the dome and on to buses,” was his reply. When I asked why the Army wasn’t doing anything to help us, the Guardsman’s reply was so matter-of-fact that at first I mistook it for a joke: “We don’t talk to the Army and they don’t talk to us.” My thought was interrupted by Laura from our group crying out in pain because of a muscle spasm in her back. The stress was mounting on us all; we just didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, Bill knew something about massage and was able to gradually relieve Laura’s back pain, though she continued to suffer several more bouts during our wait. Psychologically it was torture to hear someone up front shout into a megaphone “We’ll take five hundred more for the buses then break for the night.” Where was the five hundredth person in that mob? Would we make it together? Might we be split up? Would we be condemned to spend

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another night under the stars with the stench of human waste assaulting our senses? Panic spread fast, causing us all to stiffen with resolve to make it to the front as soon as possible. Willie had managed well despite his advanced age. It was hard for him to climb over the mattresses and water bottles, but we all helped by offering him a hand or a shoulder to lean on. When he apologized for steadying himself on my arm, I joked that I didn’t mind his being fresh with me. Willie’s smile was a ray of light in that otherwise dismal day. As we finally worked our way to the front, the five barricades manned by Army soldiers in full uniform became visible. Beyond the barricades order ruled. An officer in a very authoritative voice called out periodically on a megaphone “Three people from Gate Two, five people from Gate Five,” and so on. There was an attempt to keep families together, so we quickly agreed to call Willie “Grampaw” and insist the rest of us were siblings, an improbable plan but under the circumstances not one likely to be challenged by the soldiers. Just when we thought we could not make it another few minutes, the gate/barricade in front of us opened wide enough to permit us to pass, and we were finally free!

Friday, September 2: On the Bus at Last We expected to be processed in the New Orleans Center and had our identification papers ready, but no one asked for them. Instead, we were walked down through the now vacant shopping mall with its Victorian touches bathed in the eerie blue lights of a generator. New Orleans police officers and Army personnel nodded to us at various points as we passed. Someone mentioned that we were headed to Dallas. No choice, so Dallas it was. A profound relief came over us as we realized that we would be heading out of New Orleans. After a long walk, up one set of stairs and down another, we emerged from the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel to see a large tour bus parked several yards from the curb. That was our bus, we were told, and in a final surreal touch, we had to slosh through the filthy water in the street to reach it. That would mean cold feet during the trip with air conditioning blowing from the edges of the bus. We braved the water, carrying our bags close to our chests, and boarded the bus, collapsing into the seats. A cheerful barrel-chested bus driver said in his Texas twang, “Welcome aboard. You all must be very happy to be on the bus.” I don’t know what it was about his bright smile that set me off. He had no idea what we had been through nor the awful uncertainty to which we

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were headed. I simply let him have an earful of where we were coming from. The smile melted from his face. “Happy?” I shouted. “Why should we be happy after what we just went through? Why did we have to be treated worse than cattle? Why? Why? We’re exhausted, pushed to our wit’s end and we’re supposed to be happy!” My voice cracked and I dissolved into a paroxysm of sobs. I had reached my breaking point. After a cathartic cry that cleared the air for all of us, I was able to compose myself and sit back for the night’s ride into the unknown. My family still had no idea where I was or if I had survived. I didn’t know whether I would ever see my house again nor any of my life’s work of research and writing. Everything seemed to be closing in on us, the depression, fear and exhaustion. Several people from our group later expressed surprise that I was the one to break down on the bus after having been so strong and determined on the overpass. They had to agree that we each had our limits; some just knew how to push them farther than others did. On the bus we were finally offered MREs, though I have to say the hamburger one I got, with its pasty, compressed bread and wooden patty, was the worst of the military meals I had tasted. Besides, my hunger was not severe enough for me to tackle it. We left New Orleans over the Crescent City Connection and down through Gretna.14 Some areas had lights while others were totally dark. Before I dozed off I recall passing dozens of buses and military vehicles filled with soldiers parked along the highway. New Orleans was an occupied city, and we were going to have to get used to it.

Friday, September 2: Welcome to Texas Texas was as prepared for evacuees as Louisiana had been unprepared. Sometime around 3 pm our bus pulled into a rest area. Dozens of other buses already lined the parking lot, and we sleepy-eyed passengers joined hundreds of other people fleeing hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. We stumbled to the restrooms and were directed to a line of tables that offered everything from medical assistance (I got some lotion to put on my sunburnt and swollen legs and ankles), to brochures about FEMA, to breakfast fixings of cereal, muffins, granola bars, juice, and coffee. Each table was supervised by cheerful volunteers anxious to help us. I was so unaccustomed to attention that just thinking what these volunteers had gone through to be up at that insane hour of the morning to assist us put a lump in my throat.

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We had only a 15-minute break at the well-organized rest stop. I saw my neighbor Rosemary and we had a quick exchange of information. She said she had left her large dog at the Superdome. I haven’t seen her since but have wondered what became of her and her dog; long-time friendships were only one of the many casualties of this disaster. Soon, we were back on the bus and headed onto the interstate. My feet, soaked from wading on to the bus in New Orleans, were now freezing from the air conditioning. A Hispanic passenger who spoke little English and looked lost asked me to explain what was happening. As it turned out, he was an illegal alien who had spent several traumatic days in the Superdome and was worried now about being deported. I had no idea if customs agents would be interviewing us at the center, but I suggested that he prepare himself for that possibility. It was poignant to hear him on his cell phone telling his wife and teenage son in Honduras that he might be incarcerated before being sent back, but that they should not worry about him. It was daylight by the time we arrived somewhere in or near Dallas at a facility that was once a shopping center. The abandoned Walmart Superstore had been equipped with computers and phones operated by a phalanx of social workers and volunteers. A Texas Ranger boarded our bus and explained that we would have to wait for ten minutes or so until the center could accommodate us. There were already a thousand evacuees there, he said, and a brawl had broken out that would have to be taken care of before anyone else was added to the mix. While we waited, a passenger in the back of the bus was having heart pains and was taken away on a stretcher by a medical team. It was a reminder that we were far from whole at that point. The brawl was not quelled and 15 minutes later the same Texas Ranger re-joined us on the bus and announced that we were being sent to a center at a Baptist Encampment outside of Dallas. It was the best of all the assistance centers, he assured us, and we were lucky to be going there. Only one other busload had preceded us, he said. At that point we really didn’t care where we ended up, just as long as there was water, food, and a phone to call our families. When the bus pulled up at the center a policeman boarded the bus and told us that we would be searched for contraband after leaving the bus. If anyone had any drugs, guns, or weapons of any kind, those items should be left at the front of the bus as we disembarked, no questions asked. As to whether or not the weapons would be returned later, the officer was vague. The Baptist Encampment center was terrific, and there were no customs agents to bother the Honduran or any other un-documented immigrants. Around 60 volunteers stood at the facility applauding us as we disembarked

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the bus, teaming up with us one on one to walk through the security check and carry our bags, discussing with us what we needed. I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. The kindness and consideration that was given us weary and confused evacuees contrasted so starkly with what we had known throughout our ordeal. It was hard to believe the nightmare had ended. After listening to a brief orientation, we were attended by doctors, counsellors, and staff who took down our vital statistics, checked us for physical and mental problems, gave us clean second-hand clothes and a bag of toiletries, and showed us to our bunks in a dorm nearby. Before going through the line for the check-up, I was approached by a bubbly Red Cross coordinator who asked if I had called my family yet. When I said no, she asked me the number and started dialing it on her cell phone. I was too emotionally fragile to speak to them, but she made the initial contact. “She’s all right,” the coordinator kept repeating. “She’s been through a lot, but she’s OK now.” As I listened to her explain to my son where I was and how he could pick me up, I somehow gathered myself together enough to stop crying and take the phone. It was wonderful hearing the voices of my loved ones who could do nothing but yell back and forth to each other, “She’s safe! She’s OK!” They had waited with such anguish for days, not knowing if I was dead or alive. My name had been all over the internet, they told me. People from all over the country had inquired about my welfare. It was the first time I realized what I had put my family through; I had been so preoccupied with surviving that I assumed they knew I had made it. Actually, I had no idea how big a story New Orleans had been that whole week, that the images of us forgotten, les miserables, had passed in slow motion across the TV screens of the world for 24 hours a day, like misbegotten celebrities. It was strange how the brief reconnecting with my family helped calm and center me. Suddenly, I knew again who I was and my place in the world. Despite my ordeal, I had not stopped being a mother and grandmother, and I was needed by others in ways that only desperate separations can clarify. I took a wonderful hot shower and relished my first delicious civilian meal, read the local newspaper with its front-page stories about New Orleans, and finally crawled between clean, cool bedsheets for the first time in a week. Laura, whose bunk was below mine and who had come through the whole trek with our small group, had a hard time that night. When I awoke Sunday morning I learned she had been taken to the hospital with impacted bowels, her way of dealing with the enormous stress and

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dehydration. Later, we spoke by phone and Laura was with her son in California and doing fine. I flew out of Dallas that morning and on to Little Rock where my son picked me up for the two-hour drive to Senatobia, Mississippi, a tranquil small town where I could relax and spend time with the family, especially my toddler grandson. It had been his photo on my nightstand in New Orleans that made me get into action and evacuate. I wanted to see him grow up. In the airport I fell apart at the check-in counter. Everything seemed too overwhelming and sad. I couldn’t make one more decision, not even about a window or aisle seat. The puzzled clerk waited for me to explain. “I’m from New Orleans. I’ve been through it all. I just can’t keep it together,” I said, choking back the tears. The clerk understood. They all understood. A sky cap came up to me, took my worn schoolbag, and walked with me to the gate. I didn’t think I’d ever be myself again. The counsellor at the center had told me that Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome is very common among disaster survivors and suggested steadying myself by grabbing my knee or arm and simply saying to myself my name, address, the date, and place of birth to ground me and assure myself I wasn’t going mad. I tried this in the airport and was relieved to find it worked. It was the last time I had to do that, because once I was back with my family in a somewhat normal routine, things fell into place and I began a quick recovery.

Aftermath When I first watched TV with my family and the dramatic images from New Orleans that flashed over network news channels 24 hours a day, it shocked and angered me. How was it possible, I thought, that those awful photos had been broadcast around the world while we were abandoned on the overpass for days? Who and what had failed us and why? The answer to that is still being debated, but to those of us caught up in the horror it is an experience burned into our long-term memories and will mark us for the rest of our lives. It is early November 2005 as I complete this account, a full 10 weeks after Hurricane Katrina first made landfall. I’m living back in New Orleans with friends uptown where there was no flooding, and I’m dealing with insurance adjusters and clean-up crews. Like most of my friends who have managed to return—although a number have not—my life has been turned inside out and, so far, the future remains murky and confusing. Several impressions have stayed with me from my ordeal that exemplify the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity, the transience of

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material things, the importance of family and support systems, and the basic decency of us all when forced to confront horror. I’m very fortunate to be paid by the college where I’ve taught for many years, and we are anticipating a full class schedule in January, many courses of which will be offered online. This requires retraining and adapting, something we are all taking in stride. Patience is also a virtue in great demand. Will New Orleans survive? Yes, it will come back in some form or other, like we human survivors. Things will be different in this smaller New Orleans with enormous challenges ahead. Once people have lost so much, suffered such devastation, and on the massive scale we experienced, it’s hard to trust again, to acquire new furnishings and books, to write again, since it could all be snatched away from us once more in a matter of hours. My concern is for the many former residents who cannot afford to come back, who signed one year leases elsewhere, put their children in schools far away, whose houses in New Orleans will not be habitable for months if not years, and whose close-knit families are now scattered across the country. How will their absence change this city? I don’t regret that I stayed through the storm. I was able to salvage a lot of important papers and items that are now of great comfort to me. The overpass will never feel the same to me as I cross over or under it nearly every day. My lovely dogs still haunt me. Their questioning faces swim up to the surface of my consciousness now and then. I tell them I left them for their own good. They seem to understand. They have no choice. None of us does.

Notes 1

Mary Gehman now lives in Ascension Parish but at the time of Hurricane Katrina she lived in New Orleans and was Assistant Professor of English at Delgado Community College. Mary is a non-fiction author with three books and a number of articles on New Orleans history, specializing in women and Creoles. This account was written in October, 2005, a month after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. 2 Hurricane Cindy briefly reached hurricane-strength winds of 75 mph, but quickly subsided. 4 The Superdome is a football stadium in downtown New Orleans where thousands were housed waiting for the flood waters to recede. Numerous reports of murders, rapes, and robberies circulated that ultimately proved untrue. 5 The Orleans Parish Prison is located at the corner of Tulane Avenue and Broad Avenue in an area known as Central City. The prison is notorious for its overcrowding and overall poor conditions. At the time of Hurricane Katrina, there were over 6,800 prisoners in the jail, many of them left in locked cells for up to five

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days (https://www.hrw.org/news/2005/09/21/new-orleans-prisoners-abandonedfloodwaters). Because of continued abuse and mismanagement, the prison is now operated by the US Department of Justice (http://www.nola.com/crime/index. ssf/2016/06/gusman_jail_takeover.html). 6 In fact, no evidence has surfaced that there were any murders in the Parish Prison during the hurricane and flood that followed. 7 Marlin Gusman was elected Sherriff of Orleans Parish in 2004, nine months before Hurricane Katrina. 8 “Superette” is a New Orleans’ term for a mini-mart. 9 See endnote 2. 10 The Riverwalk is a shopping mall located at the foot of Canal Street and the Mississippi River in the Central Business District. 11 The governor that gave the “shoot to kill” order was Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/la_governor_warns_troops_will. 12 FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security and was given the charge of overseeing the federal relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 13 Most all of the claims of rapes and murders have since been debunked, with the exception of the now-documented cases of police murdering individuals, including the notorious Danziger Bridge shooting in which four New Orleans police officers murdered two people and wounded four others; Cambell Robertson, “New Orleans Police Officers Plead Guilty in Shooting of Civilians,” New York Times (April 20, 2016) (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/us/hurricane-katrina-new-orleansdanziger-bridge-shootings.html?_r=0). While “looting” did occur, these were acts of desperate people who lacked water, food, and basic supplies. Even where nonessential items like electronic equipment were looted, this was invariably done to procure and trade survival items like food and water. Marta Jewson and Charles Maldonado, “The Myths of Katrina,” Slate.com (August 28, 2015) (http://www. slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/08/hurricane_katrina_10_years _later_the_myths_that_persist_debunked.html). 14 The Crescent City Connection is the bridge that spans the Mississippi River from just west of downtown New Orleans and connects with the city of Gretna on the “west bank” of the Mississippi, although since the river flows west to east at that point, Gretna is actually south of New Orleans.

HOLDOUT: THE STORY OF A KATRINA SURVIVOR MICHAEL HOWELLS1

Normally, we learn history through books or the media, but on special occasions we find ourselves living history. This was the case for the roughly one hundred thousand people who were in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina landed on the shores of the Gulf Coast, and it’s here where we discover some the reasons why the private business sector is not capable of dealing with crises. Those of us trapped in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina saw how the private transportation system failed people who didn't have transport out of the city—and we know it failed, because we were looking for a way out but just couldn't find it. Hurricane Katrina also brought up the issue of privatization. I discovered at a City Council hearing that there was a public/private partnership between the Red Cross and the State of Louisiana for the purpose of ensuring that people would be evacuated from the city in the event of a storm such as Katrina. But this plan was a joke. The Red Cross was supposed to line up a coalition of churches to arrange for transport out of the city. When members of the City Council questioned the Red Cross, they found out that the Red Cross had lined up only three churches. This gives you an idea of how unprepared the city was. But on paper, before the Hurricane hit, both city and Red Cross officials declared that, in conjunction with local churches, there was a plan to evacuate those stranded by a hurricane. When the question is asked “why didn't people leave?” it is clear to those who were stranded in the city that people wanted to but couldn't because they lacked transportation. That was one reason. But then there's another group of Katrina survivors, and my significant other Angela, my friend and Eloise, and myself chose not to leave even after emergency transportation became available. We were the Katrina survivors called “hold-outs.” We stayed after the flooding and did not leave even though tremendous pressure was put on us by the authorities. Among other things, the authorities denied us food and we never heard from the city or state of

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Louisiana about emergency food, while the authorities also never set up an emergency food distribution center in the French Quarter. And neither did the Red Cross until after the neighborhood formally reopened, and then only after two of the grocery stores in our neighborhood had already reopened. The emergency evacuation plan was a joke in many ways. We did go to the Red Cross because it was free but only after the crisis had long since passed. In fact, starvation was used as a tool to force people out of the city in the sense that, since no food was made available, the government was hoping that citizens would have to leave. But there is the question of why did folks like us stayed in New Orleans in the middle of a catastrophe where eighty percent of the city was under water? There are various reasons. First of all, many of us lived in dry zones that did not flood. Like Angie and myself, many people were in the French Quarter where we lived and which did not flood. And while it did not flood it was nonetheless very frightening for all of us, since we were deprived of basic social services. The storm knocked out our electricity, so not only did the lights go out but the cell phone towers also stopped working. Basically, all electronic communication was gone.

FEMA Photo by Jocelyn Augustino - Aug 29, 2005

On the Wednesday August 31, after the storm had passed, the city shut off the water supply which created a big problem for those who were boiling water. Then two days later (September 2), the city cut off the gas, which I would have thought they would have shut off first. Some might remember those pictures of streets burning throughout the city while it was still flooded. Much of those fires had to do with the fact that the city did

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not shut off the gas until the Friday after the storm, which did not make sense to me. There was a lot of incompetence on display in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. With Katrina, the tidal surges from the storm caused multiple breaches in many of the levees designed to protect the city so that we found ourselves trying to survive in a giant soup bowl. And when the levees broke and the city began to flood it was the people who lived close to the levees who died. Those of us like Eloise who was living on the West Bank2 or Angela and myself lived in areas that were relatively dry. So why did the holdouts not want to leave? There were a lot of reasons, but government officials did not interview us about them. One reason was because we did not want to abandon our homes in the middle of a crisis—a person’s attachment to their home can be very powerful. A second reason was that some of us did not want to abandon our pets because the emergency transportation provided by the government forbade people from bringing their pets with them. In our case, we had a cat, Snowball, who we'd had for a long time and was very sick, and we knew that if we left she would die. And we didn't want that to happen to her. For many of us, pets are part of our families. There were some people who just didn't want the government telling them to leave their home, to leave their neighborhood, to leave their city. It is a very intense thing when you're told to leave your home for whatever reason, especially if it is under water.. There's something about people who want to stay in their homes despite a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, and the holdouts were those who refused to follow the government’s order to evacuate. That feeling to stay was so strong that they refused to leave. Another interesting point about our experience is that, as a result of the sudden and pervasive flooding, capitalism as we knew it in New Orleans collapsed. Both Angie and I lived in a country at a time when the government and the economy of existing capitalist order just died. In the days and weeks following Katrina the government was deprived of all the basics that it needed to carry out even the minimal functions that we expect of a modern government. The government did not have access to electricity or any type of power, or motorized transportation except on the most limited level. One of the things that's often forgotten is that while there were cars in New Orleans in the dry areas, they quickly ran out of gasoline. So, very soon, the government did not have any of the basics it needed. To give you an idea of how weak the government was, we had, for instance, human corpses left unattended for a week in the streets. I know this very well because the body of an elderly man covered in blankets remained on the corner of North Rampart Street and Touro Street3 for

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seven days. For various reasons I had to walk by that spot, and each time I had to pass the body of a dead elderly man. It’s a different feeling when you're in a society where they can't even pick up the dead in the middle of the street. North Rampart is one of the most heavily used streets in the city. After Katrina, of course, it wasn't too crowded because the transportation ground to a halt. But still, to leave a corpse on a heavily trafficked street in a major US city is a testament to the lack of planning of government and private officials. Another example of the weakness of the government was the police, which was the only public institution operating in the city. But about a third of the police force abandoned the city, basically deserted their posts, while the police that remained did not have electric communications or access to automobiles. The police didn't have anything that was necessary for what we normally associate with a modern police force. So, for instance, in most cases the police literally had to speak to each other if they wanted to get anything done. You would have thought they would have had walkie-talkies or something, but they didn't. It was like going back to the 1840s or 1850s, only this was a society that wasn't built for those times. In the wake of Katrina, you saw people who just weren’t trained to live in this sort of environment. Turning to the economy, in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina it simply collapsed. You could say that the local government was on life support, but it did have a very weak presence. The economy came to a halt because businesses needed the same public infrastructure that the government needed to operate. While the business class always talks about how they can do anything without the government, and do it better, once the public infrastructure went down all the businesses also shut down. All but the very smallest of businesses need a lot of public infrastructure— police, water, electricity, transportation—and with Katrina that infrastructure shut down. The roads were no longer usable while electricity was cut off, and so the capitalists who control these small, medium, and large businesses didn't make any effort to reopen their storefronts or repair businesses. Part of the problem was that the government ordered the city closed, but also those businesses simply were not in any condition to operate and could not take the initiative to begin rebuilding. You always hear this myth about how the “miracle of the market” can adapt to new conditions, even in a crisis, better than the public sector. Well, when the public infrastructure collapses in a capitalist society, so does the economy. I always thought, for instance, that there would be black markets in this sort of environment, but there was a little of that in the days following

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Katrina although I remember that somebody tried to sell me stolen cigarettes, but I don’t smoke. While you can survive without a tire store or a video store, you need food and water, and the really pressing issue with the closure of the commercial sector was the closure of the stores that sold food and drink. That raised a big question for people: how are we going to survive? Most people didn't have the supplies they needed. At the same time, we did not know how long we were going to go without assistance in New Orleans. Twenty-four hours in that environment without assistance seems like eternity, and it took four days before anything began to arrive—it felt like the world was breaking down. Think of those films you've seen where there's a comet coming towards the world and everything's chaotic. That's the mindset you have during a crisis where there is no running water, no electricity, no transportation, and no food or water. The question was, how do we survive in this environment where the society that we've been brought up in and have been acclimated to has collapsed? It was at this point that the quest for survival replaced the pursuit of profit as the driving force behind the organization of society. What did that mean in practice? Outside of lacking food and water, the biggest threat to survival was continuing to honor the principle of private property which states that, if there’s a grocery store with food and water and the owner closes the store, you are not allowed to enter that store to procure food and water for your survival. There was food and water in the city but it was under lock and key, so in order for people to survive they had to say “I know there are laws against this, but these laws have become impediments to our survival.” It was amazing how quickly people began to say “okay, this is ridiculous that we cannot get the things we need to survive because it would violate the principal of private property.” We had been taught all our life to respect private property, and yet that respect suddenly went out the window. Not only did poor and working-class people take necessities from stores, which is labelled “looting,” but I saw very wealthy French Quarter residents as well as New Orleans police officers “loot” as well! But remember, at least from what I saw, that there were unwritten rules that regulated our actions. For example, while it was okay to loot a gas station or a corner store, it was not okay to destroy equipment like a gas pump or a cash register. Private residences were also off limits. That was understood. I'm sure a few people violated that, but where I live these rules were generally abided by. However, it was also understood by all that since you needed food and water and batteries and other supplies you had a right to get them, even if you were violating the rules of private property.

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People resorted to all sorts of activities that violated the law but were necessary for survival. I think this was a clear example of an entire system in crisis, since to abide by the rule of law would have meant certain death. When the accepted laws and norms breakdown people have to find a way to survive. So we did all sorts of things like, for instance, when it came to saving people in flood zones, the many thousands of those people you saw on TV who were trapped in flooded neighborhoods were mostly rescued by fellow Katrina survivors. But to do this meant breaking the law. People found boats or floatable devices on the streets and would press them into service as rescue vehicles, but this was technically stealing because often the owner wouldn't be there. Nonetheless, people would take the boat out of the necessity for survival and to save the lives of others. There was certainly not enough attention paid to the role that Katrina survivors played in saving the lives of thousands and thousands of other survivors. But, again, this meant that the whole idea of private property was pushed to the side. Many of the Katrina holdouts wanted to escape the city, but the question is, how do you escape if you don't have a car? People decided to steal cars, trucks, and city buses—anything that had gas in it—so they could transport themselves, their loved ones, and other people out of the city. There was no bus service, no Greyhound service, and no city bus service. To leave the city, people had to literally steal motorized transportation, if they were lucky enough to get their hands on something that worked. Stealing cars was going on all over the city, and, again, it was a question of survival.

FEMA Photo by Marty Bahamonde - August 30, 2005

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Another example of the desperate methods used for survival was when people looted drugstores. Some people had drug problems, sure, and were looking for illegal narcotics. But other people were just desperate for medicine, and they were hoping against hope that by going through all the medicines in the Walgreens they could somehow, someway, find it. And, I guess, most of the time they didn't find their medication, but they tried. Because of Hurricane Katrina, we witnessed the failure of a system that had appeared to be functioning fine. The whole system of private property and the division between use value and exchange value that Marx wrote about were clear for all to see during the crisis. The whole system of exchange value was thrown out the window. There were a hundred thousand people still in the city and they needed to get food and water somehow, right? The reality is that for one hundred thousand people these necessities came through looting. Some people had stored supplies in case of a flood, but especially where people didn't have anything, the looters would go to the grocery stores or food stores. But remember that the looters were generally able-bodied people while there were still thousands and thousands and thousands of children, elderly people, and physically disabled people who needed to eat. And generally, those people ate because able-bodied men or women went out and looted and gave food and water to them. Many more would have died if not for the “looters” that violated the sacred law of private property. It was extremely hot, 95 to 100 degrees each day, and it was very humid as well. Many people were weak, and they had to have their food and water. The only way they could get these things was by stealing. Those were the challenges we faced, and we had to improvise in order to survive. People had to do it different ways depending on their situation. One last thing was the flood reactionary elements that attempted to restore business as usual in the midst of this chaos. They wanted to bring the city back to one rooted in private property, even though doing so would mean that a lot of people would die. To do this, the city’s elites had the police enforce private property at gunpoint. Not all the police were used to re-enforce private property, but there were elite units of police, like paramilitary units who decided to wage a campaign of terror to whip people into line. Eleven people were shot and killed over a four-day period, and ten of them were black. Even in the middle of a crisis, racism and police violence against black people were always lurking. The single white guy was killed not far from here and he basically told the police to “fuck off,” so they shot him in the face. And so the police used these strong-arm tactics, but they failed utterly. The police would kill somebody here, they'd kill somebody there, but the reality was that of all the people

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the police killed none had a serious criminal record. They were just people trying to survive. They were not violent criminals, they were just guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eventually some police, a small minority, were brought to trial and were found guilty and sentenced. But these sentences were irrelevant because their convictions were later overturned on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct, which sends a hell of a message to the police that the next time there's a crisis they will not be held accountable for any crimes they commit. In some neighborhoods there were people I heard about that were malicious and would intimidate people who weren't from that area. These were usually white neighborhoods, near where Eloise Williams lives,4 where black people would be harassed by white people. I didn't notice that in the French Quarter, but in many areas of the city black citizens were harassed by whites if they walked through these white neighborhoods. I'm not going to talk about the profiteers and gangsters who were up in Baton Rouge at this very time trying to sell off the city to the highest bidder. I won’t talk about the state and local politicians who were more concerned with lining their own or their friends’ pockets than with the well-being of the people of New Orleans, Louisiana, or the Gulf Coast. I'm talking about the people who stayed in New Orleans and who survived and who wanted to help other people survive. We did the best we could, and we had good reasons for staying there, but we also lived through a period where the capitalist system collapsed and we had to find a way to survive, which is one of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. When the emergency transportation finally came we decided not to leave for a variety of reasons, which became a whole issue in itself because after they evacuated the Superdome and the Convention Center the police and the National Guard waged a campaign of intimidation to drive out anyone remaining in the city. As I was told, you could be a young woman walking down the street and a National Guard truck would stop and say, "You! Get in the truck! I'm taking you to the airport to fly you to Los Angeles” or wherever they were going to fly her. That's the way it was. And after the military arrived in the city there was this reality that you could just feel in the atmosphere.5 It felt like you were living in an occupied city. The soldiers were not much help, but they reserved the right to stop and question anyone they wanted to intimidate. Since so many New Orleans police officers had abandoned their posts these soldiers were either National Guard or the Louisiana Highway Patrol. And I witnessed them do their dirty work, and I heard that the New Orleans police also harassed and intimidated people.

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Source: FEMA Photo by Michael Rieger - Sep 02, 2005

After the water subsided and the power was restored came the restoration of the city of New Orleans. But it took a long time to return to normal. The city remained closed for months and the Army roamed the streets. To their credit, the Army was the only branch of government that actually gave us food. The others just wanted us out, and we actually had soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division who had come straight from Iraq, and they were, I discovered, the friendliest. The other branches of military and law enforcement just wanted to leave. The National Guard, the Louisiana Highway Patrol, and the California Highway Patrol were just horrible. They were actually taking people from non-evacuation zones and putting them on planes and flying them off to Utah or some other distant point.

Notes 1

Michael Howells hold a PhD in Political Science from the University of New Orleans. Mike has lived in New Orleans for most of his life, and he and his life partner Angela decided to remain in their French Quarter apartment rather than evacuate. 2 The West Bank is part of the city of New Orleans but it is on the “west” bank of the Mississippi across from the French Quarter and the Warehouse District. Although it is called the West Bank, this area is actually south of the French Quarter across the river, because in this area the Mississippi River flows from west to east rather than north to south. 3 North Rampart Street and Touro Street are located east of the French Quarter in a neighborhood known as the Faubourg Marigny.

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Eloise Williams is a local community activist who has also provided a first-hand account of her experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina. 5 Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29, but National Guard troops did not arrive until five days later on Friday, September 2. See this Frontline Timeline at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/storm/etc/cron.html.

SURVIVING THE FLOOD ELOISE WILLIAMS1

It is 2016 and the people of New Orleans are still living a nightmare. We found no support from our political and business leaders to help us during our tragedy. Today, in 2015, we are looking at a giant land grab where the real estate and construction lobbies and their friends in the city council, Baton Rouge, and Washington DC want to put us out, which they've been trying to do, as my old grandma would say, “from pillar to post.” These lobbyists want to send us to every state in the United States to run us out and then call us “refugees.” We're considered to be refugees in our own city, in the place where we were born and raised. I have a problem with that, and as a community leader I looked at many issues pertaining to where we should be and what our mayor, city council, and other government officials should have done to prevent this disaster. But there was no help until they discovered that we weren’t going away—we’re not all going to die, and we’re going to be right here. As a community activist, I had to oversee a lot of people before I could leave the city. When gas pipelines owned by major corporations burst, and when the flame from the burst reached into the sky, they sent a police officer to the Lower Ninth Ward to order us to leave our homes. But the police didn’t bring any money to allow us to buy the gas, food, and shelter we would need if we left our homes. Myself, I had twelve dollars in my pocket. My neighbor had a car but no gas. We were told to go to the gas station to get some gas and get to a safe place. But when we got to the gas station there was a crowd of police pumping gas and they refused to give us any. What else could we do? We started driving out of New Orleans on an almost empty gas tank and we soon ran out. Luckily, some people from Texas were working in New Orleans and a policeman found us on the highway and got them to take us to Texas. I'm still living the nightmare of Katrina—or not Katrina so much, but what happened after Katrina. After Katrina passed it was a beautiful day, but it was on that day that we started to go through hell in trying to keep in a state of mind where they wouldn’t confiscate what little we had. I don't

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remember the name of the man that picked us up on the highway. We needed to get to Texas where my sister lives and this man was working in New Orleans and on his way to Texas, so he gave us a ride. He was a very nice man and was with his friend, who was in good spirits, and both were Caucasian. When I first met them they told us “we’ll give you all a ride, but you have to get rid of your suitcases and personal belongings,” which represented the little that we had. I said, “no sir, I won't leave my stuff, so you just leave me on the highway and go about your business.” The nice man replied, “no, I can't leave you. I'm going to have to do something.” I must talk about this young man because he made a difference, and made me see that not everyone was selfish and only out for themselves. To help others is some human skill in life. The nice man tied our suitcases to the back of his truck and said, “y’all get in.” He said “I can't take you all the way to Houston because my wife is waiting for me, but I'm going to take you to Beaumont.” They brought us into Beaumont, Texas, and waited at the phone for me to touch base with my daughter before they left. I never had the chance to say “thank you” to them; if not for them, we would have been out on the highway not knowing where we were headed. Their kindness showed me how most people are good. But some people are bad, and along the highway we saw police stopping people in cars and beating them up, knocking them into ditches, and leaving them there or taking them to jail. But the truth is we didn't have to leave our homes. As I said, Katrina had passed and gone, but for some unknown reasons they sent fully armed police and soldiers to tell us we had to get out of our homes. Well, people were afraid, and they lost the understanding that they didn't have to get out of their homes if they didn’t want to. But the way the police acted you felt forced to leave because we didn’t know what was going to happen— whether they'd kill us or what. We had to leave because the police and the soldiers didn’t seem to mind forcing you out or even shooting people. Many, many, many people got shot. Even policemen got shot. Many officers were killed that wanted to do the job properly. And that's what the city officials don't want to us to talk about.2 I didn't want to go back to Texas when Katrina hit because I had just come back from Katy, Texas where I buried my youngest son, Sergeant Joseph James Williams. In 2005 Joseph James, who was 41 years old, was released from the military and then was murdered. I did not want to go back to where I had just buried my son. I didn’t want to go back to Texas to do nothing. I didn't want to live there, I didn't want to be there, and I just wanted to be home in New Orleans. I wanted my people to be safe, but there was no safety in New Orleans because the government and

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city officials had plans to take from us all that we had worked for all our life. I'm still talking about it and I'm still going before the Council Board. I am someone who has worked with ACORN3 to get people homes for their children and help people become first-time homeowners. I was a first-time homeowner and I wanted to help others to own their own home, so I joined ACORN since they help people who can’t get homes on their own. Now I find myself homeless and our city officials do not want me to talk about these kinds of incidents. City officials don't want me to talk about the death of my oldest son, who was also murdered, here in New Orleans. It is ridiculous. City officials have done many things to people they weren’t supposed to. We were supposed to be able to live like human beings after Katrina and we need to bring this thing to a halt, this landgrabbing and taking peoples’ property by using the government. The government didn't work to buy and build these homes—we did. This land is land that we purchased to have a decent place to be. And, despite what the media and our politicians said, not everyone who was stranded in New Orleans was a thug. They want to call people thugs, but I was never a thug in all my life. I don't know what the inside of a jailhouse looks like because I ain't never been in one. I would just say to our politicians—you owe us restitution for the loss of our homes and for the way you treated us. We were never refugees, because you can't be a refugee in your own city, in your own town. Right now, I have no respect for anybody that did this to us. We need to be paid and we need restitution because many people have serious illnesses and have serious medical bills that we can't pay because you brought us back from where we were and put us back in New Orleans where we can’t find work, or if we can then the pay is terrible. We deserve a decent salary, but local, state, and federal officials don’t seem to care if we live like animals. In fact, most people treat their animals far better than our city and state officials treated us.

FEMA Photo by Marty Bahamonde - Aug 28, 2005

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I believe that the officials wanted us to be flooded out of our homes so that they could buy up our property or clear out the housing projects. Right after Katrina we heard a big boom, like an explosion, on the levee. Katrina had already passed and, on a bright sunny day, all of a sudden we're getting messages from our families to come back home and that we had to go over to the Superdome. We were waiting for our family to come home and suddenly we get an order from the government of what we can take away because the water had risen after the levee was blown up.4 There are so-called engineers who are supposedly knowledgeable about every inch of this levee system, and here it is 2016 and we don't have a proper place to live in. We also don't have healthcare and I can’t afford to pay for my medicine. I need my health. I need my home. I worked hard to pay for my home. Nobody helped me. And I want the world to know just how bad it is here in New Orleans. My house is in a shamble. The sub-contractor who was working with the government took time out to destroy our home one way or the other. They made sure we were going to be out. So, when I speak about Katrina I would ask the government, “can you straighten it up, come back and make restitution for the people that you have destroyed in this city of New Orleans?” My daughter Angela and her two children were stranded on the Greater New Orleans Bridge and watched people drop dead. My grandchildren suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. They need psychiatric attention at the same time as Governor Bobby Jindal, our so-called leader, has taken healthcare away from us. Now Jindal wants to run for the presidency. Is he crazy? We need healthcare, but all Jindal will do is take care of himself.5 Jindal should give healthcare back to the people because we need it. You're going to take everything away from us and then come back and say you're going to be President? What are you going to do now, Mr. Jindal? Maybe you're going to come back and kill what Katrina didn’t? We don't need people like Jindal as dog catchers, much less President of the United States. I know a bunch of the candidates don't need to be running for office because they only care about the super wealthy. We need politicians that will work for the average person, the workingclass person. We need politicians that will think about the future and give young people a chance to thrive. I mention young people because I've seen a generation of young people reaching out and demanding change. My experience is that young people know what’s going on and if they don't get the changes they want it will affect them emotionally, physically, and mentally. We need to give young people a chance to share in a piece of the prosperity that they feel they

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deserve. And this is what I would say to the mayor and the city council and state representatives and everyone else. We have a younger generation coming up that is unaware of what the future holds. We need to let them know that, unless things change, we’ll suffer through more Hurricane Katrinas and more homelessness and unemployment. When President Barak Obama came to New Orleans I tried to speak with him to show him what has happened to this city. But Obama was too preoccupied with the wealthy and powerful politicians to bother with me. What I wanted to tell him is that New Orleans is a city and Algiers is a city within the city of New Orleans, but we never get anybody to come to this part of the city.6 How many busloads of people come to New Orleans to tour but don't come to Algiers just across the river from the French Quarter? So, I ask the President that whenever you come back to New Orleans would you please cross over the Greater New Orleans Bridge and visit us folks in Algiers?7 There's people on the West Bank that need your assistance, so please come to Algiers because we need you. We need the President and the government to come and look at what has happened to us as poor people.

Notes 1

Eloise Williams has lived in New Orleans most of her life. An African American, Williams lived in public housing in Algiers (a section of New Orleans located on the “west bank” of the Mississippi river). Williams has been a community activist and an advocate for the city’s public housing residents. 2 Sabrina Shankman, Tom Jennings, Brendan McCarthy, Laura Maggi, and A. C. Thompson, “After Katrina, New Orleans Cops Were Told They Could Shoot Looters,” ProPublica (July 24, 2012), https://www.propublica.org/nola/story/nopdorder-to-shoot-looters-hurricane-katrina. 3 Short for “Associations for Community Organizations Now,” founded by Wade Rathke in 1970. ACORN opposes predatory lending practices and supports stricter gun control laws, increasing the minimum wage, improved education, and increasing the minimum wage: http://www.acorn.org/. 4 The idea that the government intentionally blew up the levees after Katrina is widely believed, although no evidence has surfaced to substantiate this claim. Most New Orleanians are aware that during the Mississippi Flood of 1927 a group of businessmen ordered the levee at Caernarvon, 13 miles downriver, to be dynamited in order to relieve pressure on the levees protecting the city, which is likely the source of the suspicion that the same thing was done in 2005. See Dennis Persica, “The 1927 Flood: The Times-Picayune Covers 175 Years of New Orleans History, Times-Picayune (January 29, 2012). 5 A Republican and fiscal conservative, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal cut taxes to businesses and corporations while he cut spending on social services. See Rob

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Dreher, “How Bobby Jindal Wrecked Louisiana,” American Conservative (February 6, 2015), http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/how-bobbyjindal-wrecked-louisiana/comment-page-3/; see also Ron Shinkman, “Privatized Public Hospitals in Louisiana Remain Short on Cash,” Fiercehealthcare (March 5, 2015):http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/finance/privatized-public-hospitalslouisiana-remain-short-cash. 6 Algiers is part of the city of New Orleans and is located on the “west bank” of the Mississippi river, which is southeast of the city of downtown New Orleans. 7 The Greater New Orleans Bridge, the “GNO,” links the “east bank” of the Mississippi with the “west bank.” Despite the terminology, the Mississippi river flows from west to east when it reaches New Orleans, and so the east bank is actually the north bank and the west bank is on the south bank.

PART 2: SAVING LIVES AND WETLANDS

PUBLIC HEALTH LEADERSHIP IN A CRISIS 2014: THEMES FROM THE LITERATURE ZIN HTWAY AND CASSANDRA CASTEEL1

Abstract Recent catastrophic events like Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent effects of leadership on afflicted populations demonstrate a need for improvement in managerial skill. The problem is that catastrophic events create situations unfamiliar to many public health leaders. This manuscript was crafted from a review of 28 articles from the publication date range 1992–2012. Public health leadership in a crisis focuses on four leadership skills: technical skills, interpersonal skills, conceptual skills, and emotional skills. A leader of a public health crisis must use these four skills for coordinating, managing, and directing staff and resources. In addition to leading and managing public health resources, leaders during a catastrophe will also have to communicate effectively to the public and the media. This leadership model connects lines of leadership skills to various stakeholders and collaborators. The importance of this leadership model will be shown in future public health as leaders gain a better understanding of the role of public health leadership in a crisis.

Public Health Leadership in a Crisis This paper seeks to analyze the leadership aspects of a public health crisis. A public health crisis can range from communicable disease outbreaks to natural disasters to acts of bioterrorism. The aspects of leadership discussed involve the skills, traits, and emotional intelligence of appointed leaders during a crisis situation. There is limited published literature on the subject of public health crisis leadership. A search of the CINAHL Plus database using the keywords [public health + leadership + crisis] resulted in only 28 articles for the publication date range 1992–

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2012. It is the purpose of this paper to fill this gap in our understanding of the role of leadership in a public health crisis. This paper will contribute to our knowledge about crisis leadership in a public health setting. We live in an era of emerging zoonotic diseases, which are transmittable between animals and humans. One of the most common zoonotic diseases is influenza. The natural reservoir for influenza comprises migratory waterfowl and shorebirds. Influenza outbreaks happen with such frequency that we have a “flu season.” Another common disease with lesser human impact is rabies. Rabies is a zoonotic disease in that it primarily affects animals, but can be spread to humans through the bite of an infected animal. However, crisis leadership is not limited to zoonotic diseases alone. Recent population shifts towards cities and a perceived threat of bioterrorism present a need for the better comprehension of crisis leadership in a public health setting. Hopefully, this paper will allow for a better understanding of crisis leadership in a public setting and affect a positive social change in the future.

Literature Review Three themes emerged from a review of the literature from 2004 to 2011 that addressed aspects of leadership during a crisis: leadership skills including technical skills, interpersonal skills, and conceptual skill.2 A fourth attribute of leadership, emotional intelligence, was also prominent in the current literature. The technical skills of leadership were associated with having knowledge of the specific crisis (infectious disease, natural disaster, or bioterrorism). The interpersonal skills are related to leadership during an active crisis period. The conceptual skills of leadership identified in the literature are associated with preplanning and preparation for a crisis, systems thinking during the actual crisis, regionalization and geopolitical coordination, and legal and ethical decision points. Components of emotional intelligence identified in the literature are related directly to crisis communication. Core aspects of the trait theory of leadership and personality traits of leadership were also notable, but not salient. It is not only important to possess these leadership skills, but also to have the ability to implement them effectively in the face of a crisis. Even though there was federal, state, and local government alignment of the severity and dangers of Hurricane Katrina before making landfall, the lack of inter-government cooperation between these levels was a primary factor to the loss to human and animal life. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the

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effective use of these skills and cooperation could have prevented some of these losses.

Technical Skills of Leadership Gray provided an account of the planning and utilization of the academic health sector during a crisis. The organizations involved in planning and implementation need to consider that healthcare workers and researchers at the frontline (whether in the hospital and the community, or part of the infrastructure support network) require information, supplies, attention, and care, and particularly emotional support, during such a crisis.3 Gray identified the lack of emphasis on zoonoses—diseases that are transmissible by animals—in the current health education curricula. In addition, Gray recommended that leadership in the era of bioterrorism should include a real-time inventory of research and response capacity that included the academic, industry, and government communities, as well as having research platforms in place across the country, such as appropriately secure animal care facilities, biobanks, and other technologies necessary to address research issues arising from a crisis immediately, alongside a coordinated process to move people and resources into place when a health crisis requires such action.4 The lack of secure animal care facilities played a major role in delaying the public's response to the onset of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many residents did not heed the evacuation warnings because they were prohibited from bringing their animals to government shelter facilities. Some personal accounts from Hurricane Katrina survivors note that their pet animals were not allowed onto the National Guard inflatable rescue boats as well. In the article by Reeder and Demiris, the researchers emphasize the necessity of Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) for population health disasters and crises. Reeder and Demiris defined COOP as the actions taken before, during, and after a disaster to maintain the delivery of an organization’s essential services. The technical skills of leadership arise from the need to understand the complexity of the decision-making process in emergency situations and specifically in the context of public health.5 In order to coordinate an emergency response effectively, leaders must utilize technical skills to identify and address weaknesses in the systems surrounding public health management. Prior to the onset of the storm, the FEMA “Hurricane Pam” Summer 2004 Exercise identified public health action plan factors for hurricane planning in Louisiana. However, from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it is apparent that these

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identified public health action plan factors were largely ignored by local Louisiana government agencies.6

Interpersonal Skills of Leadership The work by Bruckmüller and Branscombe identified the relationship between the gender stereotypes and the role of leadership. The authors found that gender stereotypes depict men as a better fit for leadership and, in general, women as better suited to times of crisis. Bruckmüller and Branscombe posit that this gender stereotype of women in a leadership role originates from stereotypical female characteristics of interpersonal qualities, such as "intuition" or being aware of the feelings of others. These stereotypical interpersonal qualities lead to a generalization: “think crisis— think female.” On the other hand, the experimental research by Bruckmüller and Branscombe also supports the argument that the stereotypical interpersonal qualities of men lead to the mindset of: “think manager—think male.”7 The research by Hacker et al. examined the interpersonal skills of a public health leader in response to the apparent suicide contagion in Somerville, MA from 2000–5. The authors identified the actions of the mayor, a life-long resident of Somerville, who had known several of the victim’s families and acknowledged the problem of drug abuse in his inaugural speech of 2003. The manuscript also included outlines of the community support services backed by the mayor. These support services included a local trauma response network, which was formed by community members including parents, mental-health professionals, and teachers who were closest to the young people impacted by the situation and were trained in posttraumatic stress management. Hacker et al. also included other community-wide activities to increase awareness and drive prevention efforts such as a candle-lit vigil to honor the deceased in an effort to grieve the departed without stigmatizing the manner of death; a substance abuse “speak-out” was held which allowed community members to talk openly about the impact of substance abuse on their lives and communities; and finally education forums and training on the signs and symptoms of substance abuse were held throughout the community while efforts were made to reach out to the recovery community and link substance abusers with needed resources.8 The interpersonal skills of leadership were clearly missing during the Hurricane Katrina event. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been heavily criticized for his actions or lack of action before, during, and after Katrina. Many internet blog posts

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and media sources blame Mayor Nagin’s lack of leadership for exacerbating the aftermath of Katrina.

Conceptual Skills of Leadership The conceptual skills of leadership are identified as preplanning and preparation for a crisis, systems thinking during the actual crisis, regionalization and geopolitical coordination, and legal and ethical decision points. Systems thinking is a discipline of management that examines the interactions between the components of a system and can be used to increase its functionality or effectiveness.9 Systems thinking and modelling for public health were well described in a work by Leischow and Milstein, who considered four critical points to incorporate a systems approach in public health practice. These four critical points are consistent with the conceptual skills of public health leadership during a crisis, which are; an emphasis on relationships, especially focusing on the dynamics of the interactions of people and social networks; the continuing need for specialized studies, on which all good system theories depends; an approach to health and healthcare dilemmas that requires a leader to transcend academic boundaries and interact more effectively across organizational lines as they learn to understand and manage ever more complex challenges; and an understanding of ancient philosophical roots and how their modern methodological manifestations are phenomenally diverse. Leischow and Milstein presented systems thinking and modelling for public health practice as conceptual skills of leadership.10 During the Hurricane Katrina crisis, the administrative and physician leadership of both Charity Hospital and the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans demonstrated the conceptual skills of leadership. Both healthcare facilities were known to be community shelters for riding out hurricanes. However, Hurricane Katrina knocked out power and water supplies and resource supply routes, left many dead bodies, and stranded healthcare workers and community members at each location. The leaders at each of these facilities transcended their “pre-Katrina” roles to system thinking leaders. As each hospital awaited rescue and evacuation, the leaders had to address a dire situation: lack of resources and medication, lack of clean water in an increasingly contaminated environment, lack of power in sweltering, humid weather, lack of clean clothing, lack of food and sleep, lack of toilet facilities, and decreasing morale and hope. The decisions made by these leaders during this time will likely be judged and evaluated for years to come. However, for public health leadership, the situation faced and actions taken by the leaders at both Charity Hospital

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and the Memorial Medical Center can be used for preplanning and preparation for a public health crisis. Preplanning and preparation for a public health crisis were researched by Bell et al. In this qualitative study, the authors researched the prioritizing of hospital resources during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Toronto in 2003. The authors provided a description of the priority settings within the hospital, evaluated prioritizing using “accountability for reasonableness,” and identified the prioritizing decision-making process. According to Bell et al., the key decision-makers for prioritizing within the hospital setting are: Corporate Command, Hospital Command, Department Management/Chiefs, and Individual Clinicians.11 In the case of Katrina, these hospital leaders were faced with an enormous challenge as they were still responsible for their patients' health outcomes in the midst of major supply shortages. As previously described, the situations at Charity Hospital and the Memorial Medical Center were both chaotic and dire. Hospital leaders had to prioritize limited hospital resources to patients and as a result were not able to equally distribute valuable resources to patients, people from the community, their staff, or even themselves. As previously stated; the decisions made by these leaders during this time will likely be judged and evaluated for years to come. The article by Stern, Koreck, and Markel described the H1N1 pandemic planning process by the government of Argentina, particularly calling attention to the lethargic approach by the presidential administration during the confirmed outbreak in 2009. Stern, Koreck, and Markel provided a narrative of the political and international fall-out from the delayed response by then President Cristina Kirchner. This failure of leadership during the public health crisis prompted the health department of Chubut, a rural province of Argentina, to coordinate the regional response.12 The response is an example of local ingenuity and systems thinking in a publichealth crisis situation. The lack of conceptual skills was also exemplified during Hurricane Katrina, where the failure of leadership at the federal level caused confusion at the state and local levels. This in turn resulted in a well-publicized dispute between Mayor Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. The need for systems thinking in a public health crisis is identified by O'Neil who noted the lack of leadership development programs (LDP) for public health, which in turn results in a shortage of public health managers. O'Neil equated the ability to manage people as a strategic resource.13 In a crisis situation, demand may outstrip the supply of public health resources and could pose a threat to the allocation and distribution

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of those resources.14 This is especially important during the crisis period, as managing people may improve the efficient use of resources and prevent compounding problems as the crisis carries on. The lack of effective leadership development programs and the managing of people was very evident during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) was unable to serve effectively and lead the public during the days that followed the flooding. There were many accounts of violence against the NOPD from the public during this time, although none have been substantiated, as well as accounts of violence against the public from the NOPD. “Looting” appears to be a common thread of the violence between the public and the NOPD. Some people were looting as criminals, while others were looting for survival. Had the NOPD engaged in a LDP prior to Hurricane Katrina, the violence and resulting deaths may have been avoided. However, there needs to be a consistency of LDPs for public health across geographical regions. Research by Stoto supported two reasons for the regionalization and geopolitical coordination in a public health crisis: (a) disease outbreaks do not respect geopolitical boundaries, so some sort of coordination is needed for an effective public health response, and (b) regionalization represents a more efficient use of resources than distributing resources to each of the many local public health departments (LPHD). As was seen in August 2005, the effects of Hurricane Katrina were catastrophic and widespread over seven states. Estimated death tolls from Katrina exceed 1,800 persons, in which Louisiana and Mississippi had the highest death estimates. The severe impact of this disaster necessitated leaders from different regions to coordinate their responses, but they failed to work together on many levels at the time. This is a topic on which public health leaders can improve. The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) has recognized the potential benefits of regionalization and has identified four approaches to this process: (a) networking for the coordination across jurisdictions, (b) the active management and coordination of LPHD, (c) standardization and some uniformity across individual health departments in the region, and (d) centralization of the resource planning and resource response.15 The work by Thomas and Young evaluated the pandemic influenza preparedness plans of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings of their research showed a gross lack of ethics preparedness during a crisis, as only six states (Iowa, Indiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) had their own guidelines for ethical decision-making during a crisis. Thomas and Young noted that

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California had its own ethics recommendations, but was making no further progress on them.16 Legal and ethical issues related to crisis situations were further explored by Barnett et al. as they examined the legal perspective of emergency response. The authors recognized that the declaration of an emergency often triggers new or unconventional legal responses, and authorizes varying actions of uncertain legality. Barnett et al. expressed the need for legal flexibility during emergencies and for legal practitioners in the public and private sectors to be prepared to prioritize and resolve relevant legal issues in real time. An example of the need for legal flexibility is the NOPD shootings at the Danziger Bridge on September 5, 2005, which resulted in numerous lawsuits from the local to the federal levels. The authors further described that the core objective is to craft laws (at a time when the traditional rules of society are in flux) that assist public-health practitioners and other responders in making good decisions that benefit the community’s health and that respect individual rights and expectations. A conceptual aspect of decisions that benefit the community’s health and that respect individual rights and expectations is the allocation of public-health resources when demand outstrips supply.17 In the case of Hurricane Katrina, when rescue efforts were held up or suspended and supplies were non-existent, many people looted for survival.

Concepts of Emotional Intelligence The work by Reynolds and Earley looks at concepts of emotional intelligence strongly associated with Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) and identifies the leadership challenges that stem from the uncertainty, informational overload, and situational complexity of a crisis. Reynolds and Earley identified five key informational needs that employees, stakeholders, and the public look for in their leaders during a crisis: (a) to gain the facts needed to protect themselves; (b) to make wellinformed decisions using all available information; (c) to have an active, participatory role in the response and recovery; (d) to act as “watchguard” over resources; (e) to recover or preserve wellbeing and normalcy, including economic security. Reynolds and Earley also identified five communication failures by leaders that hurt crisis response: (a) the release of mixed messages from multiple experts; (b) information released late; (c) leaders with paternalistic attitudes; (d) leaders not countering rumors and myths in real time; (e) public power-struggles and confusion.18 A paper by Henman supported the need for leaders to take charge of communication during a public health crisis. Henman also stressed the importance of a

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crisis leader listening to the response team. By putting aside ego and listening, a leader will be able to draw answers and solutions from others.19 In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the concepts of emotional intelligence were lacking: mandatory evacuation orders were given too late to evacuate all remaining persons effectively. Available trains and buses that could have aided evacuation efforts went unused, and former Mayor Nagin exploited the office for personal gain which resulted in a 21 count federal indictment. The power struggles and mismanagement between the local, state, and federal government also affected the relief efforts. The research by Lynch and Cole examined the human factors during emergency care. Their research brings to light the emotional needs of both the caregivers and patients during an emergency crisis. The situational analysis should be taken into consideration within the concept of emotional intelligence leadership during a crisis situation. The researchers acknowledged that little emphasis appears to have been placed on the recognition and development of human factors such as team communication, collaboration, personality, and culture, which can affect job satisfaction and ultimately patient outcomes. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the emotional needs of care givers and patients are evident. The dire situation at the Memorial Medical Center, as previously described, where resources were low and the rescue was hampered, the emotional needs of caregivers and patients was high. In addition, Lynch and Cole identified that negative human interactions such as conflict, power struggles, and poor leadership influence how teams perform in intensive care units, theatres, emergency departments, and other clinical settings.20 During Hurricane Katrina, Charity Hospital was a setting that exposed many of these negative human interactions, and as previously noted, the decisions made at Charity Hospital during this time will likely be judged and evaluated for years to come. The shortage of research in these areas of negative human interactions is reflective of the need for a clearer understanding of emotional intelligence and public health leadership in a crisis. The work by Lau and Can further detailed the necessity of emotional intelligence during a public health crisis. In their paper, the authors described the societal impact of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) infection. The societal impact of the SARS infection quickly spread to the community and hospital levels, with the closure of schools and hospitals, which upset many of the nurses’ personal, family, and social lives and careers. The researchers further identified the nurses’ challenges including the absence of proven treatments and reliable diagnoses of the

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disease, the risk of personal safety, the shortage of personal protective equipment, and the psychological trauma resulting from the death of the first infected nurse who lost his life on duty.21 Following Hurricane Katrina, more than half the hospitals in the seven parish area affected were closed. Many of these healthcare facilities, including Charity Hospital, would not be re-opened. Additionally, it was reported that only 16 of the 126 public schools in New Orleans emerged without significant damage.22 The research by Pender and Prichard explored crisis intervention from the aspect of the critical incident debriefing and overall critical incident stress management. The authors identified the five essential elements of crisis intervention: establishing safety, enhancing calm, building self and other’s efficacy, reconnecting to social networks, and instilling hope. Pender and Prichard suggested that group workers may recognize these as therapeutic factors that emerge in groups, furthering support that gathering people after a crisis will help. The authors identified the stress mitigation tactics that are included in the overall Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) strategy. CISM is defined as “a comprehensive, systematic, integrated, and multi-tactic form of crisis intervention that is applied to manage critical incident stress after traumatic events.” The research by Pender and Prichard supported the argument of the necessity of emotional intelligence and public health leadership during a crisis.23 Like most of the government’s emergency response to the Hurricane, Katrina victims and evacuees overwhelmed crisis mental health services. Mental health professionals were unprepared for the relocation and effect this would have on humanitarian host communities.24 Not only will the victims of crisis need mental health services, but so will the public health leaders. “Crisis-resiliency” is another term associated with emotional intelligence and public health leadership during a crisis. Moran defined “crisis-resiliency” as the ability to recover from adversity and respond effectively during stressful situations, especially when beleaguered by private events such as fatigue, frustration, and self-doubt. A leader may face this situation and be subject to these emotions during a public-health crisis, but there are two qualities in this situation that they should understand: they need a better understanding of how to lead change and a better understanding of how to manage the stress of change. Moran further expanded on the subject of “psychological flexibility,” which he broadly defined as contacting the present moment fully, based on what the situation affords, as a mindful individual, changing or persisting in behavior in the service of chosen values.25 In the case of Hurricane Katrina, there was a dichotomy of crisis-resiliency between the leaders, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin. On August 26, 2005, Governor

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Blanco declared a state of emergency and put both her staff and the Louisiana National Guard on alert, setting herself up in the state’s Emergency Operations Center. Contrarily, Mayor Nagin reportedly spent time on a film set, had a casual dinner with family members, and waited until August 28, one day before landfall, to order mandatory evacuations. This late evacuation notice is frequently noted as why so many people died during Hurricane Katrina. Many writers and critics have described Mayor Nagin as “ineffectual." As Gary Rivlin noted, "Nagin appeared to have a meltdown."26 This dichotomy of crisis-resiliency between leaders was a likely contributing factor to the ineffectiveness of emergency efforts and the dismal outcome of Hurricane Katrina.

Problem Statement We live in an era of emerging zoonotic diseases, population shifts towards cities, and the threats of bioterrorism. The role of public health leaders is changing to address the new realities and the complexity of new situations that arise from these developments. The paucity of literature on the theoretical development and evaluation of public health crisis leadership supports the statement that the application of leadership during a crisis requires more attention and better understanding to fully address issues that arise from it. The intention of this paper is to improve the comprehension of crisis leadership in a public-health setting to bring about a positive social change.

Public Health Leadership Theory The application of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory during an all-hazards crisis will be of key importance for successful crisis leadership and crisis outcomes.

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Public Health Crisis Matrix

technical skills

interpersonal skills

Public Health Crisis Leader

conceptual skills

emotional intelligence

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Technical Skills Crisis Matrix

Knowledge of the crisis processes, methods, tools, and techniques

Act as a "watch-guard" over resources

Technical Skills

Task may be unstructured or unclear, the work methods may not be known or are new, the LMX is high

Diagnosing the situation so that the leader's actions can influence the outcome

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Interpersonal Skills Crisis Matrix Knowledge of interpersonal relationships including communication, conflict management, negotiation, and team building

Social exchanges to build mutual confidence, trust, and motivation

Interpersonal skills

Adapting behavior and other resources in a way that helps close the gap between the current situation and the desired outcomes

Creating partnerships approach to the interactions and encourage the subordinates to negotiate the assignments

Conceptual Skills Crisis Matrix

Knowledge of problem solving, logical thinking, decision making, creativity, and reasoning in general

Make well-informed decisions using all available information

Conceptual skills Explore motivation to better understand the subordinate's personal aspirations, task related preferences and career goals to test the willingness of the subordinate to take on new responsibilities

Must identify the out-group during the crisis situation, analyze their past performance and identify some key characteristics that would help in exploring their interests in the crisis

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Emotional Intelligence Crisis Matrix

Self-awareness, selfregulation, selfmotivation, empathy for others, interpersonaland social skills

Gain all the facts to protect the public, their families, and their pets from the dangers they are facing

Emotional intelligence

Reduce de-motivation, identify factors that may lead to low LMX

Recover or preserve well being and normalcy, including economic security

The Role of LMX Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory is especially relevant during the onset of a public health crisis. The public health crisis leader needs to be aware that followers and subordinates will separate into in-group and out-group dyads during a crisis. In-group dyads are comprised of those engaged and working with the leader. Out-group dyads are comprised of those not fully engaged and not fully working with the leader. Therefore, the leader needs to apply the fundamentals of LMX theory during a public health crisis to bring all followers into the in-group dyad. The prominent LMX theory themes that emerge during a crisis are: if the task is unstructured or unclear, or the work methods are not known or are new, the LMX is high (technical skills); the leader must be skilled in adapting behavior and other resources in a way that helps close the gap between the

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current situation and the desired outcomes (interpersonal skills); creating partnerships by welcoming interactions and encouraging subordinates to negotiate the assignments (interpersonal skills); exploring motivation to better understand the subordinate's personal aspirations, task-related preferences, and career goals to test the willingness of the subordinate to take on new responsibilities (conceptual skills); identifying the out-group during the crisis situation, analyzing their past performance, and identifying some key characteristics that would help in exploring their interests in the crisis (conceptual skills); and reducing de-motivation by identifying factors that may lead to low LMX (emotional intelligence).27 The separation of in-group and out-group dyads occurred repeatedly after Hurricane Katrina as local and state leaders were not prepared to address a crisis of such magnitude or complexity. The outcome that leaders obtain as a result of exchanges with members, such as emergency relief, has a number of important implications for managers and organizations.28 These outcomes also have important implications during a public-health crisis. Well-planned and well-executed crisis and emergency risk leadership, fully integrated into every stage of the crisis response, can give the organization the critical boost necessary to ensure that limited resources are efficiently directed where truly needed.29 Therefore, the principles of LMX theory are applicable to public health crisis leadership. In the case of Katrina, the Louisiana National Guard, an in-group dyad, operated under the leadership of Governor Blanco. By September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, 23 states had National Guard forces in the operating area with boots on the ground. By September 8, at the peak of the response, more than 51,000 Army and Air Guardsmen were on the ground in the Gulf region, and more than 17,000 people were saved from flooding or other hazards, while 51,000 people were airlifted out of the affected areas by the Army and Air National Guard. The National Guard (both Army and Air) flew approximately 7,000 sorties, and airlifted nearly 11,000 tons of cargo to the affected areas.30 Unlike the National Guard troops, members of the NOPD, an out-group dyad, blamed National Guard troops for the shooting of innocent black residents during the days following Hurricane Katrina.31

Empirical Evaluation Plan Public-health leadership during a crisis is exemplified by short-term leadership, a notion supported by the research of Farquhar, who defined this period as an “interregnum” in which the "normal functions of

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government or control are suspended." The measure of leadership by short-term executives may reflect the demands of the situation: crisis management, stability, and readying the organization for new leadership. With the understanding that crisis management is a short-term leadership role, an empirical evaluation plan must reflect the “short-term” understanding and it would not be appropriate to use an instrument traditionally associated with leadership evaluation that was not adjusted for a short-term leadership role.32 In the case of Hurricane Katrina, many have noted an absence of leadership in New Orleans during the crisis. As previously noted, there were accounts of short-term leadership failures during this period of interregnum at both Charity Hospital and the Memorial Medical Center. Research by Schreuder et al.33 evaluated the relationship between a nurse manager’s leadership behavior in relation to the illness of the staff. The research method and the instrumentation used for this study provided empirical evidence supporting a particular leadership style for an outcome. Even though this research and the instrument used for data collection are directed towards long-term leadership effectiveness, they can be modified to evaluate public-health crisis leadership. The evaluation of the theory of public-health crisis leadership will need to measure the four leadership skills of the public-health crisis leader: technical skills, interpersonal skills, conceptual skills, and emotional intelligence. The leadership skill assessment instrument can be a tool which collects 360-degree feedback from the leader’s superiors, peers, colleagues, subordinates, the public, and the news media. This 360-degree feedback can be designed to evaluate the leader’s performance by a quantitative method or a qualitative method, or a mix of both approaches. Creswell defined these three evaluation methods as approaches to answering research hypotheses.34 The quantitative method is used primarily for survey and experimentation which can provide measures of how many members of a population have particular knowledge or attitudes. This differs from the qualitative method, as this provides insight into a population, asking the question of “why?” instead of “how many?”35 The mixed-methods approach is a blend of these quantitative and qualitative research methods. In this blend of methods, the order of investigation and the weighting of data from each method need to be pre-determined by the investigators.36 To further the research and evaluation of this theory of leadership during a public-health crisis, a quantitative research method would be appropriate since it would provide empirical data about the relationship of the four leadership skills (technical, interpersonal, conceptual, and

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emotional intelligence) and the measured outcomes. To collect the quantitative data, a survey tool could be crafted and distributed for a 360-degree feedback. The survey tool could use a Likert scale comprised of strongly agree, mostly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. This instrument could separately measure the four leadership skills as independent variables against the measured outcome, which serves as the dependent variable. The outcome of the public health crisis can also be measured quantitatively by a similar Likert scale. The outcome instrument would also have to be distributed for a 360-degree feedback evaluation. The data would be collected and analyzed for regression and correlation. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf region, articles and polls revealed a scathing public view of leadership during the crisis. The public view of the mishandling of resources, cooperation between agencies, and the disconnect between local, state, and federal governments is readily available for review and evaluation. An empirical evaluation plan should be used following an event. By applying the quantitative research method prospectively, the opinions of the 360-degree feedback participants will be more objective and less likely to be effected by time. A retrospective analysis of previous public-health crisis events may collect data from participants whose opinions have been influenced by events following a leader’s role or the news media. Events following a leader’s role and the portrayal of the event by the media would be threats to the internal validity of the retrospective data.

Conclusions Hurricane Katrina exposed the crisis of public health leadership at every level. The era of emerging zoonotic disease and the threat of bioterrorism events requires a leader skilled in public-health crisis management. The paucity of research and literature on the subject of effective public health crisis leadership necessitates this theoretical leadership approach and empirical evaluation. This theory of public-health crisis leadership is constructed from four basic and traditional leadership skills: technical skills, interpersonal skills, conceptual skills, and emotional intelligence. A public health crisis is the driving force for a leader to develop skills in these four areas. The public health crisis is a situation that is unexpected, with little or no warning, and can be readily controlled with proper planning and training, which was not the case, unfortunately, with Hurricane Katrina. A leader in this role will need to coordinate with

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several agencies and organizations, direct staffing towards favorable overall outcomes, and address the needs of the public and the media. Unlike traditional managerial leadership roles, the leader of a public-health crisis is a short-term leader with possibly increased responsibilities and decreased resources. We suggest policy adaptations for the emergency management of resources and direction of staff during a crisis period. We also suggest policy adaptations requiring annual or semi-annual crisis drills. Even though the emergency management policy of staff and resources is common to many localities, crisis drills and exercises may be lacking. Policy changes allow crisis leaders flexibility and practice in making decisions for the allocation of resources to areas or departments that present an urgent need. The results of drills may identify the need to create smaller, coordinated management teams for widespread underserved areas, such as residential neighborhoods isolated in the midst of a crisis. Additional policies should be created to ensure that members of the public can engage and act during and after a crisis. An example is the creation of community outreach centers to train potential volunteer leaders using practice drills that reflect crisis situations and exercises to ensure that there are workable interventional strategies in place for a streamlined crisis response. Historical accounts of pandemics are proof that unmanaged emerging diseases can have devastating effects on the human population. A common thread in the current literature concerns emerging microbial organisms that have become resistant to current medications and pesticides. Many of these microbiological organisms pose a threat to public-health servants engaged in helping the public. Bioterrorist activities pose another threat to populations as well as the political turmoil that continues on a global scale. In 1984, one of the largest known bioterrorism attacks occurred in Oregon when more than seven hundred persons were reported ill from Salmonella poisoning. In 1995 there was a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. On several occasions during the past decade there have been bioterrorist activities that were not known until after the event occurred and people had died. Because public health crisis events do not follow geopolitical boundaries, a crisis leader may become responsible for regional populations. The leadership skills of a public-health crisis leader will extend from technical skills, interpersonal skills, conceptual skills, and emotional skills. As these skills and others are traditionally studied and researched in managerial applications, a public-health crisis situation is far from traditional. A leader in this role must be talented in these four areas.

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In almost every aspect of crisis relief after Hurricane Katrina, it was leadership that failed to adjust to the realities of a major urban center flooded with water and lacking in food, water, transportation, medical treatment, and housing. Following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, it is imperative that we increase our understanding of these leadership skills in order to effectively manage future crises.

Notes 1

Dr. Zin Htway is an adjunct professor of Biology at California State UniversityChannel Islands. Dr. Htway also holds an MBA. Cassandra Casteel is an undergraduate student at CSUCI. 2 Nahavandi, Afsaneh. The Art and Science of Leadership. Prentice Hall, 2012. 3 Gray, Jean. "SARS and the Academic Health Sector." Clinical and Investigative Medicine 28:1 (February, 2005), 30-32. 4 Gray, "SARS," 30-32. 5 Reeder, Blaine, and George Demiris. "Building the PHARAOH Framework Using Scenario-Based Design: A Set of Pandemic Decision-Making Scenarios for Continuity of Operations in a Large Municipal Public Health Agency." Journal of Medical Systems 34 (April, 2009), 735-739. 6 Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA (July 23, 2004); Release number: R6-04-093. 7 Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla R. Branscombe, "The Glass Cliff: When and Why women are Selected as Leaders in Crisis Contexts," British Journal of Social Psychology 49 (2010): 433–51. 8 Karen Hacker, Jessica Collins, Leni Gross-Young, Stephanie Almeida, and Noreen Burke. "Coping with Youth Suicide and Overdose: One Community’s Efforts to Investigate, Intervene, and Prevent Suicide Contagion," Crisis 29 (2) (2008): 86–95. 9 Lloyd F. Novick, Cynthia B. Morrow, and Glen P. Mays, Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management (Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2008). 10 Scott J. Leischow and Bobby Milstein, "Systems Thinking and Modeling foe Public Health Practice," American Journal of Public Health 96 (3) (March 2006): 403–4. 11 Jennifer A. H. Bell, Sylvia Hyland, Tania DePellegrin, Ross E.G. Upshur, Mark Bernstein, and Douglas K. Martin. "SARS and Hospital Priority Setting: a Qualitative Case Study and Evaluation," BioMed Central Health Services Research 4 (36) (2004): 1–7. 12 Alexandra Minna Stern, Maria Teresa Koreck, and Howard Markel, "Assessing Argentina's Response to H1N1 in Austral Winter 2009: From Presidential Lethargy to Local Ingenuity," Public Health Reports 126 (January–February 2011): 9–12.

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13 Mary L. O'Neil, "Human Resource Leadership: the Key to Improved Results in Health," BioMed Central Human Resources for Health 6 (10) (June 2008): 1–4. 14 Daniel J. Barnett, Holly A. Taylor Jr., James G. Hodge, and Jonathan M. Links, "Resource Allocation on the Frontlines of Public Health Preparedness and Response: Report of a Summit on Legal and Ethical Issues," Public Health Reports 124 (March–April 2009): 295–303. 15 Michael A. Stoto, "Regionalization in Local Public Health Systems: Variation in Rationale, Implementation, and Impact on Public Health Preparedness," Public Health Reports 123 (July–August 2008): 441–9. 16 James C. Thomas and Siobhan Young, "Wake Me Up When There's a Crisis: Progress on State Pandemic Influenza Ethics Preparedness," American Journal of Public Health 101 (11) (November 2011): 2080–2. 17 Barnett et. al., “Resource Allocation,” 295–303. 18 Barbara J. Reynolds and Elvia Earley, "Principles to Enable Leaders to Navigate the Harsh Realities of Crisis and Risk Communication," Journal of Business Continuity and Emergency Planning 4 (3) (March 2010): 262–73. 19 Linda Henman, "Lessons for Leading During Crisis," Clinical Leadership and Management Review 24 (2) (Quarter Two 2010): 1–7. 20 Antonia Lynch and Elaine Cole, "Human Factors in Emergency Care: The Need for Team Resource Management," Emergency Nurse 14 (2) (May 2006): 32–5. 21 Pui Yi Lau and Carmen W. H. Can, "SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome): Reflective Practice of a Nurse Manager," Journal of Clinical Nursing 14 (April 2004): 28–34. 22 NewsHour Productions LLC. "New Orleans Schools Before and After Katrina." PBS NewsHour (November 1, 2005). 23 Debra Ann Pender and Karen K. Prichard, "ASGW Best Practice Guidelines as a Research Tool: A Comprehensive Examination of the Critical Incident Stress Debriefing," The Journal for Specialists in Group Work 34 (2) (June 2009): 175– 92. 24 Aretha Faye Marbley, "In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: Delivering Crisis Mental Health Services to Host Communities," Multicultural Education 15 (2) (Winter 2007): 17–23. 25 Daniel J. Moran, "ACT for Leadership: Using Acceptance and Commitment Training to Develop Crisis-resilient Change Managers," The International Journal of Behavioral Consultation and Therapy 7 (1) (2011): 66–75. 26 Gary Rivlin, Katrina: After the Flood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016). 27 Ashim Gupta, Leadership Development: Leader Member Exchange (June 6, 2009), http://www.practical-management.com/Leadership-Development/LeaderMember-Exchange.html. 28 Kelly Schwind Wilson, Hock-Peng Sin, and Donald E. Conlon, "What About the Leader in Leader-Member Exchange? The Impact of Resource Exchanges and Substitutability on the Leader," Academy of Management Review 35 (3) (2010): 358–72. 29 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Course (CERC) (December 9, 2011),

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http://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/overview.asp. 30 National Guard, 10 Years Later: Remembering Hurricane Katrina, n.d., http://www.nationalguard.mil/Features/2015/Katrina.aspx. 31 Ronnie Greene, Shots of the Bridge (New York: Beacon Press, 2015). 32 Katherine W. Farquhar, "Not Just Understudies: The Dynamics of Short-Term Leadership," Human Resource Management 34 (1) (Spring 1995): 51–70. 33 Jolanda A. H. Schreuder, Corne A. M. Roelen, Nely F. van Zweeden, Dianne Jongsma, Jac J. L. Van der Klink, and Johan W. Groothoff, "Leadership Effectiveness and Recorded Sickness Absence Among Nursing Staff: a CrossSectional Pilot Study," Journal of Nursing Management 19 (5) (July 2011): 585– 95. 34 John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Press, 2009). 35 Michael Siegel and Lynne Doner Lotenberg, Marketing Public Health: Strategies to Promote Social Change (Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2007). 36 Creswell, Research Design.

THE ENGLISH TURN FORESTS: THEIR COMPOSITION AND SIGNIFICANCE IN POST-KATRINA NEW ORLEANS THOMAS HUGGINS, SEAN ANDERSON, JOHN LAMBRINOS, AND KATIE BRASTED1

Katrina and its Aftermath Hurricane Katrina, a storm of extraordinary power and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in US history, was born on August 25, 2005, less than two hours before it made landfall on the southeast coast of Florida near Miami. 2 Weakening to a tropical storm over land, Katrina moved west over the Everglades, emerging six hours later into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico where it quickly regained its strength. The storm then went through two periods of rapid intensification; on August 27, the storm nearly doubled in size and wind speeds increased to 100 knots, and on the 28th the storm turned northwest toward the Louisiana coast and grew larger again with hurricane-force winds extending 125 miles from the storm’s center.3 Katrina then veered north toward the Louisiana coast, and on August 29 the eye of the storm made landfall on the Mississippi Delta near the small town of Buras, Louisiana, 50 miles southeast of New Orleans. Like a miniature version of what would happen in New Orleans, the erosion of Buras’ surrounding wetlands and barrier islands allowed Katrina’s storm surge to overtop the levee system. Buras was destroyed. Like Buras, the disaster that would drown New Orleans was largely the result of Katrina’s massive storm surge—a huge volume of water pushed inland from the Gulf of Mexico by Katrina’s 125 mph winds and enormous size.4 This storm surge, as high as 19 feet on the east side of New Orleans, was enough to overtop and breach 50 levees and floodwalls, allowing billions of gallons of water to flow into the city, until 80 percent of New Orleans was under as much as 20 feet of water.5 It would be 43 days before New Orleans’ system of pumping stations “de-watered” the city.6

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The toll in human suffering caused by Katrina was immense; over a million people from the Gulf Coast were displaced—the largest diaspora in the history of the United States. The exact loss of life is unknown and perhaps unknowable, but an estimate published in the New Orleans TimesPicayune put the number at 1,833 fatalities as of 2015. 7 Many historic New Orleans neighborhoods were damaged or destroyed, most notably the Lower Ninth Ward, which had a rich cultural and musical heritage and one of the highest rates of African American property ownership in the nation. Katrina was responsible for $108 billion in property damage and an estimated loss of 70,000 jobs.8

Wetland Deterioration While the catastrophe in New Orleans is largely blamed on the failure of the levee system and the malfeasance of the Army Corps of Engineers, the deterioration of the wetlands surrounding New Orleans was a significant factor that increased the city’s vulnerability to Katrina.9 The Mississippi Delta and the extensive wetlands below New Orleans are now a fraction of their former size; more than 3,900 km2 of wetlands have disappeared since 1930, and continue to erode at a rate of 100 km2 per year.10 Given these conditions, it’s reasonable to question whether New Orleans’ levees and floodwalls would have failed if the eroded barrier of wetlands between the city and the Gulf of Mexico had been intact.11 Coastal wetlands are very good at reducing storm surge; every 2.7 miles of marsh absorbs a foot of surge. But, the area that separates New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico has lost at least fifteen to twenty-five linear miles of wetland in the last century; that’s 0.15 to 0.25 linear miles of wetland lost per year.12 It’s often pointed out that Hurricane Camille, which struck New Orleans in 1969, had more powerful winds than Hurricane Katrina but was unable to reach many of the areas destroyed by Katrina, the principle difference being 36 years of wetland erosion and destruction. By our calculations, the wetlands lost in the 36 years between Camille and Katrina would have reduced Katina’s storm surge by approximately 2.0 to 3.3 feet. Given that the peak water levels were estimated to be one to three feet above the tops of floodwalls and levees, it’s reasonable to assume that the amount of wetlands lost between Camille and Katrina had a significant effect on the extent of overtopping and subsequent flooding during Katrina.13

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Bottomland Hardwood Forests When we think of wetlands, most people envision a marsh: a flooded plant community dominated by relatively low, herbaceous plants like grasses, rushes, and other reedy species that are adapted to growing in water year-round. The area south of New Orleans and north of the Gulf of Mexico is dominated by marshes, beginning with vast salt marshes along the coast and freshwater marshes further inland, where salt water from the gulf is diluted with freshwater flowing south from sources like the Mississippi and its tributaries, but also from countless bayous channeling inland rainwater as runoff into the Gulf of Mexico. Moving further inland past the freshwater marshes, the elevation of the land rises slightly along naturally occurring levees and ridges. Though only a meter or two above sea level, this land is sufficiently elevated that rainwater drains away to the Gulf, creating a cycle of dry and then flooded conditions that supports dense forests of trees adapted to periodic inundation. These forested wetlands are called bottomland hardwood forests. Walking through a mature, old-growth bottomland hardwood forest can be a transformative experience. The forest itself is tall and deeply shaded, the canopy 20 to 30 meters high, with emergent species like bald cypress rising out of the canopy another 5 to 10 meters. The trunks of trees, some exceeding two meters in diameter, are festooned in a diversity of delicately ascending vines. The forest floor is a dappled mass of shrubs, ferns, and the occasional fallen tree, sometimes a massive rotting log still intact decades after its collapse. The majesty and beauty of a bottomland forest is hard to beat, especially when it’s dry. When it’s wet, after a significant rain, the forest becomes a flooded quagmire a meter deep. The forests are capable of absorbing massive amounts of rainwater and slowly releasing it over the course of days, which reduces the intensity of flooding in populated areas. The trees are adapted to periodic submergence but cannot tolerate continuously flooded conditions such as those found in marshes. Compared to dryer, upland forest types, bottomland hardwood forests have high plant and animal diversity. Alternating wet and dry periods create temporal habitat heterogeneity that allows different wildlife species to use the forest during different seasons.14 Because most trees in bottomland forest are deciduous, leaf litter is more abundant, and as a consequence soils are nutrient rich. For this reason, bottomland forests produce abundant fruits and nuts that support a high density and diversity of wildlife, including many resident birds and neo-tropical migrants.15

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In addition to supporting wildlife, bottomland hardwood forests provide a number of ecosystem services to the New Orleans area, offering opportunities for the residents of New Orleans to benefit from access to natural areas and providing educators in urban schools a natural laboratory for teaching biology. Local bottomland forests also afford biologists the opportunity to investigate urgent wildlife conservation issues that occur at the interface of human-modified and natural landscapes, such as habitat fragmentation, invasive species biology, and climate change issues. And perhaps most importantly, because bottomland hardwood forests are more structurally complex and have a higher water holding capacity than marshes, they’re more effective at protecting New Orleans from hurricane winds and storm surge.16

Disappearing Forests It is estimated that, before foresting and farming, bottomland hardwood forests covered 97,000 km2 of the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast. Today, less than seventeen percent or roughly 16,000 km2 remain, and examples of old growth bottomland forest are very rare.17 In New Orleans, bottomland hardwood forests are still being cleared for development despite their beauty, wildlife, and hurricane protection. All one needs to do is drive to the edges of the city to see the last vestiges of forest being cleared. One of the saddest examples of forest destruction was documented in a paper by White and Skojac (2002). In their study, seven of the most pristine bottomland hardwood forests left in the New Orleans area were floristically surveyed. Regrettably, before the paper could be published, two of the forests had been cleared for development. And three years after their paper was published, another of White and Skojac’s forests was nearly destroyed. Ironically, this forest was “protected” within the Bayou Savage National Wildlife Refuge when saltwater surge from the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet inundated the forest during Hurricane Katrina. The saltwater was trapped for four weeks by man-made levees surrounding the refuge until the US Fish and Wildlife Service was able to open weirs to drain it; approximately 68 percent of all trees were killed, species diversity decreased, and the dominance of the invasive species Chinese tallow increased.18 The forest remains heavily impacted today.

The English Turn Forests Some of the largest fragments of bottomland hardwood forest left in the New Orleans area are located on the English Turn Peninsula, a tongue

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of land formed by a sizable bend in the Mississippi River near River Mile 83, approximately eight miles southeast of New Orleans and 80 miles north of the terminus of the Mississippi. The peninsula is bounded to the north, east, and south by the Mississippi, to the west by the Intra-Coastal Waterway, and further south by the community of Belle Chasse. Most of the peninsula is between naught and three meters of elevation. The peninsula is drained by a number of large canals and pumping stations that discharge into the Intracoastal Waterway. The natural levee once present along the Mississippi has been replaced by an artificial earthen levee 10 meters high. Approximately half of the peninsula has been developed to one extent or another. The other half, of approximately 1,400 hectares, is forested and under the control of a number of owners, both public and private. Two of the largest fragments of forest, called Woodlands and Delacroix, are managed as nature preserves by Woodlands Conservancy, a non-profit land trust organization based in Belle Chasse. In 2004, we began a project focused on documenting, through plant collections, the diversity of tree species at Delacroix and Woodlands Preserves. As of 2006, we have collected thirty different tree species at Woodlands and Delacroix: twentytwo native species and eight non-native species (see Table 1). Among the non-native trees on the preserves, there are a number of highly invasive species that represent serious threats to the native tree community: Chinese tallow, chinaberry, and Chinese privet. Because of their potential to damage natural habitat and out-compete native trees, these invasive species are the subject of a long-term joint ecological study by Woodland Conservancy and California State University Channel Islands investigating the effects of various treatments on the control of invasive tree species at Woodlands Preserve. In addition to our tree diversity study, we are describing the woody communities at Woodland and Delacroix by surveying trees on 20x20 meter quadrats scattered throughout the preserves. While this project is ongoing, we have some interesting results from our quadrats at Delacroix Preserve (see Table 2). The results summarized in Table 2 are based on eight quadrats in which we identified and measured all trees greater than 10 cm in DBH (diameter at breast height). In Table 2 the species are ranked in order of abundance. The abundance of trees differs between species; red maple is the most common species encountered on the plots, and American elm, box elder, and ash trees are relatively abundant, followed by the two oak species and then bald cypress, the most immense tree in the forest and also the only conifer. Then come a number of trees that were rare on the plots: we found three

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water tupelos, two hackberries, two Chinese tallow, and one each of water hickory, sweet gum, and button bush. Using the abundance of the threedominant species as descriptors, we could characterize the Delacroix forest as a maple, elm, and box elder forest. But trying to characterize the species composition of a forest using tree abundance alone can be misleading, because a lot of small individuals can look more important than a few really large individuals that are more dominant in terms of mass or volume (i.e. size). Foresters and forest ecologists commonly use another measure called “importance value,” which combines species abundance with a measure of tree size—the crosssectional area of the tree at breast height. Table 1. A list of native and non-native tree species collected at the Woodland and Delacroix Preserves on the English Turn Peninsula, Orleans and Plaquemines Parishes LA (2004–6). Of the 30 tree species collected, 22 are native (73%), and eight are non-natives (27%). * = highly invasive non-natives. Plant Family

Aquifoliaceae Cannabaceae Cornaceae Cornaceae Cupressaceae

Taxa Liquidambar styraciflua Ilex decidua Celtis laevigata Cornus feomina Nyssa aquatica Taxodium distichum

Euphorbiaceae

Triadica sebifera

Chinese tallow *

Fabaceae Fagaceae Fagaceae Fagaceae

Gleditsia triacanthos Quercus nigra Quercus texanum Quercus virginiana Cinnamonomum camphora

honey locust water oak Nuttall's oak southern live oak

Meliaceae

Melia azedarach

chinaberry *

Moraceae

Morus alba

white mulberry

Moraceae

Morus rubra

red mulberry

Altingiaceae

Lauraceae

Common Name

Origin

sweet gum

Native

possumhaw hackberry swamp dogwood water tupelo bald cypress

Native Native Native Native Native Nonnative Native Native Native Native Nonnative Nonnative Nonnative Native

camphor tree

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Oleaceae

Fraxinus pennsylvanica Fraxinus profunda

Oleaceae

Ligustrum lucidum

glossy privet

Oleaceae

Ligustrum sinense

Chinese privet *

Platanaceae

Platanus occidentalis

American sycamore

Rosaceae

Eriobotrya japonica

loquat

Rosaceae Rosaceae

Prunus caroliniana Prunus serotina Cephalanthus occidentalis

cherry laurel black cherry

Nonnative Native Native

button bush

Native

Rutaceae

Citrus x sinensis

sweet orange

Nonnative

Salicaceae

Populus deltoides

Salicaceae Sapindaceae Sapindaceae Ulmaceae

Salix nigra Acer negundo Acer rubrum Ulmus americana

Oleaceae

Rubiaceae

green ash

Native

pumpkin ash

Native Nonnative Nonnative Native

eastern cottonwood black willow box elder red maple American elm

Native Native Native Native Native

Table 2. Species abundance (number) and importance values for trees greater than 10 cm in diameter at breast height (DBH) in eight 20x20 meter plots at Delacroix Preserve, English Turn Peninsula, Orleans Parish LA (2005). n = 149 trees. Species Abundance SPECIES Acer rubrum Ulmus americana Acer negundo Fraxinus spp. Quercus texanum Quercus nigra Taxodium distichum Nyssa aquatica

COMMON NAME red maple American elm box elder ash Nuttall's oak water oak bald cypress water tupelo

NUMBER 68 20 16 12 9 8 6 3

Thomas Huggins, Sean Anderson, John Lambrinos, and Katie Brasted

Celtis laevigata Triadica sebifera Carya aquatica Cephalanthus occidentalis Liquidambar styraciflua Importance Values

hackberry Chinese tallow water hickory button bush sweet gum

SPECIES

COMMON NAME

Acer rubrum Taxodium distichum Fraxinus sp. Ulmus americana Quercus texanum Quercus nigra Acer negundo Nyssa aquatica Liquidambar styraciflua Celtis laevigata Triadica sebifera Carya aquatica Cephalanthus occidentalis

red maple bald cypress ash American elm Nuttall's oak water oak box elder water tupelo sweet gum hackberry Chinese tallow water hickory button bush

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2 2 1 1 1 IMPORTANCE VALUES 60.0 29.7 27.0 20.7 16.5 14.3 13.4 6.2 3.5 2.4 1.5 0.9 0.75

Using importance values rather than abundance as a measure of forest composition results in a reordering of species rank: red maple remains the dominant species in the plots, but now bald cypress and ash are the second and third ranked species, because, though they may be less abundant than elm and box elder, they are bigger. Using the importance value of the three-dominant species as descriptor, we could characterize the Delacroix forest as a red maple, bald cypress, and ash forest. How does the composition of the forest in the Delacroix Preserve compare to other forests in greater New Orleans? Table 3 contains importance values for the Delacroix Preserve in the first column, followed to the right by importance values for the seven forests analyzed by White and Skojac in 2002. The bold numbers are the top three species in each forest. The last column contains the mean importance values of the combined White and Skojac forests.

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Southern live oak Hackberry Elm Water oak Red maple Sweet gum Ash Box elder Laurel oak Swamp bay Chinese tallow Honey locust Pecan Hickory Bald cypress American hornbeam Overcup oak Nuttall’s oak Water tupelo *Other

Delacroix --2.4 20.7 14.3 60.0 3.5 27.0 13.4 ----1.5 ----0.9 29.7 ----16.5 6.2 3.4

Laffite 43 20.5 21.9 33.7 25 10.9 5.8 17 ------------1.3 19.7 0.7 ----0.5

Oak 58.7 10.6 28.9 3 72.6 21.2 3.5 ------------------1.7 -------

Verret 67 24.1 17.5 3.6 10 56.9 ----9.5 ------5.9 3.9 ----------1.6

Jackson 88.1 19.7 29.9 39.7 3.7 1.6 5.8 ----8.6 ------------------3

Airline --56.8 24.9 30.1 21.5 0.6 24.2 17.6 11.8 --3.7 ----1.7 3.7 --------3.2

Hermite 17.6 58.9 44.1 22.5 3.8 33.5 15.5 0.6 --2.3 ------------------1.1

Sauvage 46 107.4 14.2 10.7 0.4 6.1 1.2 ------4.6 5.8 --------------3.6

Mean IV (W&S 2002) 45.7 42.6 25.9 20.5 19.6 18.7 8 5 3 1.6 1.2 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.4 0.3 ----2.4

Table 3. Importance values (IV) for tree species (dbh • 10 cm) on eight forest fragments in the New Orleans area. The first column contains values for the Delacroix Preserve (Table 2). To the right are the forests surveyed in White and Skojac 2002, and the last column are the means of the White and Skojac forests. Bold faced numbers indicate the species with the highest importance values in each forest. * includes minor taxa.

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The Delacroix forests differ from the White and Skojac forests in some significant ways: (1) The top two species in the White and Skojac forests, Quercus virginiana and Celtis laevigate, are virtually absent from our quadrats in the Delacroix forest (2) The dominant species at Delacroix, red maple, is ranked fifth in mean importance value in the White and Skojac forests; the “Oak” forest has similar red maple dominance, but the similarities end there—Delacroix’s second and third dominants, bald cypress and ash, are negligible components of the Oak forest (3) Delacroix’s second dominant, bald cypress, is a tiny component of the White and Skojac forests, and Delacroix’s third, ash, is similar only to Airline, which has since been cleared for development.

Community Composition, Hydrology, and Land-Use History What accounts for these differences between Delacroix and the forests analyzed by White and Skojac? Bottomland hardwood forests vary in their species composition; they tend to share a group of tree species in common, but the abundance of each species varies. These differences in species composition are largely determined by two factors: the hydrology of the site and the capacity of each tree species to tolerate that hydrology. In bottomland hardwood forests, a useful measure of hydrology is the hydroperiod—the number of days each year in which the soil is waterlogged. The elevation of a site has a profound effect on its hydroperiod: the higher a site, the faster it drains, and the shorter the hydroperiod. And the reverse is also true; the lower the site, the slower it drains, and the longer the hydroperiod. The low topographic relief of the floodplains of southern Louisiana can be deceptive; a matter of inches in elevation can affect the hydroperiod.19 White and Skojac chose their study forests because they represented the "most intact” fragments of bottomland hardwood forest left in the New Orleans area. These forests were located on the highest of the old levees of the Mississippi: elevated land adjacent to the river. These sites are relatively high in elevation, are well drained, and have a relatively short hydroperiod. As a consequence, the White and Skojac forests are dominated by tree species that are restricted to relatively dry sites with short hydroperiods (southern live oak, hackberry, and elm).20

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The hydrology and vegetation of the English Turn Peninsula have been highly modified from their original states. Historical maps suggest that the interior of the peninsula was once a freshwater marsh, surrounded by a band of forest 500 to 1,000 meters wide on the natural levee adjacent to the Mississippi River. 21 In the 1800s, plantations were built along the Mississippi River and the forest growing adjacent to the Mississippi was converted to agriculture and drained using canals perpendicular to the river that emptied into the interior marsh.22 The interior marsh appears to have been more or less intact in the early 1900s when three large canals and pumping stations were built to drain the interior in order to control mosquitos and yellow fever. Despite the draining of the marsh, the dominant marsh grass, paille fine (Panicum hemitomon), persisted for several years and was harvested as mule fodder by one of the canal builders, George Alan Hero. 23 The paille fine (pronounced pie feen) meadow soon burned and was eventually replaced by the bottomland hardwood forest that covers the English Turn peninsula today. The tree species that dominate our quadrats in the Delacroix forest (red maple, bald cypress, and ash) are species typical of wet forests with long hydroperiods. In fact, bald cypress is the wetland forest species most likely to be found in the wettest conditions; it survives with roots partially inundated as much as 90 percent of the time, and dies only when inundation is continuous.24 While the species composition of the Delacroix forest would suggest a longer hydroperiod than the White and Skojac forests, it’s difficult and potentially misleading to make generalizations about the whole English Turn Peninsula because the area is covered with a complicated array of large and small canals and ditches, which are likely to create a tapestry of local hydrological conditions and species distributions—a kind of bottomland hardwood “frankenforest” as a product of natural processes in a human-modified environment. One thing we know for sure is that the hydrology of the English Turn Peninsula has been radically altered, being de-watered by canals and massive pumping stations capable of removing tens of millions of gallons of water from the peninsula each day.25 The good news is that in place of the lost marsh we have a beautiful and biologically diverse forest that supports wildlife and allows the residents of New Orleans, researchers, teachers, and students the opportunity to interact with that wildlife, while at the same time protecting the city from hurricane winds and storm surge. The prognosis for New Orleans in the next century is alarming: both sea level and hurricane frequency and intensity are predicted to rise this century—a bad combination for a city dependent on levees and floodwalls

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for its survival. Reforestation and the protection of existing bottomland hardwood forests from development should be a priority in the New Orleans area, and yet the forests on the English Turn Peninsula are constantly under threat of development, most recently from a proposal to build a large baseball facility. Saving and even growing more forests on under-utilized urban spaces and farmlands are cost-effective ways to help protect New Orleans from the inevitable city-killer spinning out of the Gulf of Mexico. We should heed Katrina’s warning and start saving forests now.

Notes 1

Tom Higgins is at the University of California-Los Angeles’ Herbarium. Sean Anderson teaches for the Department of Environment Science and Resource Management at California State University Channel Islands. John Lambrinos is in the Department of Horticulture, University of Oregon. Katie Brasted is at the Woodlands Conservancy, Belle Chase, Louisiana. 2 Richard D. Knabb, Jamie R. Rhome, and Daniel P. Brown, “Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Katrina.” National Hurricane Center (2005), http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL122005_Katrina.pdf. 3 D. L. Johnson, “Hurricane Katrina Service Assessment Report, N. W. Service,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Maryland: Silver Springs, 2006). 4 Knabb, Rhome, and Brown, “Tropical Cyclone Report.” 5 Johnson, “Hurricane Katrina Service Assessment Report.” 6 C. F. Andersen, J. A. Battjes, D. E. Daniel, B. Edge, W. Espey, R. Gilbert, T. L. Jackson, D. Kennedy, D. S. Mileti, J. K. Mitchell, C. A. Pugh, G. Tamaro, and R. Traver. “The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went Wrong and Why,” Report by the American Society of Civil Engineers Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel (Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2007). 7 B. Albert, “House Members Remember Katrina's 1,833 Deaths and New Orleans' Resiliency,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, (July 29, 2015), http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/07/congress_remember_katrinas_183. html. 8 E. S. Blake, C. W. Landsea, and E. J. Gibney, “The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Cyclones From 1851 to 2010, and Other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts,” National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center (2011); J. Vigdor, "The Economic Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (4) (2008): 135–54. 9 K. B. Gedan, Matthew L. Kirwan, Eric Wolanski, Edward B. Barbier, and Brian R. Silliman, "The Present and Future Role of Coastal Wetlands Vegetation in Protecting Shorelines: Answering Recent Challenges to the Paradigm," Climatic Change 106 (1) (2011): 7–29. 10 J. W. Day Jr., Louis D. Britsch, Suzanne R. Hawes, Gary P. Shaffer, Denise J.

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Reed, and Donald Cahoon, "Pattern and Process of Land Loss in the Mississippi Delta: A Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Wetland Habitat Change," Estuaries 23 (4) (2000): 425–38. 11 M. Tidwell, The Ravaging Tide (New York: Free Press, 2006). 12 Ibid. 13 Anderson et al., “Hurricane Protection.” 14 H. K. Ober, “The Importance of Bottomland Hardwood Forest for Wildlife,” Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Department, University of Florida (2013), http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw316, 15 Ibid. 16 I. van Heerden and M. Bryan, The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist (New York: Viking Press, 2006). 17 Note: km2 = square kilometres. “Louisiana Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy: Conservation, Habitat, and Species Assessments: Bottomland Hardwood Forest," Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (2005). 18 Jerome Howard, "Hurricane Katrina’s Impact on a Leveed Bottomland Hardwood Forest in Louisiana," American Midland Naturalist 168 (1) (July 2012): 56–69. 19 C. H. Wharton, Wiley M. Kitchens, Edward C. Pendleton, and Timothy W. Sipe, “The Ecology of Bottomland Hardwood Swamps of the Southeast: a Community Profile” (1982). 20 Ibid. 21 J. Ross, “Course of the Mississippi River from Balise to Fort Chartres,” The Historic New Orleans Collection (1982.19), 1794; G. Guillemard, “Plan Reduit de Barataria,” Charting Louisiana (Paris: Biblotheque National de France, 1800), figure 57, 108; A. L. Latour, “Map Shewing [sic] the Landing of the British Army” Charting Louisiana (Paris: Biblotheque National de France, 1815), figure 79, 156; Anonymous, “Mississippi River,” The Historic New Orleans Collection (1993.64.7) (1882). 22 Anonymous, “Plan del Local de las Tierras que Rodean la Ciudad de Nueva Orleans,” The Historic New Orleans Collection (1940.2) (1803). 23 United States Geological Survey. Topological map (Chalmette Quadrangle) (1939); George Alan Hero III, Personal Communication; Oral History of English Turn (Belle Chasse, LA, April 2, 2016). 24 Wharton et al., “The Ecology of Bottomland Hardwood Swamps.” 25 R. Campanella, Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in Present Day (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002).

THE DISASTER OF DISASTER RELIEF SEAN ANDERSON1

Eleven years after Hurricane Katrina, it is difficult to look at the pictures and film footage of those days and weeks in August and September 2005 when one of the world’s great cities was flooded and its inhabitants were stranded on the tops of roofs or jammed into attics or even killed, as was the case for over one thousand New Orleanians. There are so many wonderful things about Louisiana and New Orleans, and I’m reminded of this every year when I take a group of students to see this great American treasure that is New Orleans for themselves. Outside of the present topic, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is both a very important city and a very American city. What makes us so outraged about what happened is the fact that New Orleans has given the rest of the country and the world so much, yet when New Orleans was in trouble all those with the authority to help failed miserably at their charge. There have been negative aspects about New Orleans as well, such as the Supreme Court decision Plessy versus Ferguson that sanctioned racial segregation and was based on a legal case first filed in New Orleans. But there are also incredible and wonderful aspects to New Orleans. Everybody has heard of Mardi Gras, and what a joy it is to see Kermit Ruffins playing that wonderful Seventh Ward music in the club Bullet's just off of Saint Bernard Avenue. And there are my students learning to cook “bananas foster” from one of our chef friends in New Orleans. There’s a wonderful culture we get from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and I think the proper frame of reference is to start thinking about the hurricane and flood in terms of the physics, what happened, and the science of hurricanes and hurricane relief. In Arkansas in the summer and fall of 1926 there was a massive deluge that led to huge swellings of the rivers in the middle part of the United States which in turn led to huge flooding starting in December 1926 that became the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. All kinds of changes came from this flooding, and there was a huge push to do something to prevent this type of flooding again. We as a species do not like to be told what to do by nature; in fact, we like to tell nature what to do. We human beings

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created a whole series of government-run institutions and governmentgenerated plans to fight against the very thing that actually made New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and the Delta what it is. We humans decided we knew better and we could change all that had caused the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and we've been living with that legacy ever since.

Louisiana Projected Coastal Land Loss

Source: Louisiana Coastal Wetlands Planning Protection and Restoration Act Program. Credit: Nelson Hsu/NPR

On any map of Southern Louisiana is the giant Lake Pontchartrain, and not far away is a big bow in the Mississippi river—the so-called crescent that gives New Orleans its nickname of Crescent City. A huge chunk of this land was once wetland, and much of this area will be completely gone in the next decade or two. In addition, there are areas that were once wetland that have been made into dry land by humans. Louisiana has the unfortunate distinction of losing more wetlands, in absolute area of wetlands, than anywhere else in the United States. The southern Louisiana area has witnessed the greatest quantity of wetland loss of anywhere in the country. California, the other unfortunate state in the United States, has experienced the greatest proportional loss.

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Table 1. Caalifornia’s Dissappearing Wetlands W (in H Hectares)

Lower 48 California Louisiana

Percenttage Loss 54 91 46

Remainning 41.8 miillion 184,0000 3.6 milllion

Source: Joselyyn 1983, Dahl 1990, DF&G 2001

Survey Sourcce: United Statees Geological S

These nuumbers are from fr the last 150 years annd show wetlands that used to exisst versus whaat is here now w. In the casee of Californiaa, a wide swath of thee San Francisco Bay Area was built from m land that used u to be wetlands thaat, starting witth the Gold Ru ush, were filleed in. We havee a couple off problems in Louisiana inn terms of thee wetland situation. O One is that we have subsid dence, meaniing that the ground g is getting loweer. And then we have sea-level rise, m meaning that the t ocean level is gettiing higher. Off course, theree's a natural aaspect to the sinking s of the land andd the rising off the ocean. We W humans haave been messing with this natural ebb and flow w of land and water, and w we've greatly increased the rates at which land iss sinking and the water is rising. Rising g water is due in parrt due to climate changee, and the ssubsidence iss greatly complicatedd by the massiive oil and gaas extraction aactivity that goes on in that part of tthe world. Thhose two thing gs are always going on in nature n but we humans have messedd with this naatural process even more. And A then add to this the levee sysstem intended d to keep the region from flooding. Humanity hhas leveed riveers and placed d dams along their edges to o prevent floodwater, which is, affter all, the natural n processs that flowin ng rivers continually eexperience. In additiion, there are a number off dam sites thhat also keep back the river sedim ment that woould normallly be distribbuted outsidee of the riverbanks. T This sedimentt would norm mally come outt of the river and a settle on the grouund to createe natural levees and keepp our land high h and,

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hopefully, dry. But, because we levee our rivers and build dams to control the natural flow of water, we've lost those natural levees and so that becomes a new stress on the ecosystem that we never had before. And then we humans have added new lifeforms to the region, in particular an animal that is sort of a rat, sort of a beaver, kind of a platypus-type creature, a crazy animal from South America called a nutria, which, starting in the 1930s, we released into the entire region of the wetlands and southern Louisiana. People thought that nutria would be great for their fur and so we humans released nutria into the swamps of Louisiana. But it turns out that nutria eat a huge amount of the plants that form the basis of these wetlands, and this has become a huge problem. In addition to the things mentioned previously—the wetlands, the subsidence, the sea-level rise, the levees, the dams, and the nutria—we have the hurricanes we are talking about here. Hurricanes, always a dynamic in the Gulf region, are getting more intense and frequent so that, taken together, they amount to a “pulse disturbance.”2 With Hurricane Katrina we have jumped forward, depending on which metric you use, between fifty and one hundred years of wetland loss from just that single storm. If wetland loss in southern Louisiana is typical wetland loss in the United States and the world, all these factors have come together to create a big challenge for the United States and all of humanity. What also needs to be properly understood when we talk about leadership are some of the failings of leadership in terms of policy. It's important for all of us to know that what happened with Katrina and its aftermath was no surprise. What happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was not caused by a weird crazy guy with a chemical or nuclear bomb who unleashed his fury on an unsuspecting population. The impact of Hurricane Katrina was well understood years before it made landfall. In the southern part of the United States, for example, there was Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which was the last hurricane to hit New Orleans and the region before Katrina. And the questions we hear again and again is why there were no buses to evacuate people from New Orleans in 2005, or why people didn't get out when they could have. And the response we heard more than once was "we didn't think it would be that bad.” They would say "we've had hurricane warnings before, but nothing like Katrina.” And this is the frame of reference a lot of the policy people were considering when planning for a hurricane. They would argue that “we haven’t had a hurricane hit since 1965,” but this is not the proper frame of reference to consider. Below are all the hurricanes and tropical storms that have hit the region since 1965. Katrina had a little faster wind speed but represented the exact same phenomenon.

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Hurricaanes and Trropical Storrms Since H Hurricane Betsy

Image & daata: National Oceanic O and Atmospheric A A Administration (NOAA), Coastal Serviice Center’s Hisstorical Hurricaane Viewer (maps.csc.noaaa.gov/hurricannes/viewer.htmll)

The mapp above trackks all those storms betweeen 1965 and d the day before Katrrina hit. To say s that we didn't d know a hurricane would w hit Louisiana orr New Orleanns was simply y not true. Thhe map is colo our coded as to wind speed, so redd is faster than n yellow, andd yellow is faaster than green. Armed w with this knoowledge we can c then talkk about other possible disasters in other parts off the country. When we tallk about oil and a gas in Ventura Couunty, Californnia, for exam mple, we thinkk of the Santaa Barbara Channel andd the Channeel Islands, wh hich have lotss of oil wellss. The oil reserves off ff the Santa Barbara coasst do not coompare to Lo ouisiana’s reserves, whhich is the foourth largest oil o and gas pproducing statte. In the Santa Barbaara Channel arre offshore pip pelines bringinng oil and gass to land.

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Pipeline and Wellhead Map, Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico oil and gas platforms (dots) and pipelines (lines) Source: NASA image

This map shows old gas and oil wellheads in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. From this map, we see that there are oil and gas platforms and pipelines throughout the Gulf Coast region. The waters off the coast of Louisiana are covered with an established oil and gas system, and the reader can decide as to whether that's good or bad, but the point is that oil and gas wellheads are a ubiquitous part of life in the Gulf Coast region, which is important for people who are not from Louisiana to understand because this ultimately affects all of us. Below is an example of what the wetlands of Louisiana look like today:

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Ven nice, Louissiana (20088)

Source: Sean Anderson

These arre students in the classes wee hold in Louiisiana who are looking at a body off water or a baay, but this should be marshh, not water. And A what you see from m these photoss are cypress trees. t But cyppress trees are trees, not algae, and thhus cannot be inundated by y water. Cypreess trees are in n swamps and they cann be wet for a long time, 24 hours a dayy, 365 days a year. But what we seee is that thosee are dead treees. When thesse trees were born and germinated there was land around th hem, not wateer, but now the t water around the ccypress trees is i about a meteer deep. The ddemise of land d and rise in water leveels are going on o across the region. This wassn't a surprisee, and before Hurricane Kaatrina the New w Orleans Times Picayyune ran a serries of stories called “Washhing Away” describing d what to exppect in the eveent of a hurriicane.3 The seeries described exactly what happeened during and a after Hurrricane Katrinna, so when President Bush or othher officials declared d that "we " had no iddea," this wass just not true. Maybee government officials cho ose to not resppond to the “Washing “ Away” seriies, but to saay they could dn’t know w what would happen h is factually inccorrect. Certainly, we shou uld pressure oour officials to o respond to reports liike “Washingg Away,” but the other pooint is that po oliticians, academics, sscientists, andd even the priv vate sector kneew that there was a big problem devveloping even before Katrin na made landffall. With thee heating of the t planet’s climatic c condditions came more m and stronger hurrricanes, whilee at the same time climate research sugg gests that the frequenccy of weaker storms s should d decline as thhe climate warrms.4 The

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sea surface temperature, which is the fuel that gets these hurricanes going in the mid-Atlantic, had become superhot water. In addition, the winds that can sometimes break up a storm before it becomes too strong were also off the standard, so before the start of the hurricane season there is a “baseline” prediction and a “hyperactive” prediction. For the 2005 hurricane season, the prediction was almost 200 percent above the “hyperactive” line! Never before in the history of naming hurricanes have we run out of letters to name those hurricanes. There is an international convention that decides on the name of each hurricane ahead of the hurricane season, and this convention blew through A through Z before the season was over and so started using alpha, beta, and gamma because there was no predetermined plan for what to do if all the letters were used up. So 2005 was a crazy season, and we scientists knew it. .

Route of Hurricane Katrina

Source: University of Memphis C.E.R.I. (ceri.memphis/katrina)

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The map above shows what Katrina looked like just before it made landfall when it was a Category Five hurricane. One misstatement of fact was when the Army Corps of Engineers explained the levees collapsing by claiming that they did not design the system to withstand a storm of that magnitude. While Katrina was a category five storm when it was out in the Gulf of Mexico, by the time it reached New Orleans it was a category three storm, and when Katrina actually made it to Lake Pontchartrain, which is when the levees failed, it was, in terms of wind speed, a category one storm. Now, a category one storm is well within the design parameters of the federal government, which is given the charge of keeping its citizens safe. Katrina’s initial impact was there for all of the United States to see through film and photo footage, as all the major networks had crews on the ground to record the tragedy of this special, amazing, city underwater. Katrina spread disasters over a huge area about half the size of California.

Source: USGS Hurricane Response Team: Search and Rescue Photos https://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/special/serviceamericaaward/rescue_photos.ht

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Above is the city on day five, with about 80 percent of the city underwater at this point because of a series of levee failures. While we were led to believe that a single levee failed, there were in fact more than 35 individual levee failures. But incredible work was done, and within a few weeks most of the city was drained, which was a truly Herculean effort. Before the hurricane I would have estimated that it would take six to nine months to drain the city. But the first responders and the people of New Orleans and the United States did an incredible job of draining the city of the flood. Most of the areas that were heavily hit are also the lowest lying areas and tend to be the poorer areas, which had a lot to do with the “knock-on effect,” meaning that the poorest of the city suffered the most due to low income, lack of transportation, and living in areas that were more prone to flooding. “[I]t was time to leave when the skin on my fingers and legs started to peel off.”5 This quote is from a New Orleanian who was under water for six days before he was rescued, and this is not what we in the United States are accustomed to hearing. This kind of statement might usually be heard in the developing world or a war-torn country. It underscores how bizarre it was to witness what was happening in New Orleans, a city not in Africa or South America, but in the United States.

Source: USGS Hurricane Response Team: Search and Rescue Photos https://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/special/serviceamericaaward/rescue_photos.ht

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In the days after Katrina there were a lot of references to an alleged social breakdown, but most of this was not true. In the immediate wake of the hurricane there were lots of rumors: rumors of snipers and murders and rapes that in fact did not happen. It was, no doubt, a very difficult time, but the claims of a city whose population was on a rampage, proved to be false. And with the negative media reports and shocking images of dead bodies floating in water, desperate people stranded on rooftops, and the misery and desperation of mostly poor, mostly black people, there was the reality of people just trying to survive.

Source: Open Society Foundations

Above is a photo of parish prisoners being held on Interstate 10. As you can see, the jail (to the left of the picture) went subtidal, and the inmates were removed and placed on the interstate for three days with little water in 95-degree temperatures at 95 percent humidity. Yes, they were prisoners who had committed crimes, but they are human beings as well. The merit of any society is gaged on how it treats its most vulnerable. The conduct of officials during Katrina does not suggest a society possessed with compassion or foresight.

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Imagine the challenges this situation presented, with extensive infrastructure damage and thirty-five major oil spills, with smaller spills not even recorded because officials did not have the time to note them since they were in the midst of dealing with other relief efforts. The response to Hurricane Katrina exposed a political leadership that was both out of touch and incompetent. This incompetence was found among both Democrats and Republicans, government officials, and private companies and corporations. While in Houston to talk with Katrina victims that had been evacuated, President Bush’s mother Barbara Bush declared that Almost everyone I've talked to says, “We're going to move to Houston.” What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.6

Another example was Tom Delay, former Republican House Majority Leader who was later convicted of money laundering and conspiracy. Delay also visited evacuees in Houston’s Astrodome and joked with them by asking "Now tell me the truth boys, isn't this kind of fun?"7 We also have the infamous quote by President George W. Bush about FEMA chief Michael Brown: "Brownie,” Bush declared, “you're doing a heck of a job."8 When journalists grilled Bush on praising someone who did such a poor job of disaster relief, Bush appeared not to understand how inappropriate his comment was, which only illustrated a leadership that was incredibly out of touch. In addition, Director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, admitted publicly that he was unaware of the potential disaster if a hurricane hit the Gulf Coast nor was he aware of how bad conditions were after Katrina made land. While Homeland Security compromises individual liberties in order to protect US citizens, it was clear that protecting hurricane victims was not a top priority for Chertoff and Homeland Security."9 The emergency response to Hurricane Katrina exposed a government that both claimed to be responsible when disasters hit but was also clearly not prepared when millions of its citizens faced dislocation, injury, and even death. This has wide-reaching ramifications and brings up the question of how US citizens can trust the government if there’s an earthquake in California or a tornado ravages Kansas?

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Source: USGS Hurricane Response Team: Search and Rescue Photos https://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/special/serviceamericaaward/rescue_photos.ht

Above are photos of the New Orleans area ten years after Katrina, and, as one can see, large parts have yet to be rebuilt. Of course, New Orleans continues to have some great neighborhoods and success stories, but generally there has been a great unevenness in coming to terms with the racial makeup of the city post-Katrina. Before Katrina hit there were certainly problems, and in 2005 New Orleans was number two in the Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods list behind Fresno, California. The CPN index measures how concentrated poverty is throughout the United States, and, in general, where we find the greatest concentrations of wealth we also find the greatest concentrations of poverty. New Orleans postKatrina is a city of great poverty and great wealth. By 2015, the population of New Orleans has almost returned to its preKatrina levels, but the racial makeup of the city has indeed changed, and the African American population has declined from 68 percent pre-Katrina to 60 percent post-Katrina. This population shift reflects the fact that many African Americans that fled Katrina decided not to return. But this shift also reflects the design of those who managed the relief effort who used

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this disaster to change the racial makeup of one of the great cities of the world. In conclusion, Hurricane Katrina broke open a number of fissures that existed prior to 2005. The long neglect of the region’s levee system was revealed for all the world to see, and exposed the fact that for decades government officials and scientists had known that the number and intensity of large hurricanes were increasing. Also revealed was the extent of coastal erosion and how it reduced the protection from hurricane-force winds so vital to buffering New Orleans from the worst brunt of hurricanes and tropical storms. Katrina also exposed the high level of both incompetence and dishonesty on the part of government officials, from the White House to the governor’s mansion to city hall to the Army Corps of Engineers. Finally, Katrina laid bare the reality of that nexus of race and class that determined that poor whites and blacks were not going to get the same treatment or consideration as middle and upper class whites and blacks when it came to disaster relief.

Notes 1

Dr. Sean Anderson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental Science and Resource Management, CSU-Channel Islands. Much thanks to Dr. David Klein for reviewing an earlier version of this paper. 2 “Pulse disturbances are temporary disturbances that, while influential, are recoverable because of the temporary nature of the problem.” In “Press vs. Pulse Disturbance in Ecology as Applied to the Recent Oil Spills,” Freshwater Matters (August 13, 2010), http://freshwatermatters.blogspot.com/2010/08/press-vs-pulsedisturbance-in-ecology.html. 3 John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, “Washing Away: Worst Case Scenarios if a Hurricane Hits Louisiana,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 23, 2002), http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/page/washing_away_2002.html. 4 Kerry Emmanuel, “Climate Change and Hurricane Katrina: What have We Learned?” The Conversation (August 24, 2015), http://theconversation.com/climate-change-and-hurricane-katrina-what-have-welearned-46297. 5 Kenneth Watts, September 5, 2005, after six days in his flooded New Orleans home. 6 “Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off,” New York Times (September 7, 2005), http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/us/nationalspecial/barbara-bush-callsevacuees-better-off.html?_r=0. 7 Charles Babington, “Some GOP Legislators Hit Jarring Notes in Addressing Katrina,” Washington Post (September 10, 2005), http://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090901930.html.

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8 Arthur Spiegelman, “President Bush's ‘Brownie’ Quote Wins Award,” Common Dreams (December 30, 2005), http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/123001.htm. 9 “People Making Decisions Hesitated,” CNN.COM (September 13, 2005), http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/13/katrina.response.

PART 3: LESSONS LEARNED: LOOKING FORWARD

HISTORY MADE BY A STORM VANESSA VAN HEERDEN1

Introduction The coast of Louisiana comprises four million acres of marsh, swamp, and estuaries, which at the peak of existence comprised 40 percent of wetlands in the United States.2 As a consequence of building multiple river and hurricane levee systems, these wetlands have been deprived of nutrients and sediments needed for their survival. As a result, there is a loss of hurricane surge and wave protection that wetlands provide the coast.3 While built to protect cities and residents both from hurricanes and river floods, levees actually destroy the natural storm protection that has existed for centuries. Levee systems alter the natural ebb and flow regimes of river systems while also stopping the beneficial river flooding that should occur each winter and spring. River flooding would bring fresh sediment and much-needed nutrients to the wetlands, but this function ceased when the levees were built. The Mississippi River drains a large portion of the United States and its sediment load used to continually create new land (deltas) and maintain existing coastal wetlands. This process has continued for at least the last seven thousand years.4 Due to continued interaction between physical, chemical, and biological processes with the onset of human alteration of the natural environment, deltas all over the world are losing coastal land at a drastic rate.5 But since humans have industrialized and colonized this low-lying landscape, cities and ports have also grown in an environment unsuitable for such infrastructure. With the construction of levee systems, the natural sediment flow and deposition have drastically changed and the Mississippi River is now constrained by levees so that sediment is deposited in the deep Gulf of Mexico waters with no benefit to the coast. As this dynamic river system is continually affected by human-made structures, the natural protection of the Gulf Coast is thus adversely affected. It has been estimated that coastal Louisiana has lost 1,900 square miles of land since 1932, roughly the size of Delaware.6 The causes of this land loss are a combination of natural processes (subsidence, erosion, delta switching) and human activities (levee building and dredging for the oil and gas industry). 7 Southern

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Louisiana no longer has the stable means to protect itself from natural disasters. Instead, it is in a situation of diminishing hope where either the government fights for the protection of the wetlands or residents cease to live in the coastal areas of Louisiana.

Human-made Disaster on the Gulf Coast Hurricane Katrina is considered one of the most destructive and expensive disasters in modern US history, human-made or natural, with the total damage estimated at $75 billion.8 On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, Louisiana as a category three hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 112 mph.9 Katrina left New Orleans altered forever as thousands died and billions of dollars in property was destroyed, while a third of the city was lost and neighborhoods were left in ruins. 10 The subsequent outcomes of Katrina, precipitated by levee failures throughout New Orleans, destroyed the fabric of the city and resulted in considerable socio-economic hardships and destruction of the coastal environment, which can never be fully restored. To protect against storm surges and increased flooding, levees structures divide into multiple polders and pumping stations throughout the city to drain water from the lowlands.11 In addition to the function of flood protection levees and floodgates, thousands of miles of canals, channels, and similar engineering features crisscross the Southern Louisiana landscape in support of the shipping and fossil fuel extraction industries. These structures and their hydrodynamic impacts have led to the loss of over one million acres of coastal wetlands and further impacted the state’s natural protection barrier to hurricanes—the wetlands. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, however, have been so degraded since the major expansion of the oil and gas industry in the 1930s that the wetland surge dampening ability has greatly diminished. As a consequence, levee systems were developed in order to keep New Orleans “afloat” but ironically left the city to drown at a time when it could have been saved. The continued mismanagement of coastal wetlands has converted what once was a vibrant wetland and marsh community to open water dotted with wetlands. This conversion, coupled with the construction of shoddy human-made levee systems, not only led to thousands of deaths but also caused an entire shift in the atmosphere of the fabled city of New Orleans. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was a study of incompetence, and the actions taken by government officials and the Army Corps of Engineers

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were detrimental to the protection functions of the coastal environment during Katrina’s passage. There had been many researchers, scientists, and modellers who have warned the government that, if preventative measures were not taken, a hurricane such as Katrina would have devastating effects on the low-lying city of New Orleans. One of those dedicated scientists, Dr. Ivor van Heerden, former Associate Professor and Director of the Louisiana State University (LSU) Hurricane Center, had for years been warning politicians, his colleagues, and the public about the potential for a major disaster based on his research. Van Heerden’s use of a hurricane surge prediction computer model clearly showed how vulnerable New Orleans was to a wide range of hurricanes. Only as Katrina came close to landfall did the government realize that there might be a problem. The fact that the levees around New Orleans could fail was never widely publicized, but fail they did. New Orleans was destined to flood; only the city’s residents did not know it.

The Flooding and Why It Happened Researchers had been studying the potential impacts of storm surge to New Orleans, a city that lies mainly below sea level in “a bowl.” Some questioned the strength and height of the levee systems protecting New Orleans from flooding as well as the levees’ ability to withstand the power of hurricanes. While the state government refused to pay attention, researchers were convinced that Louisiana and particularly New Orleans was much more vulnerable to storms than the people believed it to be.12 In addition to structurally deficient levee systems, the continued excavation, dredging, and conversion of wetlands increased New Orleans’ vulnerability to natural disasters.

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Levee breach: 17th Street canal (van Heerden et.al. 2006)

The flooding of Greater New Orleans is shown in black (van Heerden et al. 2006)

Since the government refused to acknowledge the scientists’ warnings, residents were mostly unprepared for what happened in their backyards when almost 50 percent of the levee systems failed during the storm. Until Katrina, residents of Louisiana tended to downplay hurricane warnings as they “had been through it before.” What set Katrina apart from other hurricanes that have flooded New Orleans was not her strength or power but her trajectory. Katrina missed New Orleans by 35 miles, which placed the city on the weak side of the hurricane. Residents of southeast Louisiana were thus in for a rude awakening the morning that Hurricane Katrina made landfall. The levees proved to be the exact opposite of protection, and multiple levee system failures coupled with the inability to activate the surrounding pumping stations led to the flooding of New

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Orleans. Duue to extensivee flooding, th he pumping staations were in noperable and the releease of oil froom crude oil tanks t furthereed the damagee to New Orleans. 13 T The US Armyy Corps of En ngineers, soleely responsiblle for the constructionn of the leveees, stated thaat they wouldd be strong enough e to protect New w Orleans froom anything less than an 800-year flo ood. New Orleans is m made up of fivve bowls, eacch with its ow wn set of levees. These levees rangee in height froom 12 to 15 feeet. With a stoorm surge thaat in some locations reaached 18 feet, greater New w Orleans wass not fully preepared for what Katrinaa had to offer. 14

Thee difference betw ween a T-Wall and an I-Wall ffor levee design n (Nelson 2007; 2 van Heerden and Bryan 2006)

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There were multiple inherent weaknesses in the construction of the levees. Van Heerden and Bryan revealed that there were three main reasons the levees failed in New Orleans: (1) The Corps of Engineers used a bad engineering design; (2) the Corps were using outdated data form 1959 as a design form; and (3) they made mistakes on their topographic surveys which caused all of the levees to be built one and one half feet too low.15 Due to these mistakes, the Corps of Engineers caused tens of thousands to lose their homes and all their belongings, and almost two thousand people to lose their lives. 16 With the inadequate safety factors used in the construction, as well as the various political jurisdictions in charge of maintaining the levees after construction, there was no hope for New Orleans once the levee system failed.17 The levees were not built on strong enough substrate and used an “I” design instead of a “T” design. I-Walls are concrete floodwalls that do not have a tail that locks them into the substrate. The Corps did not use an appropriate margin of safety, and the levee structures did not take into account the substrate variation and viscosity of the soils. The Corps also did not adequately protect the levees from erosion as many were not armored (reinforced with rocks or concrete), and some of the levees were built in soil that was very erodible. In addition to levee failures and overtopping, the pump stations meant to remove excess water from New Orleans were inoperable during and after Katrina. Furthermore, the wetlands surrounding New Orleans had been destroyed by development.18 Two days after Katrina hit about 80 percent of New Orleans was under water. There were two major forms of flooding related to levee failure. Levees were either overtopped or they completely collapsed under the rush of the water. One of the main conduits for the incoming flooding was the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO or “Mister Go”), built through the wetlands and into St. Bernard Parish. A funnel is formed where the MRGO joins with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW), ending at a levee intended to protect a major portion of greater New Orleans. Since the canal and its associated levees forced the surge waters to maneuver into smaller and smaller areas, the velocity of water increased along with the height of the surge. With this increase, the destruction approaching New Orleans was unstoppable. By the time the water reached the interior levee it was higher than the top of the levee, causing overtopping. The MRGO levees also collapsed due to poor engineering design, as mentioned earlier. 19 This was a significant cause of flooding in many areas, as the world learned from the stories on their TV screens night after night.

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In the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest hit areas in New Orleans, there were breaches in the levees at two locations as well as on the main city side of the channel. From these breaches, floodwater exploded into the city. The Lower Ninth Ward averages four feet below sea level and having a water surge of fourteen feet above sea level was therefore beyond catastrophic for the residents. Hundreds of people drowned within the first 90 minutes and thousands more were scrambling for their lives. The flooding of New Orleans started around 4:30 am on Monday morning and continued for many hours thereafter. In the end, approximately 87 percent of the flooding of the Greater New Orleans area was a result of levee failures. As someone who was there, watching this beloved city perish in less than 24 hours, it was heart wrenching. Thirty hours after Katrina made landfall much of New Orleans was flooded. As the city was underwater, the rest of the world watched in disbelief. Lives were already lost and many residents were forced to stay in their homes without a way to get out of the city. In fact, New Orleans’ residents were exactly where researchers had predicted they would be: stuck in flooded homes, holding loved ones, trying to save their pets, and climbing through their attics to sit on rooftops, praying and hoping for rescue. A situation that could have been prevented had the levees served their purpose instead left an entire city underwater and helpless.20

Katrina’s Impact on the Natural Wetlands Barrier There is no environmental compromise based on political considerations when it comes to the Gulf Coast wetlands. Wetlands must be protected. They protect New Orleans and other coastal communities and are our survival mechanism. Hurricane Katrina was a human-made mistake. A hurricane that should have done less damage than a typical afternoon storm left an entire city in ruins, and drastically changed hundreds of thousands of lives. We must live with nature and we cannot fight against it. We cannot overpower nature’s powerful forces and we will lose more than just a city if we continue at the current rate of coastal degradation. Because of the mismanagement of the whole Louisiana coast, the wetlands that existed at Katrina’s landfall were substantially weaker than if the levees had never been built. As a consequence, Katrina tore up the wetlands even further. Dr. Nan Walker, Associate Professor and Director of the Earth Scan Laboratory at LSU, stated that, “the erosion and destruction of marsh from Katrina equaled or exceeded about ten years of normal wetland loss in southeast Louisiana.” This was documented by John Barras in his analysis of land change where he found that about 212

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km2 of wetlands were lost from Katrina in southeast Louisiana compared to a long-term average for the whole Louisiana coast of 50 km 2/year. Dr. Walker commented that, “the storm surge introduces destructive waves and saltwater into freshwater wetlands which are hardest hit during hurricanes.”21 Although hurricanes affect the wetlands, it is also human actions taken to protect against hurricanes that have damaged the coastal wetlands. Mary-Lee Orr, the Executive Director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, stated that the, “science is pretty clear that human actions and operations are the main contributor” (of wetland loss).22 Hurricanes are a major concern to low-lying areas of the southern United States. With climate change, other areas on the east coast and around the world are experiencing such phenomena and these storms will only continue to increase in severity and occurrence as humans continue to alter our natural climactic regime. We cannot sit by and watch cities be destroyed when protecting the environment is an important tool in the toolbox. We must protect what nature gives us and we have to save the very habitat that protects us. For Louisiana, the wetlands provide economic stability for the oil and gas industry and trading network, and the wetlands allow our families and friends to live in a state with diverse and important cultures. The wetlands in southern Louisiana are beneficial to many species (including our own) and are important for natural ecosystems to flourish in the Gulf. Saving the wetlands proves that our future is not as bleak as it could be. It is not just the Gulf Coast that is in need of protection; 44 percent of the world’s population, roughly 7.3 billion people, reside in the coastal zone, and 3.2 billion people partially rely on costal zones due to the proximity to food and ecological benefits. To put this data into perspective, the number of people currently living in the coastal zone is larger than the entire global population in 1950 of 2.5 billion people. Eight of the top ten largest cities in the world are located in the coastal zone. 23 Cross-culturally, globally, and fundamentally, humanity needs nature, but nature does not need humanity. With sea levels rising and even more frequent and powerful storms, the maintenance of our natural protection from hurricanes and flooding becomes more imperative in order for us to survive. There is always a way to make a difference in the world and we, as Americans, must look towards the future and understand that our actions now determine how we will survive in the long run.

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Lessons Learned Climate change and associated sea level rising will increase the risks of humans inhabiting coastal zones. Land conversion, increasing erosion, and urbanization only heighten the impacts of climate change on the coastal zone while furthering the degradation of the ecosystems in this region. Recent studies suggest that sea levels could rise by more than one meter by 2100, with the potential to create uninhabitable coastal zones for many parts of the world. Current and future coastal settlements risk being harmed by flooding, coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion, and an increase in destructive storm surges and waves. Climate change, as a major force of coastal ecosystem modification, provides humankind with challenges in maintaining, modifying, or developing new approaches for suitable housing and economic infrastructure. Coastal inhabitants worldwide have only recently started to “wake-up” to the realities of climate change. The Tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2012, Hurricane Sandy that hit New York, and the earthquake that levelled much of Haiti are examples of natural disasters that are not disappearing. 24 Right now, we must focus on the preservation of our natural environments and expanding coastal economies to increase resilience to these disasters.25 The fate of the coastal zone is very much tied to how human populations can alleviate the pressures on the ecosystems that they rely on to keep them protected from future climate change effects. The natural habitats within coastal zones are presently under threat from human development and its associated ecosystem degradation, which is either function alteration or complete destruction. In many parts of the world, the estuaries and rivers of coastal zones are currently being “reclaimed” by governments. Some are being dammed up and others dredged or drained. In Louisiana, wetlands are being excavated, dredged, or drained for profit by the oil and gas industry for exploration and mining. All these activities add to the pollution load of the coastal zone. Additionally, contaminated or polluted river runoff adds to coastal degradation. The deforestation of coastal areas, cypress swamps, and mangrove communities is still ongoing in many parts of the world due to unsustainable harvesting. Thus, the rate of coastal habitat destruction is increasing with each passing year, with many areas being lost forever. This decrease in natural land areas has resulted in the depletion of marine resources including harvestable marine species, the alteration of freshwater potable resources to non-potable ones, and substrate (soil and sand) degradation creating a tipping point from which there may be no

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return. The destruction costs for these depleted areas are greater than the ecological costs since there are enormous associated economic penalties.26 When looking back into the detrimental consequences of Hurricane Katrina we must understand that, as stated on the back of Dr. van Heerden’s book The Storm: It was a natural disaster, but magnified enormously by the government’s crushing incompetence in both preparation and response. The storm levelled the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but man-made problems destroyed New Orleans.

The underlying question is: what do we do now? The answer is simple. We must take care of the environment that allows us to inhabit this earth in the first place because one wrong step and an entire city can be destroyed, as revealed by Katrina. One way to increase resilience to natural disasters is represented by disaster reduction policies and measures. These policies allow governments and societies to ensure economic growth and development while also increasing resilience to natural disasters.27 Other possible solutions include more government funding, central coordination of flood control, and having plans set by governments, state and federal sectors, the private sector, and residents for evacuation and flood relief. Lastly, we must understand that what we do as human beings impacts the natural world. Humanity is the reason for the multitude of problems that are not in the natural variants of the ecosystems. Hurricanes are not going to vanish or lessen in the future and human actions are causing more damages to the environment that protects us. If we do not work to mitigate the problems, there will be no more wetlands to “lessen the hurt” of hurricanes. We must fight with nature. Fight the destruction; fight for our protection. Protecting nature means protecting us because without nature there is no humanity. Without nature, we will perish. The footprint we leave should be one that we are proud of; one that showcases our ability to thrive within the natural world. Every decision we make is a ripple in the global wave; let us make keeping the Earth beautiful for generations to come our purpose.

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Notes  1

Vanessa van Heerden is an undergraduate student in the Department of Biology and Department of Environmental Science and Resource Management, CSU Channel Islands. 2 Ivar van Heerden and Michael Bryan, The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: The Inside Story from one Louisiana Scientist (New York: Viking Press, 2006); L. M. Kiage, N. D. Walker, S. Balasubramanian, A. Babin, and J. Barras, “Applications of Radarsat-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery to Assess Hurricane-Related Flooding of Coastal Louisiana,” International Journal of Remote Sensing 26 (24) (December 2005): 5359–80. 3 “Issues,” America’s Wetland (America’s Wetland Foundation, October 16, 2012). 4 Kiage, L.M., N.D. Walker, S. Balasubramanian, A. Babin, and J. Barras. “Applications of Radarsat-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery to Assess Hurricane-Related Flooding of Coastal Louisiana.” International Journal of Remote Sensing 26:24 (December, 2005), 5359-5380. 5 J. M. Coleman and H. H. Roberts, “Deltaic Coastal Wetlands,” Geologie em Mijnbouw 68 (1989): 1–24. 6 J. A. Barras, S. Beville, D. Britsch, S. Hartley, J. Johnston, P. Kemp, Q. Kinler, A. Martucci, J. Porthouse, D. Reed, K. Roy, S. Sapkota, and J. Suhayda, “Historical and Projected Coastal Louisiana Land Changes: 1978–2050,” United States Geological Society, open file report 3 (2003): 334–9. 7 Kiage et al., “Applications of Radarsat-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery”; Coleman and Roberts, “Deltaic Coastal Wetlands.” 8 R. D. Knapp, J. R. Rhome, and D. P. Brown, “Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Katrina August 2005,” National Hurricane Center (2005): 23–30; E. McCallum and J. Heming, “Hurricane Katrina: An Environmental Perspective,” Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences 364 (1845) (2006): 2099–115. 9 N. D. Walker, A. Haag, S. Balasubramanian, R. Leben, I. van Heerden, P. Kemp, and H. Mashriqui, “Hurricane Prediction: a Century of Advances,” Oceanography 19 (2) (2006). 10 W. Anderson and S. A. Kjar, “Hurricane Katrina and the Levees: Taxation, Calculation, and the Matrix of Capital,” International Journal of Social Economics 35 (8) (2008): 569–78. 11 D. Reible, “Hurricane Katrina: Environmental Hazards in the Disaster Area,” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research 9 (3) (2007): 53–68. 12 I. van Heerden and M. Bryan, The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: The Inside Story from one Louisiana Scientist (New York: Viking Press, 2006). 13 Reible, “Hurricane Katrina.” 14 Van Heerden and Bryan, The Storm. 15 Ibid. 16 M. Orr, Telephone Interview (October 15, 2012). 17 Reible, “Hurricane Katrina.”

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18 American Society of Civil Engineers, “The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went Wrong and Why,” Report by the American Society of Engineers (Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel, 2007); Reible, “Hurricane Katrina.” 19 Walker, “Hurricane Prediction”; van Heerden and Bryan, The Storm. 20 van Heerden and Bryan, The Storm. 21 Walker, “Hurricane Prediction”; J. C. Bernier, R. A. Morton, and J. A. Barras. “Constraining Rates and Trends of Historical Wetland Loss, Mississippi River Delta Plain,” in South-central Louisiana Coastal Environment and Water Quality, eds. Y. J. Xu and V. P. Singh (Highlands Ranch, CO: Water Resources Publications, LLC, 2006), 371–82; J. A. Barras, “Land Area Changes in Coastal Louisiana after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” in Science and the Storms: the USGS Response to the Hurricanes of 2005, eds. G. S. Farris, G. J. Smith, M. P. Crane, C. R. Demas, L. L. Robbins, and D. L. Lavoie (USGS Circular 1306, 2007), 283. 22 M. Orr, Telephone Interview (October 15, 2012). 23 UN Atlas of the Oceans: Human Settlements on the Coasts,

Š––’ǣȀȀ™™™Ǥ‘…‡ƒ•ƒ–Žƒ•Ǥ‘”‰Ȁ•‡”˜Ž‡–Ȁ‡”˜Ž‡–ǫ•–ƒ–—•α Ͳš…͵ ŒͻͶœͻ‹œœͳ”„͵̱. 24

B. Neumann, A. T. Vafeidis, J. Zimmermann, and R. J. Nicholls, “Future Coastal Population Growth and Exposure to Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding—A Coastal Assessment,” PLoS ONE 10 (6) (2015): 1–34. 25 P. C. Kesavan and M. S. Swaminathan, “Managing Extreme Natural Disasters in Coastal Areas,” Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 364 (1845) (2006): 2191–216. 26 UN Atlas of the Oceans. 27 Kesavan and Swaminathan, “Managing Extreme Natural Disasters in Coastal Areas.”

TOURISM RESPONDS TO DISASTER: THE CASE OF HURRICANE KATRINA RICHARD W. HALLETT AND JUDITH KAPLAN-WEINGER1

Introduction Tourism in New Orleans is marked by pre and post-Katrina realities.2 Prior to the hurricane, New Orleans tourism was primarily promoted through metaphors of food. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the metaphors changed. Through critical discourse and visual semiotic analyses of today’s official Louisiana tourism websites, this paper examines the specific ways that New Orleans tourism continues to respond to the hurricane destruction. Our research can inform the public and private sectors of ways to utilize tourism to rebuild a devastated community.

New Orleans Tourism Pre-Katrina The use of metaphor is common in tourist promotional materials and Graham M. S. Dann notes that, “Despite the foregoing strength and weakness of metaphor, one common usage, and indeed merit, is its ability to reduce the strangeness and unfamiliarity of a concept or its referent.”3 Linguists working with metaphors routinely cite George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s definition: “metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of a thing in terms of another.” 4 Lakoff and Johnson do not distinguish between metaphors and similes as they are used and interpreted in the same way; our human conceptual system is structured, at least partially, to perceive and think in metaphorical terms. In the introduction to her volume on language and food, Polly Szatrowski states that food is “important for the formation of identity and culture, and intricately involved in the way we use language.”5 Writing about the ubiquity of food metaphors in tourism, Nadežda Silaški and Tatjana Ĉuroviü claim that, “Equating tourist destinations to food as one

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of the most vital aspects of life, with its smells, tastes, and textures invoking the most pleasurable experiences, serves to symbolically convert tourism, i.e., travelling, into an equally vital part of life.”6 In their research on Serbian culinary tourism advertising, Silaški and Ĉuroviü identify three sub-metaphors of tourist destinations that involve food: travelling is tasting/eating food, experiencing new things is tasting food, and choice of destination includes a food menu or choosing a travel destination is informed by eating choices.7 Unsurprisingly, food metaphors, especially for New Orleans, abound in tourism materials and “the act of consuming the destination is embodied as the act of consuming food.”8 Louisiana tourism relies heavily on food metaphors. In his seminal book on the sociolinguistics of tourism, Dann references Louisiana’s “We’re really cookin’” tourism campaign; 9 Louisiana is “that mainland state that appears to use culinary imagery in its advertising more than any other in the US.”10 On the city of New Orleans’ official tourism websites, before Katrina the metaphor “Louisiana is food” was featured prominently, with the common occurrence of the metaphor “New Orleans is gumbo.” 11 This metaphor appears not only in the written texts on websites but in the visual texts as well. For example, in a series of photos with the caption “Taste Louisiana,” the word “Louisiana” is placed next to photos of food to make the equivalence through the collocation, as with “Louisiana is Pie.” We argue for the extension of that metaphor, e.g. “Louisiana is sweet” (as pecan pie) and “Louisiana is diverse” (like the ingredients in jambalaya).12 We also note a contrast between hot and cold in these images, and accordingly we find evidence for both the metaphors “Louisiana is Hot” (with all of the connotations of that adjective) and “Louisiana is Cool” (again with all the connotations of what cool is).

Post-Katrina New Orleans Tourism Much has already been written about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans tourism, and scholars Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison write that: In the years following the storm, a small but visible cottage industry sprouted selling “Katrina tours,” taking busloads of tourists to survey the damage. Tours that had previously covered the French Quarter and the Garden District now added a detour to see the world-famous Lower Ninth.13 Rebecca Solnit, writes that:

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The city was profoundly changed, physically, psychically, economically, and demographically by the storm, and the nation was rocked … Disasters begin suddenly, but they never quite end, and this one arose as much from social divides and vicious worldviews as from the hurricane that came blowing in from the Gulf.14 To date, however, very little research has focused on the linguistic changes on the official tourism websites for New Orleans.15 Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, the predominant metaphor found on websites was “Louisiana is a phoenix/being reborn.” Next to a logo reading “Louisiana Rebirth,” we find the following text: Visiting Louisiana has always been a great idea and now more than ever Louisiana needs your support. The Rebirth Rewards program is our way of inviting you back. As part of the Rebirth of Louisiana effort, the tourism industry throughout the state has provided offers, discounts and special rates that are available immediately.16 The website implores visitors, especially American citizens, to be part of this “rebirth.” Accompanying images are patriotic in nature. One image has a picture of Jackson Square and Saint Louis Cathedral with an American flag superimposed over its left side. The caption of the image reads: “REBUILDING New Orleans.” The websites specifically state the importance of tourism to the local economy: Many of you have asked how you can help New Orleans. First, visit New Orleans, a city that annually welcomes 10 million visitors. Stay in our hotels and eat in our great restaurants. Visit our museums, Harrah’s Casino, music clubs and art galleries. Shop along Royal and Magazine Streets. In doing this, you will help bring back this city’s top industry: tourism.17 Gone are the “Louisiana is food” metaphors, having been replaced by an emphasis on tourism.18

Black Culture New Orleans’ tourism narrative has represented black culture through desire and disaster:

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Tourists were encouraged to think that they were experiencing and celebrating black culture by eating Creole cuisine, dancing to local music, participating in the traditional “second line” street parade, attending jazz funerals, and listening to anecdotes of quadroon balls and secret voodoo rites. At the same time, however, tourists were directed to adopt the white supremacist memory of slavery and black culture that views the old South with a sense of loss and nostalgia by touring plantations, lodging and dining in repurposed slave dwellings, purchasing slavery memorabilia, and being pampered by black service workers.19 Perhaps in response to that claim, Louisiana and New Orleans tourism websites no longer emphasize the “Louisiana is food” metaphor, although some references to the importance of food in the local culture and touristic offerings can still be found. Rather, it is the whole of New Orleans that comes to the fore: Any time of year find live music, amazing Creole and Cajun cuisine, fresh seafood, farmers’ markets, shopping, nightlife and more. During Mardi Gras season, the city becomes the world’s center. Downtown transforms into an adult playground, while parades in residential areas provide children thrilling entertainment. Each spring, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival moves the focus to the charming Gentilly area and the Fair Grounds Race Course. But no matter the time of year, New Orleans’ calendar overflows in celebration.20 The post-Katrina tourism promotion is striking, however, in its continued obfuscation of the essential black heritage that shaped and continues to influence this region. Thomas comments that: on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, the predominant historical and thematic tourism narrative about New Orleans had so effaced the lived experiences of the city’s black community that this community was effectively rendered invisible to the rest of the nation. It took the catastrophic destruction of Katrina to lay bare the city’s long history of racial and class disparities.21 Ironically, in pre-Katrina New Orleans—a predominantly African American city with a rich and enduring history and culture featuring jazz, Creole cuisine, voodoo, different forms of architecture and

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artisanship, the largest antebellum FPC [Free People of Color] population in the United States, significant civil rights activism, and countless resources dedicated to historic preservation and tourism marketing—African Americans contended with the glaring omission of New Orleans’s black history and community by the white-dominated mainstream tourism industry.22 On the website we find little mention of the formative African American culture in culinary contexts, and, when present, only references to the African origins of food alongside the influences of German, Spanish, and French cuisines. Diversity is promoted but there is no substantive change in how tourism promotion has “obscured or distorted the African presence and participation in the development and sustenance of the city.”23 Another for the region of “Houma: Louisiana Bayou Country” does recognize the African influence on “The Difference Between Cajun & Creole” page: The term Creole can have many meanings, but during the early days of Louisiana, it meant that a person was born in the colony and was the descendant of French or Spanish parents. The term is a derivative of the word “criollo,” which means native or local, and was intended as a class distinction. In present Louisiana, Creole generally means a person or people of mixed colonial French, African American and Native American ancestry. The term Black Creole refers to freed slaves from Haiti and their descendants.24 Returning to the metaphor “Louisiana is Food,” the above website continues: As to the difference in the cuisines, Creole can be defined as “city cooking” with influences from Spain, Africa, Germany, Italy and the West Indies combined with native ingredients. Cajun cooking is more of a home cooked style that is rich with the ingredients at hand in the new world the Acadians settled into. A one pot, hearty meal is typical in Cajun cooking.25 Here, the reference to “city cooking,” and the City of New Orleans in particular, obscures the traditional definition of creole as “black.” A link on the “louisianatravel.com” website takes the tourist to the website for New Orleans.26 Here the city is introduced with the traditional food metaphor of the “melting pot of culture, food and music.” As our

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analysis of Louisiana tourism websites over the last 12 years has shown, the dominant metaphor for the state is “Louisiana is Food.” In fact, we were surprised by how quickly the metaphor shifted back to “Louisiana is Food” a year after Hurricane Katrina. As Thomas writes, New Orleans tourism capitalizes on its unique place identity. The resulting narrative represents a long historical trajectory that brings into alignment the local residents’ sense of place and personal attachment to their city, marketing professionals’ use of mass media to promote a particular image of New Orleans, and the city’s civic reputation, or how New Orleans is perceived by outsiders.27 Accordingly, “Louisiana is Food” is no longer the sole or even dominant metaphor found on the current official tourism websites for Louisiana and New Orleans. For example, the current text for the French Quarter read as follows: The French Quarter in New Orleans (called Vieux Carré) is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. Established in 1718 the area acted as the town center and a major trade hub. The district is bounded by Canal, Decatur, Esplanade Ave. and Rampart Streets. This fun and exciting neighborhood has everything from the party vibe of Bourbon Street to the elegance found on Royal Street. Enjoy views of stunning architecture with balconies adorned with intricate ironwork to beautiful gardens and courtyards. Every street has something to offer from the famous landmark Jackson Square to boutique shopping, live music, restaurants, voodoo temples, Café Du Monde and the French Market. Come stroll the streets of this exotic neighborhood.28 Surprisingly, there is no use of metaphor and no specific mention of food, aside from the mention of “restaurants” and Café Du Monde. On the same website, the following text concerning the New Orleans Area is found: One of the country’s oldest and most interesting cities, New Orleans is known as a culturally rich and vibrant center of fun, festivity, fine dining and history. Landmarks and historically significant architecture abound, as do sights, attractions and activities for families. Discover the restaurants, clubs and centuries-old buildings of the world-famous French Quarter and the grand homes of the Garden District. Ride a streetcar along beautiful, oak-draped St. Charles Avenue. Take the kids to the Audubon Zoo and Aquarium, visit the National World War II

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Museum, and stop for amazing views of paddle wheelers and freighters on the mighty Mississippi River. Take a drive south to Venice, and charter an offshore fishing boat for a day of trophy fishing on the Gulf of Mexico. Or drive just minutes out of New Orleans to Chalmette and visit the site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Visit the area during Mardi Gras or during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival to enjoy major international events you will never forget. If you’re hungry for Louisiana seafood, you won't want to miss stops along the Jefferson Parish Oyster Trail in Lafitte, Kenner, Metairie, Gretna and Harahan.29 This time, New Orleans is not a “gumbo” but rather a “culturally rich and vibrant center of fun, festivity, fine dining and history.” At the end of this passage there is a mention of Louisiana seafood, but, again, not as any sort of metaphor. Today, the official Louisiana tourism website contains several links like “Find Places,” “Trip Ideas,” and “Other Popular Content.” The last example contains five more links to other webpages; “Cajun vs. Creole Food—What is the Difference?,” “Explore the Hidden Treasures of Louisiana’s Beaches,” “10 Must-Visit Louisiana Festivals,” “‘Action!’ New Orleans Film Locations You Can Visit,” and “Ten Must-Have Louisiana Souvenirs.” The first of these links does contain a metaphor, but it is not the familiar “Louisiana is Food” metaphor: Compared to Louisiana, other states have it easy. Sure, Louisiana is home of the “Big Easy” and the locals are known for our “joie de vivre,” but we are also parents to some of the most precious cuisines in the world. While we may, on occasion, have one too many Bloody Marys at Sunday brunch or add some “punch” to our milk, we don’t take our responsibility lightly. Like real parenting, this job has no vacations. Even when away from the motherland, Louisianans still find ourselves bragging about and, on occasion, having to defend our pride and joy.30 The metaphor is now “Louisianans Are Proud Parents,” an interesting one in that most people do not think of a particular cuisine as having parents or guardians. Yet food is nourishing, and as a parent’s responsibility is to nurture his or her child we can understand a host city’s responsibility to offer a positive and beneficial experience to its guests and, having done so, to bask in the glory of a job well done. Like good, proud parents, Louisianans nurture their culture and provide for its growth. The “Food” metaphor has not been lost to Louisiana tourism and remains

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today as not only a symbol of a vibrant and diverse locale, but also as a symbol of a comfortable home in which one will feel welcome and cared for.

Conclusions Writing about the importance of tourism materials (including official tourism websites), Tijana Rakiü notes that, “What makes these place narratives particularly interesting from the perspective of scholarly research is that these, among other cultural texts, social and cultural practices, individual experiences, stories and memories, can also be considered to play a role in the making of that place and its meaning.”31 Research on tourism texts continues to illustrate the constructive role of discourse in formulating identify of both place and person. As these texts attempt to capture the current status of a locale in their structure, they both acknowledge and construct that locale’s significance. As we tourists inform ourselves of a locale, we too are constructed as not only potential visitors but also actual contributors to the locale’s growth, revision, and significance. Louisiana tourism texts are not unique in their role of informing and encouraging the traveler. Further research into such texts could reveal how other locales that have been subject to catastrophes, whether natural or not, have capitalized on tourism for their rebirth and renewal.

Notes 1

Dr. Hallett and Dr. Kaplan-Weinger are both professors at the Department of Linguistics, Northeastern Illinois University. Much thanks to Dr. Helaine Silverman, Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for reviewing this paper. 2 Richard W. Hallett and Judith Kaplan-Weinger, Official Tourism Websites: A Discourse Analysis Perspective (Bristol: Channel View, 2010). 3 Graham, M. S. Dann, The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World (New York: CAB International, 2002), 4. 4 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 5. 5 Polly Szatrowski, “Introduction to Language and Food: Verbal and Nonverbal Experiences,” in Language and Food: Verbal and Nonverbal Experiences, ed. Polly E. Szatrowski (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishers, 2014), 5. 6 Silaški, Nadežda and Tatjana Ĉuroviü, “Food-related Metaphors in Culinary Tourism Advertising,” In The English of Tourism, eds. Georgeta RaĠă, Iona

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Petroman, and Cornelia Petroman (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 259. 7 Ibid., 261. 8 Ibid., 259. 9 Graham M. S. Dann, The Language of Tourism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective (Wallingford: CAB International, 1996). 10 Graham M. S. Dann, “The Pomo Promo of Tourism,” Tourism, Culture and Communication 1 (1998): 1–16. 11 Hallett & Kaplan-Weinger, Official Tourism Websites, 45. 12 Ibid., 46. 13 Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison, Reclaiming Travel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 126–7. 14 Rebecca Solnit, “Snakes and Ladders: What Rose up and What Fell down during Hurricane Katrina,” in Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, eds. Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 32. 15 Hallett & Kaplan-Weinger, Official Tourism Websites. 16 http://www.louisianatravel.com/rebirth_rewards. 17 http://www.neworleansonline.com/rebuilding/help.html. 18 For more on the rebranding of the city for touristic purposes, see Kevin Fox Gotham, “(Re)Branding the Big Easy: Tourism Rebuilding in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Urban Affairs Review 42 (6) (2007), 823–50. doi:10.1177/1078087407300222. 19 Lynnell L. Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 7. 20 http://www.louisianatravel.com/cities/new-orleans. 21 Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans, 13 22 Ibid., 123–4. 23 Ibid., 1. 24 http://houmatravel.com/about/cajun-vs-creole. 25 Ibid. 26 http://www.neworleansonline.com. 27 Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans, 3. 28 http://www.louisianatravel.com/areas/french-quarter-area. 29 http://www.louisianatravel.com/areas/new-orleans-area. 30 http://www.louisianatravel.com/articles/cajun-vs-creole-food-what-difference. 31 Tijana Rakiü and Jacqueline Tivers, “Narratives of National Versus ‘Universal’ Belonging of the Athenian Acropolis in Travel Guidebooks,” In Narratives of Travel and Tourism, ed. Jacqueline Tivers (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 151.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND FUTURE KATRINAS DAVID KLEIN1

Introduction Will destructive storms like Katrina be more frequent in the future? Driven by global warming, are they likely to become even more powerful? What does the future hold for low-lying coastal cities like New Orleans? And what is the role of capitalism in the climate catastrophe? This article will provide a background to global warming, summarize some scientific predictions for future storms, discuss why the global capitalist system is incompatible with sustainability and survival, and offer ecosocialism as an alternative to capitalism.

Global Warming A good way to understand the effect of a small increase in the global average temperature is to look to the past. Scientific studies estimate that twenty thousand years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, the global average temperature was 3°C to 6°C cooler than now. During the Last Glacial Maximum, ice sheets covered Canada and much of the United States while New York City and Chicago were buried under more than a mile of ice, and the sea level was almost four hundred feet below where it is now. This example from Earth's history illustrates how a change of only a few degrees in the global average temperature has major planet-altering consequences.2 At the current rate of global greenhouse gas emissions, warming of the planet above pre-industrial temperatures will shoot past 2°C by midcentury and reach 4–6°C by 2100. Consider that if a 4–6°C decrease in global average temperature put New York City and Chicago under a mile of ice, what would a 4–6°C increase do? The answer is that it would transform the planet in ways that make it unrecognizable and even uninhabitable. Hans Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research described the consequences of global warming: "the

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difference between two and four degrees [of warming] is human civilization." A temperature rise of 4°C (which is an increase of 7.2°F) would likely end civilization as we know it, and a 6°C global average temperature increase could very well mark the extinction of humanity along with many other species.3 The direct physical cause of global warming is the emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The sources of emissions span the entire global economy, from electricity, heat, and cement production, to deforestation and agribusiness, and to transportation and industry. In this situation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that to even stay below 2°C of warming, already a very high and dangerous temperature limit, greenhouse gas emissions must decrease worldwide to zero well before the end of the century.4

Greenhouse Gases and Ocean Effects When carbon dioxide in the air mixes with surface ocean water, the two react to form carbonic acid. This is the same acid in carbonated soft drinks that gives the tingling sensation on your tongue. But in the oceans, carbonic acid attacks coral reefs, certain kinds of phytoplankton, and swimming animals with shells (pteropods), which are critical food sources for fish. 5 Coral reefs are the rainforests of the ocean with a rich biodiversity estimated to hold more than a million species. Warming of ocean waters is causing coral bleaching as overheated coral expel symbiotic algae. Ocean acidification, now worse than during the previous several million years, is reducing calcification of corals. The combined effects have already resulted in the mass mortality of ocean life. 6 In addition to the deadly effects of acidification, the warming of ocean waters tends to stratify the waters by temperature and decrease circulation, thereby lowering oxygen levels. Adding to this, chemical fertilizer runoff into the oceans has the effect of further depleting the ocean of oxygen. The result of oxygen depletion is the increasingly alarming appearance of dead zones in the ocean, devoid of life. Sea level rise is another consequence of global warming because of ice melt from Greenland, Antarctica, and glaciers, as well as thermal expansion from warming waters. The Eemian interglacial period (120,000 years ago) was 2°C warmer than the decades 1880–1920. Geologic evidence suggests a rapid sea level rise during that period eventually reaching nine meters above present sea level.

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The example of the Eemian interglacial period raises a serious possibility that a critical stability threshold was crossed at 2°C of warming that resulted in polar ice-sheet collapse. Considering that most large cities in the world lie on a coast, the human consequences of global warming and sea-level rise are enormous.7 Predictions for the extent of sea-level rise by 2100 vary widely. The 2013 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report estimated about a meter of sea-level rise, but some subsequent analyses put it much higher. James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, together with eighteen international colleagues, warned that without substantial decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, global sea level is likely to increase "several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years," rendering most of the world’s coastal cities uninhabitable. Moreover, an increasing surface temperature gradient between the equator and the poles could energize unprecedented, devastating storms.8 A study published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 examined how much rising sea levels will eventually affect cities across the United States even if carbon emissions decrease. The most startling finding is that 414 coastal towns and cities have already passed their lockin date—that is, the point at which it is guaranteed that more than half the city's populated land will eventually be underwater. Even if carbon emissions are drastically decreased, it is not a matter of if but when. Of those 414 cities, New Orleans and Miami stand to be among the most compromised as sea levels rise.9

Hurricanes on a Warming Planet Computer models and other physical analyses indicate that the incidence of the strongest hurricanes will increase as the climate warms. In fact, there is already evidence that this is happening. More specifically, a 10 mile per hour increase in top hurricane wind speeds for every degree (Celsius) increase in surface sea temperatures is predicted by hurricane experts. 10 This is far more significant than it might first appear. For example, consider typhoon Haiyan in 2013. 11 The Philippines regularly endures category five typhoons, but they rarely make news because they seldom do much damage. One storm every one hundred years will have a landfall peak wind speed of about 170 mph, but Haiyan topped that with wind speeds beyond 190 mph, along with a huge storm surge. The difference between 170 mph, for which that nation was prepared, and the 190 mph winds of Haiyan caused more than 6,300 deaths and the massive devastation of infrastructure. Globally, satellite data show that storms are reaching peak energies at higher latitudes, as predicted by mathematical

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models. As a consequence of this trend, there may be reduced risk in parts of the tropics but new risks of destructive storms in the middle latitudes of the planet.12 Aside from greater wind speeds, an obvious reason that more damaging storms will occur is the rise in sea levels that will necessarily add to storm surges.13 A storm surge is an increase in sea level caused mostly by cyclonal winds (as opposed to low air pressure). Storm surges from Katrina reached 25 to 28 feet, breaking all previous records, and were the source of the greatest destruction from the storm. Taking into account these factors, Kerry Emanuel, an MIT climate scientist and a leading expert on hurricanes, summarized the prospects for the future of New Orleans as follows: Adapting to the myriad changes expected over the next 100 years is such a horrendous prospect that otherwise intelligent people rebel against the idea even to the extent of denying the very existence of the risk. This recalcitrance, coupled with rising sea levels, subsiding land and increased incidence of strong hurricanes, all but guarantees that New Orleans will have moved or have been abandoned by the next century.14 Looking beyond New Orleans and Katrina, the National Hurricane Center makes the following observations regarding the US Atlantic and Gulf Coast. Quoting a National Hurricane Center document: • • •

•

Much of the United States' densely populated Atlantic and Gulf Coast coastlines lie less than 10 feet above mean sea level Over half of the Nation's economic productivity is located within coastal zones 72 percent of ports, 27 percent of major roads, and 9 percent of rail lines within the Gulf Coast region are at or below 4 ft. elevation A storm surge of 23 ft. has the ability to inundate 67 percent of interstates, 57 percent of arterials, almost half of rail miles, 29 airports, and virtually all ports in the Gulf Coast area15

Without drastic mitigation, we are likely to see all of these events and the dangers are very much the same for other parts of the world.

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Technical Solutions Rising sea levels and the destruction of the biosphere are not inevitable consequences of human nature. Humanity has the means to live within the natural boundaries of the planet, and to live well. But achieving harmony with nature requires a fundamentally different system of human cooperation and profound changes in the way the world economy operates. The good news is that the technology needed to carry out such a global transformation already exists. Detailed plans for zero carbon energy generation, electrified mass transportation, agricultural reform, low carbon footprint buildings, and the contraction of damaging and unnecessary industries have been developed by numerous experts in their fields and are widely available.16 Humanity has within its grasp the means to avoid the worst effects of global warming and to create a thriving and sustainable future in harmony with nature. But virtually nothing has been done to accomplish this. What stops us? The barrier to our collective survival is the constraining system of rules and relationships that are presently imposed by capitalism.

Capitalism or Sustainability Capitalism is waging a war against nature. Until this is widely understood and acknowledged, humanity will be limited to ineffective reformist projects harnessed to the profit motive. Such projects may slow the drive to ecological disaster, but they cannot stop it, including so-called green capitalism, because capitalism is incompatible with the sustainability of the planet. Capitalism must expand, and infinite expansion on a finite planet is impossible. Economists, from liberal to conservative, from Milton Friedman to Paul Krugman, all agree that economic growth, or capitalist expansion, is unavoidable if capitalism is to survive. But economic growth is killing the planet.17 What does it mean for capitalism to expand? It means a perpetual increase of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It means unending commodity production and resource extraction, the ever-increasing dumping of trash and toxic waste, the depletion of natural resources, deforestation, species extinction, resource wars, and population growth. One often hears that population growth is the fundamental problem, rather than capitalism. There are just too many people, so this argument goes. It is true that the population cannot grow indefinitely on a finite planet, but there is much more to this story. First, the poorest 3.5 billion people—half the planet—emit almost no greenhouse gases and so they are

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not the cause of global warming. On the other hand, a tiny fraction of humanity—the wealthiest—are responsible for the bulk of global greenhouse gas emissions.18 Second, and most important, it is capitalism that causes both climate change and drives population growth. The highest population growth rates in human history coincide with the capitalist era.19 Efficiencies and growth of food production naturally lead to population increases. Capitalism also benefits from an increasing population because markets expand as populations expand, and so does the labor pool. An expanding labor pool lowers the cost of labor and increases profits. In addition, capitalism concentrates wealth which creates widespread poverty. It is well known that impoverished women tend to have more children than those with better resources at their disposal. Capitalist expansion and population growth are therefore mutually reinforcing.

Ecosocialism and Lessons of Katrina As Professor Emanuel's statement quoted earlier in this article suggests, New Orleans might not survive as a city to the end of this century. Hurricane Katrina was a wakeup call that climate change is real and is happening now. Katrina may be understood as one of many signposts of a new planetary climate regime. In recognition of the catastrophic changes to Earth's environment caused by human activity, some scientists now refer to the present geologic epoch as the Anthropocene.20 It will be impossible to completely avoid climate change and the destruction that entails, but there is still time to limit global warming to survivable levels and avoid the worst environmental consequences. Achieving this will require mass movements and many committed activists. But climate activists who do not identify capitalism as the fundamental problem are unwittingly participating in planetary suicide. The only rational course of action is to mobilize openly against capitalism and to speak against it as an integral component of every climate action. But what alternatives to capitalism are there? A growing number of people embrace an ecosocialist perspective. As the term suggests, ecosocialism promotes both socialist relations and the necessity for humanity to live within ecological constraints. The international grassroots organization "System Change Not Climate Change" explains further on its website: Ecosocialists start with the premise that environmental degradation and social injustice stem from the same source: a world where

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profit is the highest goal. We believe that the emancipation of people from capital and its masters goes hand-in-hand with the emancipation of the earth and its biosphere from the cancer of capitalism. Thus, unlike most branches of the environmental movement, ecosocialism provides an over-arching framework that sees links between different struggles.21 A real possibility exists that, in reorganizing human society to eliminate carbon emissions so that we can survive within natural boundaries, many other improvements within a socialist framework could be carried out, such as: universal free healthcare, universal free education including university education, free and efficient electrified mass transportation powered by renewable energy, moving agricultural production closer to where it is consumed, and the use of production efficiencies to meet needs and create more leisure time for all people. These and many other improvements are within reach of humanity if we exercise the will to abolish capitalism and embrace values beyond private profit.

Notes 1

Dr. David Klein is a Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Climate Science Program, California State University, Northridge. Many thanks to Dr. Ana Cadavid, Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Northridge, for reviewing an earlier version of this paper. 2 David Archer, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012). 3 Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, “The Papal Encyclical, Science and the Protection of Planet Earth,” Common Ground (n.d.), https://www.pik-potsdam.de/images/common-ground. 4 David Klein and Stephanie McMillan, Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (2016), https://gumroad.com/l/climatechange. 5 Archer, Global Warming. 6 James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Gary Russell, and Pushker Kharecha, “Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 371 (2001) (September 16, 2013), http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294. 7 Ibid.; Klein, Capitalism and Climate. 8 James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Paul Hearty, Reto Ruedy, Maxwell Kelley, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Gary Russell, George Tselioudis, Junji Cao, Eric Rignot, Isabella Velicogna, Blair Tormey, Bailey Donovan, Evgeniya Kandiano, Karina von Schuckmann, Pushker Kharecha, Allegra N. Legrande, Michael Bauer, and Kwok-Wai Lo, "Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from

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Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2°C Global Warming Could be Dangerous," Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 3761–812, http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016, doi:10.5194/acp-163761-2016. 9 Benjamin H. Strauss, Scott Kulp, and Anders Levermann, "Carbon Choices Determine US Cities Committed to Futures Below Sea Level," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (44) (2015): 13508–13. 10 M. A. Bender, T. R. Knutson, R. E. Tuleya, J. J. Sirutis, G. A. Vecchi, S. T. Garner, and I. M. Held, “Modeled Impact of Anthropogenic Warming on the Frequency of Intense Atlantic Hurricanes,” Science 327 (5964) (2010): 454–8; Kerry Emanuel, "Climate Change and Hurricane Katrina: What Have We Learned?" The Conversation (August 24, 2015), https://theconversation.com/climate-change-and-hurricane-katrina-what-have-welearned-46297. 11 Doyle Rice, “Super Typhoon Smashes Into Philippines,” USA Today (November 7, 2013) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/11/07/philippines-typhoon/346 5779. 12 Emanuel, “Climate Change and Hurricane Katrina.” 13 A. Parris, P. Bromirski, V. Burkett, D. Cayan, M. Culver, J. Hall, R. Horton, K. Knuuti, R. Moss, J. Obeysekera, A. Sallenger, and J. Weiss, “Global Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the US National Climate Assessment.,” NOAA Tech Memo (2012), OAR CPO-1. 14 Ibid. 15 “Storm Surge Overview,” National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge. 16 Miguel A. Altieri and Fernando R. Funes-Monzote, "The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture," Monthly Review 63 (8) (January 2012), http://monthlyreview.org/2012/01/01/the-paradox-of-cuban-agriculture; M. Z. Jacobson, and M. A. Delucchi, "Providing all Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials," Energy Policy 39 (2011): 1154–69; Klein, Capitalism and Climate. 17 Klein, Capitalism and Climate; Richard Smith, "Green Capitalism: The God that Failed," World Economics Association (2016), https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/new-wea-paperback-green-capitalism-thegod-that-failed-by-richard-smith. 18 Klein, Capitalism and Climate. 19 Tomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 20 Richard Monastersky, “Anthropocene: The Human Age,” Nature 519 (March 12, 2015): 144–7. doi:10.1038/519144a. 21 System Change Not Climate Change (SCNCC): http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/ecosocialism.

HURRICANE KATRINA AND THE MARKET RESPONSE TO DISASTER MICHAEL POWELSON1

In late August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina gained momentum in the Caribbean, the price of most everything shot up, especially essential items like water, food, transportation, and hotel rooms.2 While the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding areas were facing flooding, destruction, dislocation, and even death, the businesses saw an opportunity to maximize profit. Once the levees broke and New Orleans flooded, prices rose even more. Days after Katrina hit land, real estate brokers throughout the state were planning the best ways to take advantage of the booming housing market now that thousands had been left homeless. As one Baton Rouge realtor put it, "I've been in the business for 30 years, and we've never seen anything like this.”3 Back in New Orleans housing prices soared while some low-income renters who were told that their apartments were destroyed later discovered that their apartments had been rented at much higher prices.4 In order to protect their property, airlines, car rental companies, and bus companies shut down their operations, which only made evacuation more difficult.5 Thus, while market forces sought to maximize profit amid crisis, those same market forces conspired to slow relief and to make evacuation from New Orleans difficult, if not impossible. A broad consensus of academics, journalists, and government officials assert that post-Katrina relief efforts were mishandled and that a combination of poor planning and a failure to recognize the scope of the disaster conspired to make the damage from Katrina even worse that it might otherwise have been. In contrast, this paper will argue that the relief effort was carried out as planned by a host of government and private entities that were fully prepared in the event of a disaster. Far from a “mistake” on the part of officials, either public or private, from the beginning the relief effort focused on profit maximization and carrying out a number of long-standing plans to transform the city’s housing, education, and healthcare systems, while at the same time changing its racial makeup. That prices shot up during a crisis has long been a feature

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of a profit-driven economic system, and the lack of a thorough plan of evacuation and relief was both known and declared by numerous public officials well before Katrina hit. That public housing was dismantled followed the agenda of various interest groups that had already begun the process of converting public housing into for-profit real estate ventures.6 The transformation of the traditional public school system into charter schools and the shutting down of Charity Hospital had long been on the wish list of various business and governmental entities. The destruction of the school teachers’ union, the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), had been the dream of anti-union forces for decades. In addition, many middle-class whites had long hoped for an event that would reduce the city’s poor black and increase the white middle class populations.7 Thus, in the eyes of elites at the local, state, and federal levels, the relief and clean-up of New Orleans was a success and, in fact, followed objectives that had been discussed for decades. While the for profit-approach appeared to have failed at evacuation and disaster relief, this same model did generate profits for private businesses and corporations and thus was pursued with a vengeance. Dating back to the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the federal government’s approach to disaster relief has been to funnel money to the private sector which, in theory, would do a superior job administering the relief effort that follows a natural disaster. Utilizing neo-liberal strategies that included “publicprivate partnerships, private contractors and quasi-state programs,” the forprofit model of disaster relief was fully expressed in the aftermath of Katrina.8 Under the Reagan administration’s New Public Management approach, the principle that government agencies should operate like a private business was first applied to famine relief in Ethiopia, with disastrous results.9 Bill Clinton's "reinventing government" approach argued that disaster relief should follow a "customer service model," in which the federal government would cease the direct management of relief in favor of funneling money into the private sector for disaster relief and clean-up.10 This paper will argue that the protection of property, rather than saving lives, was the guiding principal of disaster relief in the wake of Katrina. President George W. Bush summed up this principal when he declared, even before the hurricane made landfall, that the federal government, “will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm to help you deal with the loss of property.”11 Finally, this paper will argue that the government’s adherence to a privatized approach was used to fulfil already-existing agendas that had nothing to do with disaster relief. These agendas included shutting down the city’s public housing,

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converting the public schools to charter schools, breaking the New Orleans teachers’ union, and shutting down Charity Hospital, a legendary government-funded institution that began operations in 1736.12

Price Gouging That prices of goods, especially essential goods, skyrocket during and after a natural disaster is a well-documented fact of which business and political elites are well aware. In the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, complaints of price gouging were heard early and often. In 2004, a year before Katrina hit, Hurricane Charley slammed the Florida coast and thousands of complaints poured in that prices had soared to astronomical levels.13 Price gouging is found in the wake of every natural disaster because businesses and politicians see a great opportunity to make exorbitant profit. Indeed, there is a large body of academic and journalistic work that argues that price gouging actually aids in post-disaster rebuilding. According to this thesis, higher prices for basic commodities will allocate those commodities more efficiently to where they are best utilized.14 Indeed, price gouging has been a feature of US capitalism from the beginning of the republic, and if the federal government refuses to regulate price gouging in any meaningful way it is because Washington DC and its lobbyists do not want such legislation.15 While skyrocketing prices are a feature of every natural disaster, the government has always had the power to halt such practices. Yet when Hurricane Katrina made landfall there was no federal law that prohibited price gouging. In 2013, eight years after Katrina, Congress passed the “Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act” to address, in this case, the high price of gasoline. But the wording of the law is so vague as to render it useless, since the Act does not set a specific price for gasoline but instead prohibits pricing that would be “unconscionably excessive” or where the seller was “taking unfair advantage of the circumstances.”16 The obvious solution to price gouging is to have essential items already stored that would be distributed to victims outside of market forces and the laws of supply and demand. Just as homeowners are not expected to pay the fire department to have a fire extinguished, disaster relief victims should also not be expected to pay exorbitant prices for essential items. To do this, however, would mean that a detailed relief plan was already in place and that stores of essential items had already been put aside and stored in damage-proof containers. Nothing close to this was ever suggested by disaster relief operatives, whether public or private,

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since there are great profits to be made in spiking prices in the wake of a disaster.

For-Profit Relief According to classical economic theory, a rise in demand for commodities should result in a rise in the price of those commodities. But classical economic theory also posits that price increases should increase competition which, in theory, should result in a fall in prices. While price hikes were immediate in the wake of Katrina, the expected price decrease never happened. Additionally, classical economics dictates that for-profit businesses must act to limit financial losses which, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, meant shutting down operations vital to survival and/or evacuation.17 The reality in a capitalist, profit-driven economy is that protecting property and investment will eclipse all other considerations— including evacuating people or saving lives. From the beginning of the Katrina disaster it was clear that no branch of government had made serious contingency plans in the event of a major hurricane and flooding. In July 2005, for example, one month before Katrina hit, New Orleans officials distributed a DVD in low-income neighborhoods informing residents that the government would not provide aid in the event of a hurricane and/or flooding. “Our main message,” the DVD’s producer told the Times-Picayune, “is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves.”18 In 2003 the Federal Emergency Management Agency was taken over by the Department of Homeland Security which resulted in FEMA’s diminished focus on disaster relief in favor of increasing attention on terrorism. In addition, since FEMA’s creation by federal order in 1979, the whole approach of government disaster relief, part of “New Public Management,” has focused on a forprofit model in which private contractors take the lead role in emergency relief and rebuilding rather than the state.19 This philosophy was mirrored at the state and local levels where both Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin were strong supporters of a for-profit model of disaster relief.20 Years before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, experts predicted disaster if a powerful storm were to hit New Orleans. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, repeatedly called on the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA to upgrade the levees protecting New Orleans and the region. Not only were van Heerden’s words ignored, he was eventually dismissed from his post because university officials feared that his criticisms of the Army Corps of

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Engineers jeopardized federal grant money to the university.21 Thus, it cannot be argued that government officials were unaware of the potential disaster that a hurricane could bring. When Katrina did hit, the devastation was just as bad as van Heerden and others had predicted. Sadly, the government was fully aware of the faulty levee system and chose to do nothing. The failure of government agencies to prepare for disaster relief is also part of the for-profit approach, and a combination of budget cuts and increased focus on terrorism made the devastation of Katrina inevitable.22 As part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, FEMA was transformed from a disaster relief agency into a “service purchaser and arranger,” while local, state, and federal agencies were committed to contracting out disaster relief to private firms. Overall, this for-profit approach encompassed “a range of efforts by governments to move public functions into private hands and to use market-style competition to address regulatory problems.”23

Demographics The demographic shifts that occurred post-Katrina were also by design. While the New Orleans population before Katrina was 484,674, by 2015 the population was 386,617—a population decline of 20 percent since 2000.24 Additionally, the black population of New Orleans declined from 67 percent in 2000 to 60 percent in 2013.25 This demographic shift reflects longstanding efforts to reduce both the black population of the city and the overall population. As reported by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, “influential voices inside the business community” pressed the Authority about the need to “shrink the footprint,” or, put more bluntly, to use the ravages of Katrina to reduce both the overall population and the poor black population. As New Orleans real estate mogul Joe Canizaro put it, Hurricane Katrina, “should get us talking frankly about some of the stuff we need to deal with, particularly … where we have a low-income Black population.” Lance Hill, who is white, labelled this the “exclusionist movement,” and recounted that, in the wealthy white neighborhood of Uptown, post-Katrina, “I was in the middle of people who were openly planning for a city that was whiter and more affluent than before Katrina.” Jimmy Reiss, an Uptown blue blood and friend to both president Bush and mayor Nagin, and thus an individual with considerable political and economic influence, told Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal that, “New Orleans would need to be a city with fewer poor people and better-run services if people such as himself were going to participate in

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the recovery efforts.”26 Given that black people make up the vast majority of “poor people” in New Orleans, Reiss’ implication was clear. Demographic shifts were also found in the reduction of African American schoolteachers who went from making up the majority pre-Katrina to onethird after the storm.27 While the numbers of African Americans and poor and working-class whites were reduced, the numbers of the top one percent remained solid. Population studies show that while black people are still in the majority, their numbers have declined, while the white, Hispanic, and Asian populations have increased. More tellingly, in poor and working-class neighborhoods, populations have either stagnated or declined, while in the newly gentrified areas populations have soared.28 Centered in the Uptown area of New Orleans, the wealthy faced different challenges than their poor brethren. Armed with generators to power cell phones, air conditioners, and freezers stocked with ice cubes to cool their drinks, the wealthy of New Orleans were in a perfect spot to focus on how to rebuild the city in their image. New Orleans blue blood James Reiss fled Katrina but soon returned—by helicopter—and affirmed what his wealthy friends and neighbors collectively believed that the city should not just be restored but re-configured: “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically … Reiss added that “I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out.” To carry out this transformation, white elites relied on the city’s black middle class for support, with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin as the lead figure in schemes to remake the city as whiter and more affluent. While the city has a majority black population, a large sub-section are “creoles,” descendants of the free black population who are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and who make up a good percentage of the city’s small business and craftsman class.29 New Orleans creoles have joined forces with white voters in the past, and it is this group that also backed the dismantling of the public school and housing systems and other programs of the white elites.

Public Housing The dismantling of New Orleans public housing was a process begun years earlier and which only culminated in the destruction of Katrina. As John Arena has illustrated in his book Driven From New Orleans, prior to Katrina there had been a decades-long push to move public-housing residents to free up prime New Orleans real estate for private speculation. The Saint Thomas housing project, located south of the wealthy Garden

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District, was dismantled in 2001, four years before Katrina. The methods utilized for its demolition became the blueprint for the destruction of all New Orleans public housing projects after Katrina.30 Of the four largest housing projects, two were hardly damaged by Katrina, yet all of them were torn down in the hurricane’s wake. As a Republican Congressman from Baton Rouge bragged, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans,” adding “we couldn’t do it but God did.”31

Source: Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bernard_Projects

While business and government leaders used the damage wrought by Katrina to argue for the demolition of public housing, in fact most public housing units could easily have been repaired at a fraction of what it cost to build new ones. Nonetheless, business groups and most politicians were determined to demolish public housing, despite widespread and sometimes violent protests by residents. 32 And once destroyed, only a fraction of the units were rebuilt. The St. Thomas housing project, for example, demolished before Katrina hit, once had 1,510 public housing units, while its replacement, River Garden, has only 182. The St. Bernard housing project was demolished after Katrina and once had 1,464 public housing units. Its replacement, Columbia Parc, has only 221. C. J. Peete, also known as the Magnolia housing project, had 1,403 units pre-Katrina, while its replacement, Harmony Oaks, has only 193. Finally, the Desire project, demolished in 2001, four years before Katrina, had 1,860 units, while its

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replacement, The Estates, has 283. Real-estate mogul Joseph Canizaro was front and center during post-Katrina rebuilding, and a major advocate of tearing down and building anew. As far back as 1994, Canizaro, as head of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) strategic planning committee, advocated privatizing and/or demolishing the city’s public housing projects.33 Thus, it is clear that the plan to destroy New Orleans public housing had begun decades before Hurricane Katrina provided the opportunity for government and business leaders to accelerate the process.34 Advocates of demolishing public housing had an alternative plan: give former public housing residents Section 8 vouchers, preferred by private landlords because they guarantee them a fixed monthly rent. Advocates of the vouchers claim they serve to deconcentrate poverty. But as John Arena notes, the destruction of public housing and the turn to vouchers did not deconcentrate poverty, it simply relocated it. This relocation was confirmed by Lisa Bates, who also noted that, of the five thousand vouchers issued, only one thousand were used due to landlord discrimination or a shortage of available housing.35

Public Schools Free market ideology has played an increasingly important role in how the nation’s educational system should function, and Hurricane Katrina was an ideal event for proponents of school “choice” to transform the way the city’s school system operated. New Orleans public schools had long been under attack, and advocates of “choice” wanted to replace traditional schools with charter schools. The movement for school “choice” was first articulated by Milton Friedman in 1955 and developed into the New Public Management (NPM) movement in the 1980s.36 NPM advocated that the public sector should draw lessons from the private sector, and in particular should focus on “entrepreneurial leadership” within public sector organizations. NPM advocated a number of reforms including the separation of public services into basic units, a focus on “cost management,” and encouraging the growth of markets, competition, and contracts within the public sector.37 A key component of NPM is “choice theory,” which emphasizes that institutions, whether public or private, should offer a choice to consumers, which in turn would force competition and thus create a better product.38 To have “choice,” so the argument goes, public schools need to operate as if they were businesses where students are consumers and faculty and administrators work to deliver a better product to the consumer. The charter school movement has been accused

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of being a step in the direction of privatizing public schools, and, as Diane Ravitch argues, the movement is not, “meant to reform public education but is a deliberate effort to replace public education with a privately managed, free-market system of schooling.”39 The charter school movement has since taken on a life of its own, with US presidents from Reagan to Obama embracing charter schools as well as school vouchers.40 Vouchers, in which students can use public school funds to attend private schools or, in some cases, religious schools, have been rejected by referendum from Maryland to California.41 Since 1966, there have been ten state-wide votes to allow public school monies to be used as “vouchers” to pay for attendance at private schools, and in all ten this was rejected. Success for the voucher program has only come through votes in state legislatures.42 In 2001, the “No Child Left Behind” Act encouraged the growth of charter schools because it required public schools to show “adequate yearly progress” (AYP), based on improved test scores. If schools did not show AYP they could be shut down, reconfigured as a charter school, or handed over to a state-run institution.43 In New Orleans post-Katrina, 107 of Orleans’ Parish’s 128 public schools were converted to charter schools. As Diane Ravitch has pointed out, while charter schools receive public monies, charters are increasingly run by not-for-profit or even for-profit corporations.44 In some cases, charter schools exclude students with special needs in order to boost the school’s test scores. As more public monies flow to charter schools there is less money for public schools, which, unlike charter schools, are obliged to educate all of the school-age children in the district.45 Efforts to undermine public schools in New Orleans began in 1954, soon after the Supreme Court’s “Brown vs. Board of Education” mandated an end to segregation in public schools, and by the 1980s efforts to outsource work and transition from public to “charter” schools had gained momentum. The school “choice” movement is championed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has worked to undermine both public schools and teachers’ unions through the spread of charter schools and school vouchers.46 Thus, well before Katrina, powerful groups lobbied to transform New Orleans public schools into a network of charter and privatized schools.47 It was under the cover of disaster that charter school advocates were mobilized to transition all but a handful of New Orleans public schools into charter schools. The first step for the Orleans Parish School Board was to fire three thousand staff workers and four thousand teachers. Step two was to hand over most of the city’s public schools to the “Recovery School District” (RSD), first empowered by the Louisiana

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State Legislature in 2003 as an all-charter school district. RSD was identified by the Washington Post as “corporate education reformers.” Prior to Katrina, the RSD had only five schools under its jurisdiction; postKatrina, the RSD took over 107 of the 128 Orleans parish public schools. Paul Vallas, former CEO of the Chicago Public School District, was named head of RSD, and declared that the move from traditional public schools to charter schools was "the greatest opportunity for educational entrepreneurs, charter schools, competition and parental choice in America.”48 Vallas later formed The Vallas Group Inc., which partnered with the Cambium Learning Group to bid for contracts teaching poor and at-risk student populations.49 Step three in dismantling New Orleans public schools was to call in private money from organizations like the Walton and Gates foundations. According to Ray Nagin, former New Orleans mayor (and current inmate at the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas),50 these foundations would, under the right circumstances, “fund, totally fund, brand new schools for the city of New Orleans.”51 Step four was to bring in Teach for America (TFA), a not-for-profit corporation that recruits graduates from top universities to teach in public or charter schools in one of 52 low-income communities served by TFA. While TFA provides education to poor and historically deprived school systems, it was also used to replace New Orleans unionized public school teachers with non-union TFA teachers.52 While the charter and for-profit model has been much praised by its supporters, for students and teachers, the actual recipients of charter schools, there is less enthusiasm. A federal civil rights complaint filed in 2014 against New Orleans charter schools described the shift away from public schools: The vast majority of public schools closed by RSD in the past five years were in poor and working class, African-American neighborhoods … Many of the schools existed for over a hundred years before being closed and had been attended by multiple generations in one family. These schools employed teachers and administrators who have taught in our communities for decades— staff who hold community knowledge, understand the hardships that face our students, and pass down our shared values … After everything that we lost in Katrina, it has been devastating to lose our schools as well.53 Despite ongoing protests against the dismantling of New Orleans public schools in favor of charter schools, advocates of the charter school

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movement are unmoved by such complaints, and Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education and a strong advocate of charters, declared that, “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.”54 Despite such praise, charter schools have not improved education in New Orleans, and, in fact, they have created as many problems as they purport to solve. A faceless bureaucracy (which charters claimed was an issue with the public-school system), high teacher turnover rates, and the almost complete destruction of traditional public schools in favor of charter schools have not been offset by better results. There are no objective studies to date that compare the charter school model with the traditional public-school model, and the studies that do exist are compromised because they are carried out by institutions that have a pro-charter/private school bias. Stanford University, for example, produced the Credo Report that claimed that charter schools have, on the whole, outperformed traditional schools.55 This report is suspect, however, because it was carried out by advocates of charter schools and was conducted by the conservative Hoover Institute.56 As noted by Dr. Andrew Maul at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Credo’s report, “cannot be regarded as compelling evidence of the greater effectiveness of charter schools compared with traditional public schools.”57 As with the school system, so too with the school teachers. The drive to eliminate public-school teachers’ unions has spread throughout the country, with varying degrees of success. But in post-Katrina New Orleans, anti-union advocates found victory in disaster. As previously noted, the Recovery School District program passed by the state legislature in 2003 mandated that “academically unacceptable” schools would revert to its control, and operated a charter system with non-union teaching staff. Prior to Katrina, only five schools were under RSD control, but three months after Katrina the state legislature passed Act 35 which changed the definition of “academically unacceptable” in a way that only applied to Orleans parish schools. Act 35 was a clear attack on Orleans parish schoolteachers and their union by the state legislature. The result was that the RSD took over an additional 112 schools while 17 others were administered as independent charter schools. In all cases where the RSD took over, the teachers’ union was disbanded.58 By 2014 the remaining five public schools in Orleans parish had reverted to charter schools, and from only five charter schools in 2013 the RSD now maintained every school in the district as a charter school, and not a single teacher was in a union, at least not initially.59 In January 2014, however, a state court ruled that teachers had been wrongfully terminated by RSD,

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and in March 2015 teachers at Benjamin Franklin High School signed the first collective bargaining agreement since Katrina.60 2015 was also the year that control of New Orleans schools was returned to the New Orleans School Board, effectively ending the tenure of the RSD. In June 2016 a second contract was signed with the teachers at Morris Jeff Community School, which means that, ten years after Katrina, the plan first hatched in 2003 to transition New Orleans public schools into non-union charter schools has largely succeeded. Far from lacking a plan to deal with a hurricane-ravaged city, the advocates of non-union charter schools were ready to pursue their agenda even as the city was underwater.61

Charity Hospital Even before Katrina flooded the city, Charity Hospital was a target of the for-profit approach to healthcare. Among the oldest hospitals in the United States, Charity has a storied history that began in 1736 as a hospital that served any and all New Orleanians. The current structure, a famous Art Deco structure in the central business district, was opened in 1939, and before Katrina served over one hundred thousand patients a year. Charity, with a large black clientele, was the best teaching hospital in the state. Despite this, during the 2003 governor’s race both Republican Bobby Jindal and Democrat Kathleen Blanco described Charity as “broken,” and both offered plans to revert Charity from state control to local, private control.62 Plans to privatize Charity were in place well before Katrina, and in 2004 an entire wing of the hospital was converted to provide private single rooms for non-publicly funded patients. At the same time, newlyelected Blanco approved further cuts to Charity’s budget as part of her campaign promise to reduce government spending.63 Louisiana State University, which controls Charity, was the power pushing to privatize the hospital. Although state-run, LSU “has long sought … to become more of a private patient-centered institution.” A 2003 study by LSU called for expanding into the world of for-profit health care because Charity’s “indigent population constitutes a disproportionate share of its payer base.”64

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Source: https://www.lsuhospitals.org/News/archives2010.htm

The documentary Big Charity chronicles how the hospital not only withstood Katrina with relatively little damage, but how its first three floors were clean and operational shortly after Katrina hit. While it appeared that Charity would return to its status as New Orleans premier hospital, doctors and staff were ordered out of the building and all repairs were halted. The reasons for this are still disputed, but, as Alexander Glustrom notes, many believed that refusing to reopen Charity was a maneuver by the state government and LSU to collect an even bigger pay out from FEMA if an entirely new hospital were built in its place.65 State Treasurer John Kennedy was one of the first to see the cleaned-up hospital. “We were in desperate need of this facility,” Kennedy recalled. “The lights and A/C were on. It was clean and functional.” Yet Charity sat empty, and when Kennedy asked LSU hospital CEO Don Smithburg why the hospital was not reopened, Smithburg replied: “If we do, we will never get a new one,” meaning a new hospital.66 In the wake of Katrina, LSU initiated its longstanding plan to build an entirely new facility in Lower Mid-City. But to get the necessary funding LSU would have to show that repairing Charity would cost more than 50 percent of its value. A functioning Charity Hospital would make it much more difficult to receive FEMA money to build a new facility, so LSU did everything in its power to keep Charity closed. Governor Kathleen Blanco pulled army troops off of Charity grounds, the hospital police ordered

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volunteer workers to leave, LSU officials shut off the power, and police locked the doors.67 If the goal was to provide a medical facility to address health problems both related and unrelated to Katrina, repairing and opening Charity was a simple and economical solution. But, in reality, LSU’s goal was to game the system to get funding for a brand new privatized hospital. This meant closing Charity and leaving the city without a public hospital. Plans to shut down Charity and move to a private hospital model were in place before Katrina and have now been realized after Katrina. Since Charity Hospital is registered as a historic monument, efforts to tear the building down have been blocked. But with each year and with fading memories, it is likely that the oldest hospital in the country, one that served the poor, will be torn down.

Non-Governmental Organizations In 2009, the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Rand Corporation released a study on the role of NGOs, which, not surprisingly, argued that “nongovernmental organizations … are instrumental contributors to human recovery.” Having established their crucial role, the study did admit that NGOs encountered problems in their efforts to aid in hurricane relief. The principal problem, so declared the study, was not the privatized model of disaster relief but rather the failings of governments and individuals. The report explains that: communities’ abilities to draw on NGO services have been highly variable. In many cases, NGO activities cope with inadequate policy and financial support which have hindered participation in recovery activities. Further, there is little clarity in terms of what human recovery looks like (what are the essential services, core components, and effective models?) and what policies are needed to support essential services and engage NGOs. While NGOs provide critical social, economic, and health services, there is evidence to suggest that their effectiveness could be enhanced if they were more formally engaged in recovery efforts and better integrated into planning at the local and state levels.68 Since NGOs are vital in disaster relief, the Rand study blames everything but NGOs for any relief failures. The study cites a host of factors, including “communities,” “inadequate policy and financial support,” or that NGOs were not “integrated into planning at the local and

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state levels” for the shortcomings of disaster relief. The Rand study reflects similar works that accept as gospel that the for-profit/privatized model is the correct and only way to carry out disaster relief. Most studies blame the government in general and FEMA in particular, which conveniently underscores their own commitment to the privatized/NGO model of relief.69 And while acknowledging that mistakes were made, these studies approach the failings in disaster relief as a lesson to be learned, rather than considering whether or not the for-profit/NGO model of disaster relief is itself the problem.70 The self-serving nature of a study of NGOs by an NGO is evident in the Rand study’s introduction: The Rand Gulf States Policy Institute and Rand Health partnered with the Louisiana Association of Non-Profit Organizations, the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps, and the Louisiana Association of United Ways to convene NGO leaders and give them an opportunity to share their lessons learned and ongoing challenges. This effort is consistent with the Rand Corporation’s mission to respond to the hurricanes of 2005 by channeling corporate resources to support research and analysis … Today, Rand Gulf States provides objective analysis to federal, state, and local leaders in support of evidence-based policymaking and the well-being of individuals throughout the Gulf States region.71 The very nature of the private Rand Corporation and its commitment to “channeling corporate resources to support research and analysis” negates the claim that the study “provides objective analysis to federal, state and local leaders in support of evidence-based policymaking.” The goal of Rand is to perpetrate the Rand Corporation and other NGOs, whether or not these NGOs are really a benefit to at-danger populations. By any objective standard, the reliance on NGOs and the private sector in disaster relief has itself been a disaster. Rather than the government rebuilding homes or constructing new ones, the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency offered tax credits to private developers who immediately complained about the terms of the tax credits and that the government did not also offer reduced insurance rates. The result was that rebuilding was delayed for years while private developers negotiated a sweeter deal.72 Reliance on private contractors to rebuild after Katrina did not reduce the amount of red tape and bureaucracy; in fact, it made it worse. Common in all disaster relief in the US is the fact that since the government guarantees pre-determined pay outs and payments that are “cost-plus,” it is in the

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interest of companies to accept government contracts at a set price and then bring in subcontractors to do the work.73 As one author noted, “On both the federal and local levels, inadequate contract oversight and lack of cost controls provided opportunities for private contractors to siphon public resources and exploit government agencies to further their profiteering interests and accumulation agendas.”74 While studies boast about the “lessons learned” from Hurricane Katrina, the one lesson not learned is that relying on market forces during and after a disaster is a much more costly and inefficient method than when the government manages disaster relief directly. China’s Typhoon Haitang was hardly mentioned in the US press, yet it was a category three storm that hit mainland China a few months before Katrina hit the Gulf. While the for-profit/NGO model was incapable of evacuating New Orleans 485,000 residents, over one million people were successfully evacuated from China’s southeastern coast. While between 1,200 and 1,500 people perished as a result of Katrina, not a single life was lost on mainland China, with 16 deaths recorded in Taiwan, which the Hurricane also passed.75 In 2012 Hurricane Sandy, a category two storm (Katrina was a category two by the time it hit New Orleans), hit the city of Santiago, Cuba, with a population of over four-hundred thousand, similar to pre-Katrina New Orleans. Yet only eleven people were killed.76 These hurricanes are vastly different and unique, but it is also true that with a clear evacuation plan the loss of life can be minimized. In Sandy’s case eleven were killed, while with China’s Typhoon Haitang none were killed. In the case of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, with no coherent evacuation plan, over one thousand people perished. This is equally true of the clean-up. Ten years after Katrina, in 2015, I visited New Orleans to find vast tracts of land littered with destroyed homes, downed power poles, and void of people. Yet in 2016, only four years after Hurricane Sandy, I visited Santiago de Cuba and found a city almost completely rebuilt. It was not until I stumbled on a hurricane-ravaged home near the downtown area that I learned that Sandy had passed directly over Santiago de Cuba (Katrina passed to the east of New Orleans) and had done considerable damage to the city. Yet, little evidence remained of a devastating hurricane that had levelled much of Cuba’s second city. With a coherent plan to rebuild after a disaster, Santiago de Cuba shows little evidence that Sandy even struck. Of course, in the cases of Cuba and China the governments simply ordered an evacuation, while in New Orleans evacuation was only recommended. But added to this was the assumption that it was the responsibility of the individual to plan their own evacuation. The result was that evacuation was possible for those with

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access to automobiles, trains, busses, and airplanes, but was not for thousands of others given the intense poverty of New Orleans. Given that government leaders, from president Bush to governor Blanco to mayor Nagin, embraced a free-market solution to evacuation and hurricane relief, the people of the Gulf Coast could not expect an aggressive government-led plan for the same. But an empowered government-directed relief effort would have looked quite different. Rather than rely on community organizations and NGOs for evacuation planning, a government body would have a detailed plan already in place, including transportation facilities to evacuate all of New Orleans residents, not just the ones that could afford to leave. Rather than rely on private sellers to provide water, food, housing, and transportation, a government body would have already stored these necessary items so that no person would be left without them. It is understood, for example, that fires will be put out without victims having to pay the fire department beforehand, so why do we not think this way when it comes to disaster relief? A government-directed evacuation would also look very different, with air, rail, and ground transportation evacuation plans already laid out. Unlike the private sector, the government could not and would not shut down busses, trains, and airplanes in order to protect their property, and nor would the government withhold allowing people to return to a city ravaged by flood based on considerations of profit and property rather than saving lives.

Conclusions Classical economic theory states that while prices may spike during a crisis because of an increase in demand, prices should conversely go down once the crisis subsides. Yet since Hurricane Katrina prices have hit record levels, where they remain today. That housing costs, for example, have not fallen eleven years after Katrina is a testament to the shortcomings of classical economic theory. New Orleans has thousands of empty homes and a poverty rate of 30 percent, two factors that should, according to classical economic theory, reduce property values. Nonetheless, home prices in New Orleans have increased 46 percent since Katrina.77 This is true for rental property as well, and, despite a child poverty rate of 40 percent, rents have increased as much as 50 percent a full 10 years after the Hurricane inundated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.78 While an army of academics, politicians, and journalists have proclaimed that both the government and businesses were unprepared for Katrina and that the relief effort was mired in error and incompetence, the

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reality was that government and business officials knew very well what to expect and what they needed to do once Katrina made landfall. If the goal was coming to the aid of hurricane victims, then of course the relief effort was a failure. But if the real goal of both government and business leaders was to manipulate the hurricane and flood in such a way that it would bring great financial rewards to the business sector, then the response to Katrina was a great success. In addition to financial gain, longstanding goals such as privatizing the public-school system, breaking the teachers’ union, and shutting down public housing and Charity Hospital were also carried out with great success. In fact, government and business elites have always known what to do in the face of natural disasters. During the Great Flood of 1927, for example, a group of New Orleans business leaders agreed to dynamite the levee next to the 9th Ward in order to save the Garden District, Uptown, and the Central Business District—areas that were home to the wealthy and where stores of goods were threatened by the flooding. The result was that most of the working-class 9th Ward was flooded while the homes and warehouses of the elites survived. As the flood drove more and more people out of their homes and onto the levees that line the Mississippi River, these same business leaders agreed to evacuate white refugees from the flood while leaving black people stranded on the river, since, so they reasoned, they would have a workforce ready to clean up once the waters subsided.79 Seventy-eight years later Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and quite predictably prices skyrocketed within the city while people fleeing were subjected to price gouging along the evacuation route. Rather than focusing on saving lives, government and business leaders were, predictably, singularly focused on extracting profit from disaster. Committed to a privatized model of relief, government monies were funneled to the private sector in the form of no-bid “cost plus” contracts and other publicto-private-schemes. Business and government elites planned long ago to convert to charter schools, and Katrina provided the perfect excuse to accelerate that process. Katrina also provided the perfect union-busting opportunity, and hence the teachers union was eliminated. Having already planned to convert Charity Hospital from a public facility to a for-profit hospital, the same business and governmental elites saw the hurricane as a perfect opportunity to shutter Charity’s doors. Real-estate developers who had long conspired to convert New Orleans public housing into for-profit real-estate ventures saw Katrina as an ideal excuse to make that dream a reality. The desire to reduce New Orleans black population had long been

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the hope of the city’s elites, and so it is no surprise that this was made practical under the cover of disaster. Despite the death and devastation of Katrina, some believe that such a disaster would be a blessing in other regions as well. In August 2015, Chicago Tribune editorial board member Kristin McQueary wrote in an op-ed piece that the city of Chicago could use a storm like Katrina: With August 29 fast approaching and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu making media rounds … I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago—an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops.80 While rational individuals regard hurricanes as life threatening and something to be avoided, others, especially those in that rarefied world of the top one percent, see opportunity. For McQueary, Hurricane Katrina was, “what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak.”81 And despite the fact that there was, until January 2017, an African American Democrat in the White House, the approach to disaster relief remained the same as when Katrina hit in 2005. In August 2016, torrential downpours in southern Louisiana resulted in at least thirteen deaths, sixty thousand homes damaged and over seven thousand people driven into emergency shelters. This latest flood brought to mind the horrors of Katrina, yet the government response has been just as bad this time around, and government officials insist on carrying out the same limited relief effort and reliance on private contractors and NGOs that failed to address the most basic needs of Gulf residents during and after Katrina.82 Acknowledging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would play a secondary role in flood relief, spokesperson Rafael Lemaitre declared that FEMA was a “life vest, not a lifeboat." FEMA has capped flood relief at $33,000 per family, which is not nearly enough to restore homes destroyed by flooding.83 Some homeowners have flood insurance but the majority do not, since for many flood insurance is beyond their financial means, while others wrongly believed that flood insurance was included in their homeowners' insurance. The reality is that thousands of homes do not have flood insurance, and this will force many homeowners to dig into their personal savings—if they have such a savings at all.84 Katrina exposed the true priorities of both the government and private sectors, principal among them protecting corporations and property over human beings. While the federal government has contributed $120 billion towards Katrina relief, the government bailout of Wall Street during the

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Great Recession of 2008 is estimated to have been around $14 trillion.85 General Motors, for example, received an $80 billion dollar bailout that ultimately cost the taxpayer $9 billion,86 while the American International Group (AIG) received $180 billion in bailout money, and the Bank of America was given $120 billion in relief and other government guarantees.87 The sums given to corporations dwarf the monies allocated for flood relief, and the bailout of Wall Street continues to this day, with trillions of federally guaranteed low-interest loans given to banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing concerns, and billions more in "quantitative easing" intended to increase both stock values and the money supply.88 Bailing out Wall Street apparently enjoys priority over helping flood victims. The results of this privatized model of relief were in full view in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Contractors made fortunes on no-bid “cost plus” contracts and real-estate companies used the flooding as an excuse to tear down public housing to make way for money-making real-estate schemes. Fortunes may have been realized, but since the focus of relief was on profit rather than helping flood victims, the people of New Orleans and the Gulf South suffered mightily. Rather than relying on the failed model of government relief money funneled to the private sector, a coherent program of flood relief directed by federal, state, and local officials should have already been in place so that this nation’s vast resources were devoted to saving the lives and property of its citizens and not simply to line the pockets of contractors, real-estate developers, and self-interested non-governmental organizations.

Notes 1

Michael Powelson is an adjunct professor of history at California State University Channel Islands in Ventura County, California and Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys, California. Much thanks to Dr. William Jones, Department of History, University of Minnesota, for critiquing an earlier version of this paper. 2 Kent Bernhard Jr., “Pump Prices Jump Across U.S. After Katrina,” NBC News (September 1, 2005), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9146363/ns/business-local_business /t/pump-prices-jump-across-us-after-katrina/#.V-AzljWRbR8; Kevin McCoy, “Katrina Hotel Bills Raise Questions,” USA Today (February 14, 2006), http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/hotels/2006-02-14-fema-hotels-usat_x.htm. 3 Manav Tanneeru, “Baton Rouge Swells With Evacuees,” CNN (September 9, 2005), http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/09/baton.rouge.impact/index.html?iref=mpstoryv iew.

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“Post Katrina Real Estate Booming,” NBC News/Associated Press (May 9, 2006), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12707604/ns/business-real_estate/t/post-katrina-realestate-booming/#.V-BaJTWRbR8; Joel Roberts, “Post-Katrina Price Gouging?” CBS News/Associated Press (April 16, 2016), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/post-katrina-price-gouging. 5 Johanna Neuman, “No Way Out of New Orleans as Planes, Trains and Buses Cancel,” L.A. Times (September 1, 2005), http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/01/nation/na-transit1. 6 John Arena’s excellent Driven From New Orleans: How Non Profits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012) exposes how a cabal of public officials and for-profit corporations began the dismantling of New Orleans public housing system well before Katrina. 7 Gary Rivlin, Katrina (New York: Simon and Shuster Press, 2015), 191. 8 Kevin Fox Gotham, “Disaster Inc.: Privatization and Post-Katrina Rebuilding in New Orleans,” Perspectives on Politics 10 (3) (September 2012): 633–46. 9 Gayle Smith, “Ethiopia and the Politics of Famine Relief,” Middle East Report 17 (147) (March/April 1987), http://www.merip.org/mer/mer145/ethiopia-politicsfamine-relief. 10 Fox Gotham, “Disaster Inc.,” 636. 11 Rivlin, Katrina, 32. 12 John Salvaggio, New Orleans Charity Hospital: A Story of Physicians, Politics, and Poverty (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992). 13 For Hurricane Andrew see Joseph Treaster, “Rising Complaints of Price Gouging,” New York Times (August 30, 1992); for Hurricane Charley see Joseph Treaster, “With Storm Gone, Floridians Are Hit With Price Gouging,” New York Times (August 18, 2004). 14 See, for example, Rafi Mohammed, “The Problem with Price Gouging Laws,” Harvard Business Review (July 23, 2013), which claims that laws prohibiting price gouging encourage hoarding and discourage businesses from boosting supply. 15 While there are no federal laws prohibiting price gouging, 13 states do have such laws. Angie A. Welborn and Aaron M. Flynn, “Price Increase in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Authority to Limit Price Gouging,” CRS Report for Congress (September 5, 2005), https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22236.pdf. 16 “Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act of 2013,” 113th Congress (2013–14), https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/2070. 17 Johanna Neuman, “No Way Out of New Orleans as Planes, Trains and Buses Cancel,” Los Angeles Times (September 1, 2005). 18 Rivlin, Katrina, 49. 19 For an early description of “New Public Management” see Fred Kramer, “Public Management in the 1980s and Beyond,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 466 (March, 1983): 91–102. 20 See the State of Louisiana’s webpage “Volunteer + Relief,” which emphasizes volunteerism in place of government agencies to carry out disaster relief: http://gohsep.la.gov/RESPOND/REQUEST-RESOURCES/Volunteer-Relief-

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Organizations; David Hammer, “New Orleans Touts Public-Private Economic Development Team,” Times Picayune (December 6, 2008). 21 Van Heerden details the mismanagement of government officials and the Army Corps of Engineers in his book The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina (New York: Penguin Books, 2007). For van Heerden’s dismissal see “Moving On: Ivor van Heerden Contemplates Life Anew after a Lengthy Court Battle with LSU,” Baton Rouge Business Report (April 16, 2013), https://www.businessreport.com/article/moving-on-ivor-van-heerdencontemplates-life-anew-after-a-lengthy-court-battle-with-lsu. 22 Charles Perrow, “Using Organizations: The Case of Katrina,” Perspectives from the Social Sciences (June 11, 2016), http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Perrow. See also US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 2006), which reported that the devastation from Katrina came from “the failure of government at all levels to plan, prepare for, and respond aggressively to the storm.” 23 Fox, “Disaster Inc.,” 633–4. 24 Allison Plyer, “Facts for Features: Katrina Impact,” The Data Center (August 26, 2016), http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/katrina/facts-forimpact. 25 Kelsey Nowakowski, “Charts Show How Hurricane Katrina Changed New Orleans,” National Geographic (August 29, 2015), http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150828-data-points-how-hurricanekatrina-changed-new-orleans. 26 Rivlin, Katrina, 144–75. 27 Alexandria Neson, “The Color of School Reform,” Slate (June 5, 2016), http://www.slate.com/articles/life/tomorrows_test /2016/06/new_orleans_needs_more_black_teachers_and_knows_it_why_is_progre ss_so_slow.html. 28 Kelsey Nowakowski, “Charts Show How Hurricane Katrina Changed New Orleans,” National Geographic (August 29, 2015), http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150828-data-points-how-hurricanekatrina-changed-new-orleans. 29 The “we’re out” comment refers to the wealthy elites of the city. Christopher Cooper, “Old line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future,” Wall Street Journal (September 8, 2005). 30 Arena, Driven, chapters thee and five. 31 Rivlin, Katrina, 191. 32 Richard Webster, “New Orleans Public Housing Remade After Katrina: Is it Working?” Times-Picayune (August 20, 2015), http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/new_orleans_public_housing_dem .html. In January 2006, four months after Katrina hit New Orleans, I visited the St. Bernard housing project in the Mid City district, and, as a former carpenter, I concluded that the structures suffered minimal to moderate damage and could easily have been repaired. The outer structures were little damaged and since the

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apartments had no false walls of sheetrock and the electrical wiring was exposed, it would have been easy to perform repairs that would make the units liveable and allow residents to return to their homes. 33 Richard Webster, “New Orleans Public Housing Remade after Katrina. Is it working?” Times-Picayune (March 16, 2016), http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/new_orleans_public_housing_dem .html. 34 Arena, Driven, 99–101; also see Kent Germany, “The Politics of Poverty and History: Racial Inequality and the Long Prelude to Katrina,” Journal of American History 94 (3) (December 2007): 743–51, especially 749 where the author notes the federal government’s turn away from funding a host of public projects, including housing. 35 Arena, Driven, 134–6; Lisa Bates, “Post-Katrina Housing: Problems, Policies, and Prospects for African-Americans in New Orleans,” The Black Scholar 36 (4) (Winter 2006): 134–1. 36 Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Orlando: Harvest Books, 1990), chapter six, 150–88. A good overview of “New Public Management” is found in Christopher Hood’s “A Public Management For All Seasons?” Public Administration 69 (Spring 1991): 3–19. 37 Stephen Osborn (ed.), The New Public Governance? Emerging Perspectives on the Theory and Practice of Public Governance (New York: Routledge Press, 2010), 3. 38 Gernod Greuning, “Origins and Theoretical Basis of New Public Management,” International Public Management Journal 4 (2001): 1. 39 Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (New York: Knopf Publishers, 2013), 4. 40 Milton Friedman, "The Role of Government in Education," in Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Robert Solo (New Brunseick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 123–44; Joseph P. Viteritti, Herbert J. Walberg, and Patrick J. Wolf, “School Choice: How an Abstract Idea Became a Political Reality,” Brookings Papers on Education Policy 8 (2005): 137–73. 41 Barry Lynn, “The People of Michigan Do Not Want Vouchers,” Macinack Center for Public Policy (January 10, 2001). 42 Lawrence W. Kenny, “The Public Choice of Educational Choice,” Public Choice 124 (1/2) (July 2005): 210. 43 Abigail Brown and Jack Clift, “The Unequal Effect of Adequate Yearly Progress: Evidence from School Visits,” American Educational Research Journal 47 (4) (December 2010): 774–98. 44 Ravitch, Reign of Error, 3–11. 45 Stephanie Banchero and Caroline Porter, “Charter Schools Fall Short on Disabled,” WSJ (June 19, 2012), http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303379204577477003893836734 46 Rick Cohen, “Diane Ravitch Takes Down Gates Foundation Role in U.S. Education,” Nonprofit Quarterly (July 10, 2012),

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https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2012/07/10/diane-ravitch-takes-down-gatesfoundation-role-in-us-education; Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 47 Lewis Nghana, “After Brown: Poverty, Politics, and Performance in New Orleans Public Schools,” Louisiana History 48 (2) (Spring 2007): 157–91. 48 Alison A. Carr-Chellman, Brian Beabout, Khaled A. Alkandari, Luis C. Almeida, Husra T. Gursoy, Ziyan Ma, Rucha S. Modak, and Raymond S. Pastore, “Change in Chaos: Seven Lessons Learned from Katrina,” Educational Horizons 87 (1) (Fall 2008), 36. 49 “Vallas Group Debuts Turnaround System with Cambium Learning,” Cambium Learning Group (June 6, 2012), http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vallasgroup-debuts-turnaround-system-with-cambium-learning-157362815.html. 50 In 2013 Nagin was convicted on a host of charges, including bribery, fraud, and money laundering relating to his role as mayor both before and after Hurricane Katrina. Kathy Flynn, “Former New Orleans Mayor Nagin Charged with Corruption,” Reuters (January 18, 2013), http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usacrime-nagin-idUSBRE90H12U20130118. 51 Colleen Kimmett, “10 Years After Katrina, New Orleans All-Charter School System Has Proven a Failure,” In These Times, (August 28, 2015), http://inthesetimes.com/article/18352/10-years-after-katrina-new-orleans-allcharter-district-has-proven-a-failure. 52 Micha Landau, “The Destruction of New Orleans Public School System,” United Federation of Teacher: New York Teacher Addition (June 26, 2014), http://www.uft.org/public-ed-under-attack/destruction-new-orleans-public-schoolsystem. 53 Kimmett, “10 Years After Katrina.” 54 Landau, “The Destruction of New Orleans Public School System.” Duncan is not the only office to see benefit in disaster. Chicago Tribune columnist Kristen McQueary hoped that Chicago would also be hit with a disaster, since, she reasoned, it would result in better government and a re-working of the school system. Heather Nolan, “Chicago Tribune Columnist Wishes for a Hurricane Katrina,” Times Picayune (August 13, 2015), http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/chicago_tribune_hurricane_katr.ht ml. 55 Two studies on charters versus public schools from the Center for Research for Education Outcomes, Credo, are subject to much debate and claims of bias: the National Charter School Study 2013 (http://urbancharters.stanford.edu) and the Urban Charter School Study 2015 (http://urbancharters.stanford.edu). See Randi Weingarten, “A Coordinated National Effort to Decimate Public Schools,” Huffington Post (April 13, 2016), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randiweingarten/a-coordinated-nationalef_b_9683210.html?utm_hp_ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo. 56 Paul Buchheit, “Growing Evidence that Charter Schools Are Failing,” Common Dreams (July 6, 2015),

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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/06/growing-evidence-charterschools-are-failing. 57 Andrea Gabour, “The Myth of the New Orleans School Makeover,” NYT (August 22, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com /2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-the-new-orleans-school-makeover.html. 58 United Teachers of New Orleans, Louisiana Federation of Teachers and American Federation of Teachers, "‘National Model’ or Flawed Approach? The Post-Katrina New Orleans Public Schools,” November 2006, http://www.naomiklein.org/files/resources/pdfs/aft-nov-2006.pdf. 59 Alan Greenblatt, “New Orleans District Moves To An All-Charter System,” NPR (May 30, 2014), http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/05/30/317374739/neworleans-district-moves-to-an-all-charter-system. 60 Danielle Dreilinger, “7,000 New Orleans Teachers, Laid off after Katrina, Win Court Ruling,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, (January 16, 2014), http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2014/01/7000_new_orleans_teachers_laid.ht ml; Marta Jewson, “Teachers Unions on the Rise Again in New Orleans,” Hechinger Report (April 13, 2015), http://hechingerreport.org/teachers-unions-onthe-rise-again-in-new-orleans-10-years-after-charters-pushed-them-out. 61 Emmanuel Felton, “First Teachers Union in Post-Katrina New Orleans Inks Contract,” Education Week (June 30, 2016), http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2016/06/first_new_orleans_teachers_u nion_contract.html. 62 Brad Ott, “The Closure of Charity Hospital After Hurricane Katrina: A Case of Disaster Capitalism.” Dissertation (University of New Orleans, 2012), 62–9. 63 John Pope, “Ministers Blast Cuts at Charity Hospital,” Times Picayune (June 4, 2004); “Charity Running on Empty, Officials Say,” Times-Picayune (May 5, 2004). 64 Roberta Brandes Gratz, “Why Was New Orleans Charity Hospital Allowed to Die?” Nation Magazine (April 27, 2011). 65 Alexander Glustrom (dir.), Big Charity: The Death of America's Oldest Continuously Operating Hospital (October 2014); Rivlin, Katrina, 190. 66 Gratz, “Why Was New Orleans Charity Hospital Allowed to Die?” 67 Ibid. 68 Anita Chandra and Joie Acosta, “The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in Long-term Human Recover and Disaster,” Gulf States Policy Institute (Rand Corporation, 2009), http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2009 /RAND_OP277.pdf. 69 “Administrative Failure and the International NGO Response to Hurricane Katrina,” ResearchGate (December 2007), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229507888_Administrative_Failure_and _the_International_NGO_Response_to_Hurricane_Katrina. 70 Matt Petronzio, “10 Years After Hurricane Katrina, Charities Look Back at Lessons Learned,” Mashable (August 29, 2015),

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http://mashable.com/2015/08/29/katrina-charities/#RX0Jhc9CDkqF. 71 Chandra and Acosta, “The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations.” 72 Rebceea Mowbray, “High Costs Threaten Housing Plans,” Times-Picayune (January 16, 2007). 73 Joby Warrick, “Multiple Layers of Contractors Drive Up Cost of Katrina Cleanup,” Washington Post (March 20, 2006). 74 Fox Gotham, “Disaster Inc.,” 633. 75 “Coastal Provinces Bracing for Typhoon Haitang,” China Daily (July 18, 2005), http://english.sohu.com/20050719/n226358364.shtml; “Super Typhoon Haitang,” Philippine Tropical Cyclone Studies, 2005 Season (July 2005). 76 “Cuban State Media say 11 Deaths in Hurricane Sandy,” US News and World Report (October 12, 2012), http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/10/25/cuban-state-media-say11-deaths-in-hurricane-sandy. 77 Greg Allen, “Ghosts of Katrina Still Haunt New Orleans Shattered Lower Ninth Ward,” National Public Radio (August 3, 2015), http://www.npr.org/2015/08/03/427844717/ghosts-of-katrina-still-haunt-neworleans-shattered-lower-ninth-ward. 78 Katherine Sayer, “New Orleans home prices up 46 percent since Hurricane Katrina,” Times-Picayune (August 11, 2015), http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2015/08/new_orleans_home_prices_up_4 6.html; “High Cost of New Orleans Apartment Rentals,” WGNO/ABC (July 27, 2015). For statistics on poverty see Campbell Robertson and Richard Fausset, “10 Years After Katrina,” New York Times (August 26, 2015): http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/26/us/ten-years-after-katrina.html. 79 See John Barry’s excellent Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998) for a full description of the flood and the “relief” effort that followed. 80 August 29, 2005 is the date Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast. 81 Justin Moyer, “Chicago Tribune Columnist Wants a Figurative Katrina and Rebirth for Chicago,” Washington Post (August 14, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/14/chicagotribune-columnist-wants-a-figurative-katrina-and-rebirth-for-chicago. 82 Holly Yan, “Louisiana's Mammoth Flooding: By the Numbers,” CNN (August 22, 2016), http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/16/us/louisiana-flooding-by-the-numbers. 83 Sam Karlin, “Thousands Still in Shelters After Record Louisiana Floods,” Reuters (August 23, 2016), http://www.reuters.com /article/us-usa-weather-idUSKCN10X2B5. 84 Tom Hall, “Government Indifference in the Midst of Historic Louisiana Flooding,” World Socialist Web Site (August 20, 2016), https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/20/floo-a20.html. 85 Bruce Alpert, “$120 Billion in Katrina Federal Relief Wasn't Always Assured,” Times Picayune (August 21, 2015); Nomi Prinz, “The Real Size of the Bailout,” Mother Jones (January/February 2010), http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/real-size-bailout-treasury-fed.

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86 Brent Snavely, “Final Tally: Taxpayers Auto Bailout Loss $9.3B,” USA Today (December 30, 2014), http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/12/30/auto-bailout-tarp-gmchrysler/21061251. 87 Matthew Karnitschnig, Deborah Solomon, Liam Pleven, and Jon E. Hilsenrath, “U.S. to Take Over AIG in $85 Billion Bailout; Central Banks Inject Cash as Credit Dries Up,” Wall Street Journal (September 16, 2008); Patrick Rucker and Jonathan Stempel, “Bank of America Gets Big Government Bailout,” Reuters (January 16, 2009), http://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-idUSTRE50F1Q720090116. 88 Jeff Cox, “12 Trillion of QE and the Lowest Rates in 5,000 Years … For This?” CNBC (June 13, 2016), http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/12-trillion-of-qe-andthe-lowest-rates-in-5000-years-for-this.html.

RESILIENCY FOR WHOM? PUBLIC HOUSING, CLASS STRUGGLE, AND A REAL PEOPLE’S RECONSTRUCTION OF POST-KATRINA NEW ORLEANS JOHN ARENA1

In the “Introduction” to the official Katrina 10: Resilient New Orleans commemoration guide, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu wrote that “Ten years ago, on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.” The subsequent decade, Landrieu continued, brought further calamities, from successive hurricanes to the BP oil spill, resulting in New Orleans facing “the biggest challenges any American city has ever faced.” Yet, despite this adversity, the official narrative went, the city was bouncing back, since New Orleans, “is a resilient place with a resilient people” (my emphasis).2 Resilience, and its message of an undifferentiated city collectively bouncing back from adversity stronger than before, was ubiquitous over the course of the week-long commemoration in August 2015. Events and panels organized as part of the city’s official event, as well as those hosted by the National Urban League headed by former Mayor Marc Morial and the Atlantic Magazine—all underwritten by corporate and philanthropic “partners”—included such gatherings as the “New Orleans’ Resilience Strategy Launch,” the “9th Ward Resilience Festival,” “Building a Resilient Future,” and the “Resilient Nation: Strengthening Our Places” panel.3 In a tourist destination like New Orleans, the week could not be complete without “resilience tours” by “land, air or sea,” all included as part of the official commemoration.4 The city even had a “chief resiliency officer” on hand, underwritten as part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities” initiative, who unveiled the city’s new “resiliency strategy” report, “Resilient New Orleans: Strategy to Shape Our Future City.”5 In fact, according to city boosters, much of that “future” had already arrived. Events touted how New Orleans has “become, for other cities in the US and globally, a model

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for education reform, entrepreneurship, criminal justice reforms, and more.”6

Unmasking the Resiliency Rhetoric The resiliency theme, so favored by state, corporate, and foundation elites as a way to frame, analyze, and legitimate post-disaster reconstruction, began to encounter pushback during the Katrina commemoration. Even some of its champions, such as FEMA director Craig Fugate, acknowledge its vacuous and malleable nature, explaining that “it can pretty much mean whatever you want it to mean.”7 In fact, others argued that the “social concept” of resiliency, which geographer Tom Slater calls the “latest urban policy and think tank buzzword extolled upon the world’s urban dwellers,” is so favored by elites because as both a “theory and practice [it] meshes seamlessly [and] … is highly compatible with the regnant neoliberal political economy and its associated ideological frames.”8 The term is embraced enthusiastically because it helps to, “obfuscate underlying conflict and the distribution of benefits resulting from policy choices” of the pro-market recovery project. Both corporate and state elites, who assembled the ten-year Katrina commemoration and celebration of the “New Orleans model,” have imposed this corporate recovery model over the last decade.9 Left out of the resiliency theme is any criticism of the neoliberal agenda that made recovery more about eroding public services in favor of privatization and less about actually rebuilding a devastated city and region. In fact, “disaster capitalism” is a well-documented phenomenon in which a disaster, whether the Johnstown flood or Hurricane Sandy, is utilized to protect and enrich the ruling class. During the San Francisco earthquake, for example, wealthy neighborhoods were guarded by the US military, water was used to save the Folgers Coffee warehouses before working class neighborhoods were saved, and Chinatown was intentionally dynamited to create a fire break to protect wealthier districts.10 It is well-known that one key factor in the postKatrina housing crisis was the joint decision by the government and private developers to demolish public housing that had sustained little to no damage.11 In contrast to the official festivities, the “People’s History of Hurricane Katrina Conference” counter-commemoration, organized by activists and academics, unmasked the anodyne language of “resiliency.”12 The panelists and audience members who gathered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans on August 30, 2015 demonstrated that if the city, as Mayor Landrieu touted, had been turned into “the

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nation’s most immediate laboratory for innovation and change,” it was an experiment that had failed miserably for the majority of its inhabitants.13 The assembled speakers at the People’s Conference, in contrast to the boosterism and superficiality of the official events, made their case by exposing the underlying conflicts, power relationships, beneficiaries, and losers of this experiment, and showing what a real reconstruction should look like. Rebecca Glover began the proceedings by highlighting the “resiliency” of police impunity as exemplified by the exoneration of the police officer who shot and killed her unarmed nephew, Henry Glover, in the aftermath of Katrina, one of many police atrocities committed in the storm’s aftermath.14 While the city touted its criminal justice reform, antipolice brutality activist W. C. Johnson exposed the mayor’s attempt to void the 2012 consent decree imposed by the Department of Justice on the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). The decree established federal oversight to reform the notoriously brutal department. At the time of the federal intervention the mayor himself acknowledged that the NOPD was “one of the worst police departments in the country.” The intervention of the Obama administration’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, was the result of pressure by activists and journalists documenting the many atrocities the New Orleans police carried out both before Katrina and in its aftermath. Now, despite continued killings of civilians by the NOPD, the mayor was trying to finagle his way out of even these limited federal constraints.15 In contrast to the resiliency language that obscures “questions of political power and the role of the state,” activist and sociologist Brad Ott recounted the lives and jobs lost by Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco ordering the closure of the city’s little-damaged Charity public hospital in the wake of Katrina.16 Highlighting the contradictions of the resiliency rhetoric, Ott explained that State of Louisiana authorities then condemned a wide swath of the Mid-City neighborhood to build a bio-medical complex, displacing many “resilient” low and moderate-income income residents who had rebuilt their homes in the immediate years after the storm. Professor Adrienne Dixson delved into the underside of the postKatrina New Orleans laboratory in public education. This experiment, the University of Illinois professor explained, was overseen by state, corporate, and philanthropic operators who fired thousands of teachers, tore up their union contracts, and closed scores of schools without any input from the students and families that previously attended those schools. The privatized charter schools that have replaced the previous

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public schools, Dixson explained, are, despite the hype, not performing any better than those public schools they replaced. The conference’s focus on the city’s affordable housing crisis provided the starkest contrast between the rhetoric of resiliency, of a “New New Orleans,” and the lived experience of poor and working-class people. A 2015 study by the Enterprise Community Partners non-profit found that, in a country facing an affordable housing shortage, the problem was particularly acute in New Orleans. In the New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner metropolitan area, 35 percent of renters are “severely rent burdened,” devoting 50 percent or more of their income to rent, the second highest in the country, just behind Miami at 35.7 percent. Another 54 percent are “rent burdened,” defined as renters who pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent, while 87 percent of renters making less than $15,000 a year fall into this category.17 A central factor in the worsening of the affordable housing crisis postKatrina was the federal and local government’s decision, in collusion with private developers, to demolish thousands of little-damaged but muchneeded public-housing apartments. Former St. Bernard public housing resident and activist Sharon Jasper recounted the hardships and community destruction wrought by the federal bulldozers, which United Nations human rights investigators condemned for violating a host of international human-rights treaties that the United States was a signatory to.18 Jasper’s testimony, along with that of her daughter Kawana, brought to light—in contrast to the resiliency narrative and recent work by academics on gentrification—that there is a dark underside to the vaunted “New Orleans model.” Jasper’s moving testimony exposed the “injustice of community upheaval … working class displacement … and the erosion of affordable housing.”19 In contrast to the resiliency narrative, political scientist Cedric Johnson highlighted the centrality of a government-backed “rent intensifying development” agenda that produced the affordable housing crisis. To address the housing crisis, Johnson emphasized the need for government regulatory intervention and, in particular, the direct-government provision of housing, all of which would challenge the dominant pro-market recovery project. Johnson echoed Susan Fainstein’s critique of the “conventional thinking” of the resiliency school that “regards the government production of housing as an inefficient and limiting choice.” In contrast to the reigning market ideology, the record shows that only through “large-scale production of social housing … [will] adequate shelter for low-income households” in New Orleans, as well as nationally and globally, be achieved.20

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In New Orleans and across the world, governments are going in the opposite direction. This political reality was underscored during the weeklong festivities as local and federal authorities held a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the demolition of the city’s last traditional publichousing development, the Iberville housing complex, and the grand opening of its new replacement, the “mixed-income” Bienville Basin Development. Mayor Landrieu, the current and former Secretaries of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, developer Pres Kabacoff, and the vetted tenant leader who conducted the ritual all conveniently ignored the fact that the shiny new bricks included a drastically reduced number of public-housing apartments compared to the “New Deal Ruins” upon which they were built.21 That same week the local press reported on efforts, led by a Democratic city councilperson and Republican US Senator, to block rebuilding even a fraction of the small collection of public housing apartments, known as “scattered sites,” despite the desperate need.22 How, then, in this hostile political environment, one in which the hegemonic neoliberal resiliency narrative frames public-housing demolition as part of “best practices,” is there any chance of it re-emerging in New Orleans, let alone nationally? Susan Fainstein, while recognizing the need, argues it is “politically impossible” to win any program, such as public housing, that “require[s] spending a great deal of money on poor people.” The best we can hope for is to mitigate the pain. Planners, under her constricted political imagination, become the most viable historical agents to achieve this downsized vision of a more-just city, achieved by “explaining the stakes in any particular [planning] decision” and “advocate[ing] for policies that are more equitable.”23 In contrast to this pessimism, I draw on the optimism embodied in the People’s History of Katrina Conference and rooted in the participants’ historical knowledge of, and participation in, popular struggles in order to address how public housing might be placed on the political agenda once again. This potential is explored through a historical analysis of the rise and decline of public housing in New Orleans and the United States as well as the movement that emerged post-Katrina to oppose demolition, and what insights and lessons this provides for how we might see its re-emergence.

The Origins, Containment, and Continuing Fight for Public Housing The origins of public housing in the United States are not to be found in the legislative work of New Deal Democrats, crusading social

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reformers, and American Federation of Labor (AFL) lobbyists that some accounts point to.24 Rather, “the central event leading to the adoption of the public housing program in the U.S.,” argues urban theorist Peter Marcuse, “was certainly the Depression, and more specifically the forces of unrest and discontent it unleashed.”25 In the aftermath of the 1929 stock-market crash and skyrocketing unemployment, militant Unemployed Councils, in which the Communist Party USA played a central role, emerged around the country.26 The Unemployed Councils and Unemployed Leagues (affiliated with A. J. Muste and other political tendencies) and their later organizational successor, the Workers Alliance of America (WAA), were at the cutting edge of radical working-class resistance not only during the early years of the Depression, when the capitalist crisis idled quarter of the workforce, but throughout the decade. In the sphere of housing they mounted militant actions, including rent strikes and blocking evictions. Mark Naison recounts the direct-action techniques used to reinstall evicted tenants in New York City, which was a center of the radical housing movement that was by no means limited to the five boroughs: Coming upon instances where tenants had been forcibly evicted, Communist organizers would move the furniture back from the street to the apartment, while appealing to neighbors and passersby to resist marshals and police if evictions were repeated.27 The unemployed movement fought not only against evictions and rent increases but also resisted high food prices and racist discriminatory practices in housing and employment. The movement advocated for family relief and organized Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers. The WWA united the unemployed in solidarity with striking workers and unions, organizing drives undermining employer efforts to pit one section of the working class against another. The WAA was an organizational expression of what Jane McAlevey calls “whole worker organizing,” which recognized that “people do not stop belonging to classes when they leave their workplaces. Class relations [and struggles] pervade all aspects of social life.”28 This radical ferment provided political space for liberal reformers and the conservative AFL leadership to gain a hearing for the creation of government owned, financed, and—for a time—government built public housing. The first version of this direct-government provision of housing appeared in 1934 in the form of the federal government’s Civil Works Administration (CWA), which directly constructed public housing

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developments where tenants paid rent according to their income. This program was superseded by the 1937 US Housing Act that provided funding for local housing authorities to establish government-owned and managed public housing. The program predictably encountered fierce opposition from the private housing industry of builders, bankers, realestate brokers, construction unions, property owners, and speculators.29 The real-estate industry established the Urban Land Institute in 1936— which now plays a central role in legitimating demolition of public housing—to help lead that fight. While not able to defeat the program, the private housing industry worked assiduously to limit the program’s encroachment on their power and profit making as much as possible.30 In 1934, a few years prior to the passage of the public-housing legislation, the federal government created the generously funded Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The program insured mortgages issued by private lenders, removing risk for banks, and allowing borrowers to put up only a small portion of the principle, with low mortgage payments spread out over 30 years. The FHA program and other federal housing programs of the day also provided federal government backing for the private housing industry’s racist “racial covenants” that barred the sale and rental to racial and ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. The inclusion of these covenants was a precondition for FHA insuring loans. Which of these two programs would dominate—the social democratic public housing model or the generous, government-subsidized, raciallydiscriminatory for-profit private home one—was still an open question in the 1930s and through World War II.31 The containment of the post-war strike wave and radical movements of the 1930s, and the subsequent McCarthyite counter-offensive to cleanse Marxism and Marxists from both the labor movement and US society, sealed the fate of public housing.32 The door was now open for the implantation of the conservative, working-class atomizing “spatial fix” of suburbanization, homeownership, and the private automobile as the main form of transportation, rooted in the publicly built interstate highway system.33 Although subsequent legislation in 1949 expanded public housing, the program was increasingly subordinated to the needs of urban redevelopment efforts. Despite these attacks on public housing, over 1.2 million public units were built from the1940s to the early 1970s, when the Nixon administration suspended further construction—a ban that subsequent Democratic administrations continued. Public housing clearly did not achieve the radical goals envisioned by chief backers like Catherine Bauer as it became harnessed to meet the needs of capitalist urban development agendas. At the same time, the program did establish the responsibility of

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the state to provide “safe, sanitary, and decent housing”—an implicit recognition that an entirely capitalist housing market was unable to provide for a significant part of the population. As geographer Don Mitchell argues, the program, “establish[ed] an important ideal against which the behavior of the state, capital and other powerful actors must be measured.”34 Another contradictory feature of public housing was what sociologist Erik Olin Wright would term the “structural power” or “class capacities” that it provided residents.35 Although real-estate interests and their pliant public servants often used public housing to isolate the poor, especially African Americans, the collection of the poor in close proximity, and facing a central authority, simultaneously facilitated group identity and collective action. Indeed, this was recognized by the authors of the 1967 Kerner commission, assembled by President Johnson in the wake of massive ghetto revolts of the mid and late-1960s. The authors identified “mammoth” public housing developments as the centers of most revolts and recommended creating smaller collections of apartments to prevent future “disturbances.”36 Thus, in the face of the continuing incapacity of the private market to deliver “safe, sanitary, and decent” housing, even during the height of the post-war boom for a large part of the population, the demand for public housing continued to resurface. Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, the major movers of the 1963 March on Washington, made it a major part of their “Freedom Budget” campaign. Initiated in the mid-1960s to end poverty and achieve real freedom after the defeat of the formal Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Budget called for a massive expansion of well-built public housing as part of a broader expansion of the public sector.37

The Neoliberal Counter-Offensive Despite this clarion call from Rustin and Randolph, the decade after the march on Washington witnessed a radical detour from the social democratic path they advocated. Beginning in the 1970s and accelerating into the 1980s and beyond, capitalists launched a counter-offensive against public housing and all the gains won by the working class from the 1930s to the 1960s. This attack, termed “neoliberalism,” or what Les Leopold in his book Runaway Inequality calls the “Better Business Climate Model,” was an ideological, political, economic, and cultural project launched by political and economic elites in the face of the increasing challenges to both capitalist rule and profitability.38 As Jason Hackworth argues, this class project is both an ideology and a mode of governance that

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encompasses the “roll back” of the previous Keynesian or “Liberal Egalitarian” regulatory regime and “roll out” of the neoliberal regime. The entire project is legitimated—although not always carried out in practice— in the name of the core principles of individual choice, unfettered markets, and non-interventionist state.39 The “roll out” of neoliberalism has not been a straight trajectory but an uneven one reflecting the contours of the class compromises of the preceding Keynesian regulatory regime. Public housing has been especially vulnerable as a “means tested” program limited to the most vulnerable— and demonized—sections of the working class. The limited coverage, along with the program’s local rather than national administration, undermined the ability of public-housing residents to challenge the budget cutbacks of the late 1970s and 1980s and the demolition and roll out of the new privatized “mixed income” developments in the 1990s and 2000s. There were a lot of protests against various demolitions and privatization schemes, but partly because of the structure of the program it was difficult to mount broader opposition. In contrast, social security, as a universal rather than “means tested” program like public housing (and welfare), has been much less vulnerable—for now.40 Further adding to public housing’s vulnerability was the return of capital to disinvested inner cities to extract what the late geographer Neil Smith termed the “rent gap”—the difference between current and potential land values. Banking and real estate-dominated city governments identified public housing as a major impediment to their urban redevelopment agendas designed to transform urban landscapes and extract land rents.41 The HOPE VI program, developed under the first George Bush administration and carried out and extended under his successor Bill Clinton, was the neoliberal vehicle—“The “New Urban Renewal” as Derek Hyra termed it—to remove these impediments.42 The Clinton administration oversaw the demolition of some one hundred thousand public housing units and scores of developments across the country. Ostensibly targeting the most distressed development, in practice HOPE VI was deployed most often against public housing complexes that would do the most to spur increases in land values and real-estate redevelopment in the surrounding area. Thus, facilitated through HOPE VI and the following “Choice Neighborhood” program, authorities in major cities across the country have carried out a classic “accumulation by dispossession” operation.43 Thousands of families have been evicted from their homes, with only a fraction being able to return to the new “mixed-income” developments that include, at most, one-third of the previous number of public-housing

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apartments. The long wait for construction to be completed, strict rules that provide various bases for the now privately run developments to exclude former residents, and the failure of authorities to keep track of former residents all combined to undermine the ability of former residents to return even to the limited number of units available.44

The Resiliency of Displacement: Pre-and Post-Katrina New Orleans Between 1995 and 2005, New Orleans’s black-led city government— what Adolph Reed terms a “black urban regime”—worked closely with real-estate developers and both the Clinton and Bush Jr. administrations to slash the city’s public housing stock from about 14,000 to 7,000 units.45 A prime example of this initiative was the St. Thomas public-housing redevelopment, located along New Orleans’ fast developing riverfront. Formerly encompassing over 1,500 public housing units, it was redeveloped as a “mixed-income” development with only 182 public housing apartments. The ensuing rise in real-estate values in the surrounding neighborhood produced further displacement.46 In the aftermath of Katrina, the Bush administration, which then controlled the local housing authority, moved to use the storm as a convenient way to close down the remaining traditional public housing complexes and other public services, from hospitals to schools. This agenda, in which city and state authorities also played central roles, was a classic case of “disaster capitalism”— the “orchestrated raid on the public sphere in the wake of a catastrophic event.”47 But things did not go exactly as planned with regards to public housing. A campaign had emerged before Katrina to defend the Iberville public housing development, located just outside the city’s famed French Quarter, whose residents were facing a fate similar to their brethren at St. Thomas. A new organization, “C3/Hands Off Iberville,” made up of public-housing residents and community supporters, emerged to lead a successful fight to defeat a HOPE VI redevelopment plan. As with the Workers Alliance of America chapters described above, C3 fought for workers’ interests in the workplace and community. After the storm, the activism of C3 combined with the direct action of residents who returned to their apartments before authorities restored water and power forced HUD to reopen this development. Nonetheless, Bush’s HUD held firm on closing four other development—St. Bernard, C. J. Peete, B. W. Cooper, and Lafitte—that encompassed some five thousand badly needed apartments. In response,

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the public-housing movement expanded beyond Iberville to become citywide, and also “scaled up” to the national level. Although this movement did not prevail in the immediate conflict—the details of which are recounted in my book Driven From New Orleans—it did make progress in placing a renewed public-housing program and an equitable “people’s reconstruction” of New Orleans on the political agenda.48

The People’s Silver Lining How did the public housing movement, despite not meeting its immediate objectives, still make advances? First, the resistance to the demolitions and repression blocked attempts by authorities to portray the redevelopment plans as a benevolent initiative to help the poor. The movement helped delegitimize the vaunted “New Orleans Model” by unmasking its deeply authoritarian nature. Second, it did not just come out against demolition, but put forward what is was for. C3/Hands Off Iberville in particular coupled its opposition to demolition with a demand for “Jobs for All, Free Public Services for All.” This would be achieved through a democratically-controlled, direct government-employment public-works program, open for all, to rebuild New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and country, financed by ending all US wars and taxing the wealth and income of the top 1%.49 This type of demand had the potential of uniting a broad section of the working class, including, but not limited to, public-housing residents. A class-wide demand such as this laid the basis for forging the social power to win a real people’s reconstruction, one that certainly included but was not limited to rebuilding public housing. This kind of demand at the same time faces an uphill battle. The reigning “government failure ideology” that identifies government intervention as only able to create “inefficiency, inequity and corruption” presents a significant ideological barrier to a movement attempting to gain political traction.50 In fact, as Vincanne Adams shows in her critique of the federal government-financed and privately-run post-Katrina Road Home program to ostensibly help private homeowners rebuild, the privatized reconstruction model paradoxically reinforced the government failure ideology.51 In addition, the Democratic Party-allied non-profit industrial complex, which operates to channel discontent toward narrow demands, often tied to a particular identity, presents a further formidable barrier to mounting a class-wide demand and movement of “Jobs for All, Free Public Services for All.” Yet, since the imposition of the New Orleans disaster capitalist agenda there have been changes to the national political opportunity structure that

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increase the potential for the “Jobs for All, Free Public Services for All” demand to garner political traction. First, not only in New Orleans but throughout the nation, people are facing an affordable housing crisis. A Harvard University study shows that the percentage of American households who own their own home shrunk to 62.9 percent in 2016, the lowest since 1965 and down from its peak of 69.2 percent in 2004. At the same time, rental prices increased on average eight percent between 2001 and 2014, while the average household income shrunk nine percent during the same period. Young people are especially hurt by these trends, with those between 18 and 34 more likely to live with their parents than any other living situation. The last time this was the case was 130 years ago!52 Further strengthening the audience for a mass public works preprogram was the Great Recession of 2007–9, which was followed by the weakest recovery in the post-war era. Most of the wealth and income gains in the tepid “recovery” have been captured by the wealthiest earners, and most of the new jobs created have been low-wage. The nation’s youth have been especially hard hit by the poor job market on one side, while at the same time student debt has skyrocketed further as state governments slash support for public universities and institute steep tuition increases in the wake of the Great Recession. Katrina’s surging floodwaters highlighted the deep decay in southern Louisiana’s federally maintained levee system. Yet, despite all the talk of “resilience,” the infrastructure across the country continues to deteriorate, a crisis punctuated by regular calamities, from train crashes to dam breaks. In its latest four-year report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the United States a D+, estimating that the country confronts $3.6 trillion in unmet infrastructural needs.53 There are further signs of the viability of a movement for public works in that the demand has been raised by various groups in recent years. In 2013 the Newark, New Jersey-based People’s Organization for Progress hosted a “People's Conference on Jobs, Peace, Equality and Justice” that brought together over a dozen organizations to decide on a common set of demands and a plan to win them. The chief demand was the same publicworks one as in New Orleans, which added further specificity by underscoring that “open for all” includes immigrants and the formerly incarcerated.54 The weakness of the gathering was revealed in the fact that there was no set of collective actions adopted to advance the group’s demands. In the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City the Demands Working Group adopted the same demand for a public-works program to create “Jobs and Free Public Services for All.” Nonetheless, the “prefigurative politics” that held sway among the anarchist leadership,

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which vehemently opposed placing demands on the state, blocked the adoption of these demands taken up by the broader movement.55 On the electoral front, the 2014 gubernatorial campaign of Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, who garnered the highest third-party vote tally in decades in New York State, had as his central plank a Green “WPAstyle” jobs program. Financed by higher taxes on banks and the wealthy, it would put nearly one million people to work at an undefined “living wage.” Jill Stein’s 2016 Green Party presidential campaign platform also called for a “Green Deal” full employment plan to create 20 million “green jobs” and expand public and social services. Nonetheless, Stein does not make an explicit a call for “direct government employment,” therefore opening the door for a replication of the contracting-out system. Other left candidates also raise the public-works plan. While promising and significant, the weakness of all the electoral initiatives is the failure to build a movement pushing for “Jobs and Free Public Services for All” beyond the electoral cycle.

In the Contradiction Lies the Hope The acerbic journalist Alexander Cockburn noted, in his critique of Naomi Klein’s influential book on “Disaster Capitalism,” that “capitalists try to use social or economic dislocation or natural disaster—New Orleans is only the latest instance—to advantage, but so do those they oppress.”56 Clearly, capitalists and their public servants in Washington, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans harnessed Katrina to remake the city in their class interests, and we must recognize that they have been fabulously successful in implanting the “New Orleans Model” as well as spreading its various “innovations” across the country and world. Indeed, a representative for the Honduran government, the second poorest in the western hemisphere, looked to New Orleans’ mass privatization of public schools to solve the “huge problem of the teachers’ unions … [and] the teachers [who] are striking all the time.” The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) worked to bring the “New Orleans Model” to Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, following the devastating 2010 earthquake. The IDB hired Paul Vallas, the former head of New Orleans’s post-Katrina statecontrolled school district, to help introduce a neoliberal makeover of Haiti’s public schools.57 Nonetheless, as much as New Orleans Mayor Landrieu and other boosters repeat how “resilient” the city and its people are, and how much “resiliency” infuses their recovery model and inspires others, they can’t completely hide its glaring contradictions. The hoopla surrounding the ten

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year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina cannot hide the reality that over one hundred thousand people, mostly black and poor, have not been able to return to the city a decade after the storm. The false boosterism of 2015 cannot hide the fact that, in a majority renter city, “rental apartments are mostly substandard and 78 percent of them, nearly 50,000 apartments, need major repairs.” And the civic cheerleader cannot hide that, “over half of black children in New Orleans live in poverty—a higher percentage than even before the storm.” 58 These contradictions are so great that at times even the boosters must acknowledge these realities. Mayor Landrieu, when he is not touting the market-centric recovery, has pointed to the underside of the model, including the high homicide rate (excluding those killed by the police) among young black men. But of course, as Cedric Johnson points out, Landrieu cannot attribute this to “the rapid upward redistribution of wealth that he has facilitated”—that is, to a bankrupt system that has failed economically for the majority of New Orleanians. Instead, predictably, Landrieu, a supposedly enlightened white southern racial liberal, collapses into a blame-the-victim “cultural dysfunction” explanation to explain New Orleans’ alarming crime rate.59 But this is to be expected. The responsibility of pointing out these contradictions and resolving them through a people’s reconstruction in New Orleans— and across a country that increasingly mirrors the Crescent City—falls on the shoulders of those who have been the primary victims of an all-too-resilient capitalist system.

Notes 1

Dr. John Arena is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Staten Island, State University of New York. Thanks to Jeannette Gabriel, a PhD candidate in Social Studies Education at the University of Iowa, for reviewing an earlier draft of this paper. 2 City of New Orleans, Katrina 10: Resilient New Orleans (New Orleans: City of New Orleans, Mayor’s Office), 4. 3 City of New Orleans, Katrina 10; Urban League of New Orleans, Rise: Katrina 10 (New Orleans: Urban League of New, 2015); Atlantic Magazine, “New Orleans: Ten Years Later,” http://www.theatlantic.com/live/events/new-orleansten-years-later/2015/#event-agenda 2015; Mitch Landrieu, “New Orleans Remains a Resilient City, No Matter What,” The New Orleans Advocate (August 29, 2015). 4 “Resilience Tours,” http://katrina10.org/tours. 5 Jeff Adelson, “Resilience Strategy for City Unveiled,” New Orleans Advocate (August 26, 2015); Kathleen Tierney, “Resilience and the Neoliberal Project: Discourses, Critiques, Practices—And Katrina,” American Behavioral Scientist 59 (10) (2015): 1337.

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Katrina 10, 4. Adelson, “Resilience Strategy for City Unveiled.” The extent of the absurdity led some panelists to poke fun at its widespread use, although they did not engage in any critique of the pro-corporate agenda to which it has been harnessed. See the panel from the Atlantic Monthly’s conference, “New Orleans: Ten Years Later; Resilient Nation: Strengthening Our Places,” http://www.theatlantic.com/live/events/new-orleans-ten-years-later/2015/#eventagenda. 8 Tierney, “Resilience and the Neoliberal Project,” 1334. Tom Slater, “The Resilience of Neoliberal Urbanism,” Opendemocracy.org, January 28, 2014: https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/tom-slater/resilience-of-neoliberalurbanism. 9 Susan Fainstein, “Resilience and Justice,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39 (1) (2015): 157. 10 Adolph Reed, “Undone by Neoliberalism,” Nation, (August 31, 2006), https://www.thenation.com/article/undone-neoliberalism/; Steve Fraser, “A History of Disaster Capitalism,” Mother Jones (April 4, 2013), http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/history-disaster-capitalism. 11 John Arena, Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 12 People’s History of Hurricane Katrina Conference (August 30, 2015), New Orleans, Louisiana. “Part I, History of Resistance: Defending Public Services and Fighting Police Repression,” Mike Howells, Sharon Jasper, Brad Ott, Rebecca Glover, and W. C. Johnson, https://youtu.be/WriKc1JUWD8; “Part II, From Disaster Capitalism to a Real Reconstruction Plan,” Adolph Reed, Cedric Johnson, Jill Stein, Adrienne Dixson, and J. Arena, https://youtu.be /ECUkm5ZRHZM. 13 Katrina 10: Resilient New Orleans, 1. 14 Laura Maggi, “Former New Orleans Police Officer Greg McRae Sentenced to 17 Years for Burning Man's Body after Katrina,” Nola.com (March 31, 2011), http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf; “In Katrina Killing of Henry Glover, Jury Verdict Sends One Father Home while Family Grieves for Another,” Nola.com (December 12, 2013), http://www.nola.com/crime. 15 Advancement Project, “Katrina Truth Project” (Washington, DC: Advancement Project, 2015), http://katrinatruth.org/pages/criminaljustice.html. 16 Fainstein, “Resilience and Justice,” 160. Academic accounts also often obscure who carried out the closure of Charity Hospital and other elements of the mass privatization agenda. For an example see Lydia Voigt and William Thornton’s account, included in a special edition of the American Behavioral Scientist journal on post-disaster recovery. They write that, “The Katrina disaster exacerbated the problem further by reducing the capacity of the city’s health care system … due to irreparable storm damage, Charity Hospital, a public facility that was located in the heart of the city, was shuttered” (my emphasis). Through the use of passive voice and anthropomorphic language, the authors obscure who ordered the closing while inaccurately describing the damage as “irreparable,” which is contradicted by widely available evidence. The authors deploy similarly obfuscatory language 7

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to describe the mass privatization of public schools, referred to as an “overhaul of the system.” See Lydia Voigt and William Thornton, “Disaster-Related Human Rights Violations and Corruption: A 10-Year Review of Post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans,” American Behavioral Scientist 59 (10) (2015): 1300–1. For a thoroughly researched refutation of the “irreparable damage” thesis, see the study by Brad Ott, “The Closure of New Orleans’ Charity Hospital After Hurricane Katrina: A Case of Disaster Capitalism.” Master’s Thesis (University of New Orleans, 2012). 17 Greg LaRose, “New Orleans Ranked 2nd-worst Housing Market for Renters,” Nola.com (January 15, 2015), http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2016/01/new_orleans _ranks_as_2ndworst .html. 18 Arena, Driven From New Orleans, 210. 19 Tom Slater, “The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30 (4) (2006): 739. 20 Fainstein, “Resilience and Justice,” 164. 21 Jaquetta White, “Officials Praise Public Housing Residents while Opening Bienville Basin Community,” The New Orleans Advocate (August 30, 2015), http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/politics/article_a02e2a05-b5545a7c-9eb1-011ac7d21ead.html; Edward Goetz, New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice & Public Housing Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013). 22 Richard Webster, “HANO Moves to Build on Sites,” Times Picayune (August 25, 2015). 23 Fainstein, “Resilience and Justice,” 166. 24 For leading examples of this genre see Nicholas Bloom, Public Housing That Worked (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and Brad Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 25 Peter Marcuse, “Interpreting ‘Public Housing’ History,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 12 (3) (1995): 242. 26 James Lorence, Organizing the Unemployed: Community and Union Activists in the Industrial Heartland (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Mark Naison, “From Eviction Resistance to Rent Control: Tenant Activism in the Great Depression,” in The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904–1984, ed. Ronald Lawson (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 94–133. 27 Naison, The Tenant Movement, 101; on Michigan see Lorence, Organizing the Unemployed. 28 Jane McAlevey, Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) (London: Verso, 2012), 13–15; David Camfield, “Re-orienting Class Analysis: Working Classes as Historical Formations,” Science and Society 68 (4) (2004): 421; David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (New York: Verso Press, 2012), 128–9. 29 Marcuse, “Interpreting ‘Public Housing’ History,” 254.

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30 The for-profit private housing industry, if not able to stop it altogether, pushed a number of measures to limit public housing’s encroachment on their power and profit making. These included using the program as “slum clearance” rather than, as Catherine Bauer advocated, siting public housing on lands outside “slum areas,” which would have been less expensive and helped to drive down the land value of the slums, allowing them to be placed there in the future much more cheaply. Opponents also worked to block direct government construction and instead rely on contractors, pushed a “means tested” as opposed to universal program, and kept construction budgets as low as possible to ensure austere accommodations. Marcuse, “Interpreting ‘Public Housing’ History.” 31 Peter Dreier, “Labor’s Love Lost? Rebuilding Union’s Involvement in Federal Housing Policy,” Housing Policy Debate 11 (2) (2000): 327–92. 32 On the relationship between the anti-Communist offensive and the assault on public housing, see Don Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). 33 Harvey, Rebel Cities. 34 Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (London: Guilford Press, 2003), 25. 35 Erik Olin Wright, Class, Crisis, and the State (London: New Left Books, 1978), 98; Erik Olin Wright, “Working Class Power, Capitalist Class Interests and Class Compromise,” American Journal of Sociology 105 (4) (2000): 957–1002. 36 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, U.S. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), 68, 173–4. 37 A “Freedom Budget” for All Americans” (Washington DC: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966). The glaring weakness was their political strategy of working with the Democratic Party to get the Freedom Budget adopted and implemented. This strategy explains why Randolph and Rustin couched this anti-poverty, fullemployment and public works plan as fully compatible with a mammoth Pentagon budget—and implicitly the Vietnam War their Democrat Party allies were then prosecuting—as well as capitalism. For a further elaboration of this critique see John Arena, Driven From New Orleans, 215–19; Author’s presentation at the People’s History of Hurricane Katrina conference, “From Disaster Capitalism to a Real Reconstruction Plan” (New Orleans, Louisiana, August 2015). 38 Les Leopold, Runway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice (New York: Labor Institute Press, 2015); see also David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 19. 39 Jason Hackworth, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 4–5. 40 Hackworth, The Neoliberal City, 189–95. 41 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996). 42 Derek Hyra, The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzevillle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

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Harvey, Rebel Cities. Goetz, New Deal Ruins. 45 Adolph Reed Jr., Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 46 Arena, Driven from New Orleans. 47 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 6. 48 Arena, Driven from New Orleans, 145–214. 49 Mike Howells and Eric Lerner, Public Works to Rebuild New Orleans (New Orleans: Workers Democracy Network, 2006). 50 Hackworth, Neoliberal City, 11. 51 Vincanne Adams, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). Adams’ findings provide support for Jamie Peck and Adam Tickwell’s observations on neoliberal urbanism that “to a greater extent than many would have predicted, including ourselves, neoliberalism has demonstrated an ability to absorb or displace crisis tendencies, to ride—and capitalize upon—the very economic cycles and localized policy failures that it was complicit in creating, and to erode the foundations upon which generalized or extra-local resistance might be constructed.” Jamie Peck and Adam Tickwell, “Neoliberalizng Space,” Antipode 34 (3) (2002): 400. 52 Gabriel Black, “US Homeownership Rate Falls to Lowest Level in 51 Years,” World Socialist Web Site (August 3, 2016), http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/03/hous-a03.html. 53 American Society of Civil Engineers, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure (ASCE Foundation, 2013), http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 54 People's Conference on Jobs, Peace Equality and Justice (October 19, 2013) (Paul Robeson Center, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ), http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=WGXo8pe2MGU; “Part II” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBlnh7xysTY. 55 John Arena, “Breaking the Silence?: The Mass Strike, Occupy Wall Street, and Demanding Jobs for All,” Working USA: The Journal of Labor & Society 19 (3) (2016): 321–40. 56 Alexander Cockburn, “On Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine,” Counterpunch (September 23, 2007), http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/09/22/on-naomi-klein-squot-the-shock-doctrine-quot. 57 Arena, Driven from New Orleans, 221. 58 Bill Quigley, “17 Shocking Stats that Show how the 1 Percent Have Ruined New Orleans,” Salon.com (July 24, 2016), http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/17_ shocking_stats_that_show_how_the_one_percent_have_ruined_new_orleans_partn er. 59 Cedric Johnson, “Gentrifying New Orleans: Thoughts on Race and the Movement of Capital,” Souls 17 (3–4) (2015): 188. 44

NOTES FROM THE BIG UNEASY HARRY SHEARER1

Dr. Ivor van Heerden, who was director of the LSU Hurricane Center in Baton Rouge, is one of my heroes, and it was really tragic that he was dismissed from his position for being an honest scientist. In 2010 I made a documentary called The Big Uneasy which looked at how it happened that the levees in New Orleans collapsed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I interviewed Dr. van Heerden along with Dr. Bob Bea from UC Berkeley and Maria Garzino, the whistle-blower inside the US Army Corps of Engineers, for both my documentary and my radio show, Le Show, in the years after the flood. It was van Heerden, Bea, and Garzino who provided me with information that later became public, and so I knew the real story of why things went so badly during and after Hurricane Katrina.2 In October 2009 I was watching the footage of President Obama making his first presidential visit to New Orleans, and when he referred to its flooding as a “natural disaster” he had an elegantly framed tone of voice that suggested human culpability in the response to the flood, and therefore was criticizing his predecessor, G. W. Bush. I thought to myself at that moment that there were two possibilities: either Obama knew the truth about the levees, or he didn’t. As a working hypothesis, I couldn't decide which was worse, but I did think that my radio show was clearly not enough to get across to the US public about what happened in New Orleans and why. So, I thought, what do people do in this day and age? They make documentary films. I know how to make a film and I know people who are experts about hurricanes and levees and what hurricanes do to levees because I had already spoken to many of them—people like Ivor van Heerden—on my radio show. So I thought it would be great to do a documentary on Hurricane Katrina. We were approaching the fifth anniversary of the flood, which happened in 2005, and I thought that the national media were going to come to New Orleans like gravy on rice, and,. I reasoned, that if I get this film out in time, the media, the politicians, and the average person will be able to say “here's what we've learned since Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.”

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That was my mistake. The mainstream media did come to New Orleans in the way I described, but, instead of trying to learn from the knowledge we’ve accumulated over the past years, they vacationed there while they reran their footage from five years earlier, saying: “Weren't we great? Weren’t we wonderful? Didn't we wag our finger in Mary Landrieu's face?”3 And I’m not just referring to the major television networks, because National Public Radio (NPR) was similarly resistant to the story as presented in The Big Uneasy. So making the documentary was both a profoundly constructive and profoundly frustrating experience. I didn't care if my name was mentioned and making it was not a career move on my part, since I do have a day job, but I wanted the story to get out—the real story of how the levees that were supposed to protect New Orleans gave out and ended up flooding the city, stranding thousands of people and killing thousands more. And I wanted people to known that all of this was preventable. And so I went around the country screening The Big Uneasy for about a year and a half. As I toured the country and went from town to town I realized that local newspapers would cover the story, which was pretty much the only way people were going to be exposed to the film and the reality of what happened post-Katrina. There's an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine4 about Seymour Hersh’s claim that whatever we think we know about the assassination of Osama bin Laden is false.5 New York Times Magazine writer Johnathan Mahler continuously asked Hersh: “how did you get this information? How did you find this out? What is all this about?” Mahler never reveals whether he believes Hersh or not, but he does admit that journalism is about narratives, and once the editors and TV producers hook onto a narrative they bend facts to fit it. This is a familiar practice in the news media, and in the case of the lead up to the Iraq War a former CIA intelligence chief in Europe claimed that the Bush administration ignored “crucial evidence” that Iraq had no WMD program.6 In fact, journalism operates in much the same way as government. You reach for a narrative first and then you fit the facts to it. And the narrative reached by the national media was: monster hurricane, city below sea level, mainly poor black victims, and no contrary evidence was allowed to disrupt this narrative. There's a wonderful example of this phenomenon in action. Peter Maass, an investigative journalist of high repute whom I and many others really respect, wrote a piece about the iconic moment in April 2003 when Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in Firdos Square, Baghdad, about three weeks after the United States invaded Iraq. This event was celebrated by the US media as a great moment in which the citizens of Baghdad, celebrating the arrival of the Americans and the end

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of Hussein’s dictatorship, toppled the statue of the hated dictator. But Peter Maass, investigative journalist, wanted the full story and so he talked to the reporters and photographers who were there when the statue was pulled down and who said, to a man and a woman, that there were very few Iraqis in Firdos Square when the statue came down—so few, in fact, that the marines had to come in with a winch and pull it down. These journalists told Maass that the Iraqis in the square were just standing and looking at the stature and were not trying to pull it down, and in any case they couldn’t because there were so few people there. Maass reported that the reporters and photographers present when the statue was toppled called their producers and editors in New York asking to turn their cameras around and show the American public how few Iraqis were even there and that the winch was manned by US soldiers, not Iraqis. But the New York editors and producers said “no,” because it would disrupt the narrative. So the US public saw, on CNN and the other news outlets, Iraqis tearing down the statue because that's what the US news media wanted them to see.7 Bending facts to fit the narrative is not just happening in this country. I made a follow-up radio documentary for the BBC on the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The BBC asked me to look back at New Orleans 10 years after the flood and discuss what we have learned since the Hurricane struck in 2005. While the BBC did broadcast the piece, three times in the week leading up to the broadcast a producer from one of the news programs told me he wanted to interview me, and three times they called me back to say they didn’t want to interview me for their show. Clearly there was resistance to me doing a radio piece on the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I don't think the BBC has any material reason to protect the US Army Corps of Engineers, an organization I criticize in The Big Uneasy. I think its refusal to interview me is more deeply rooted. The media today is obsessed with presenting a narrative, and, thank you very much, the news media likes it that way and doesn’t want those stubborn things called “facts” to get in the way. Then we get to the core. Now we move away from my little story to the big story. I became aware of the US Army Corps of Engineers growing up in Los Angeles. One day I asked my parents, “what's that big concrete ditch that winds through the city?” They replied that it once was a river. I read up on this concrete river that runs through Los Angeles and I discovered that there was a flood in 1937, and that after the flood the Army Corps of Engineers came to Los Angeles, as they did in other parts of the country, and said they could fix it so that Los Angeles would never flood again. And the city thought this was a good idea, and so the Army

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Corps of Engineers encased in concrete the Los Angeles River, termed an “occasional river” because it occasionally has water but also occasionally no water. If you grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, this concrete river was notable for two things: soapy bubbles from laundromats and car chase scenes in movies and on TV. Laundromats would send their waste suds down the river and this concrete straight jacket, and you would see this sudsy water pass by, and, every once in a while, it would be cleared out to film a car chase scene. And that was when I realized what the Corps of Engineers did for a living. There's a wonderful book written by two reporters from the Tampa Bay Times called Paving Paradise, which discusses the Clean Water Act of 1972 during the Nixon Administration.8 One provision in the Clean Water Act was that there should be no net loss of wetlands going forward into the future, meaning that any development in any state had to ensure this. The Army Corps of Engineers was the agency in Florida in charge of enforcing that part of the Clean Water Act, and thirty years later there has been a major net loss of wetlands in Florida. In fact, it is the Army Corps of Engineers and private land developers (the Corps’ biggest friends) that are largely responsible for the near destruction of the Florida Everglades, and it is now the Army Corps of Engineers that Congress turns to to fix the problem of the disappearing Everglades! In 2000, Michael Grunwald wrote a wonderful series of articles in the Washington Post about the Army Corps of Engineers which argued that the Corps’ “business model” was to get paid to break things and then get paid to fix them.9 It's not a bad business model, since the Corps and private contractors make money both ways. But the bigger question is why this story doesn’t have “legs”? Why don’t news organizations feel that this is a sexy story? Part of the reason, perhaps, is that you have to understand a little bit about engineering. But Bob Bea, UC Berkeley Civil Engineer, says that engineering is 90 percent common sense. Personally, I know that when I was in college I didn't walk past any building faster than the engineering building, so I admit to having no affection or talent for the field. Yet, I was able to absorb what Bob Bea, Ivor van Heerden, and others told me about the science of engineering, and I absorbed it quickly. Journalists like to say that they don’t like to “get into the weeds.” Sorry, journalism—your job is precisely to get into the weeds. The first task is for the journalist to comprehend the story they’re working on, in this case the engineering behind New Orleans’ levee system. And the second task is to make what they’ve learned comprehensible to people who don't have the time or the resources to go into the weeds, i.e. your readers and viewers.

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It's a copout for journalists to justify sloppy reporting by claiming they don’t “go into the weeds.” But there's another aspect to the counter-narrative of Hurricane Katrina, since the actions of the Army Corps of Engineers confound both partisan narratives about how the world works. The left says government is capable of doing good things, while the right says the market will take care of everything. Beginning in the 1980s, the Army Corps of Engineers, as shown in my film, was hollowed out and stopped doing their own construction. They do some of the design, but most of it is now contracted out to private companies, and there is a network of contractors who do most of their work with the Corps. Bob Bea, who was in The Big Uneasy and is critical of the Corps, recounted that most of the engineers wouldn’t talk to him after he publicly criticized them because they still have to work for the Corps, a major source of their employment.

Source: /FEMA Photo by Marty Bahamonde - Aug 28, 2005

From a political science perspective, you want power centers to compete, and you don't want them to collude. You want the private sector to be a check on the public sector and vice versa. But what have emerged over the past 30 years are what is termed “private-public partnerships,” in which private companies now feed at the trough of public agencies. In too many cases, public agencies simply serve to satisfy the desires of private corporations, which in turn donate money to candidates who are then re-

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elected to continue to vote to fund the public agency that continues to feed them. Arguably, this dynamic defies the assumptions of both the right and the left and does not fit into the talking points of either Fox or MSNBC. The result is that no entity can gain political mileage out of this story of the Army Corps of Engineers because it hinges on the failings of both government and the private sector. It is the worst of both worlds: of the profiteering of the private sector and of the budget increases seeking of the public sector. This is not peculiar to the Corps— it is the way the entire Defense Department works. If you want a case history of this right now look no further than the Defense Department’s F-35 stealth jet fighter, which is not really a “fighter” since it’s been proven that it is not capable of dog fighting.10 It’s the most expensive airplane in history, yet all tests so far show that it's not able to do as well as the plane it's supposed to replace. Yet it costs about $100 million per plane. Of course, private companies want to make as many F-35s as possible, and the Defense Department likes to keep increasing its budget to pay for faulty fighter jets, so the Army Corps of Engineers is a subset of a government budgeting system geared to line the pockets of private contractors. The problem is that, as weapons, jet fighters are not going to be called on to do much fighting in this present day and age, so the F-35 program is a mammoth waste of money.11 As we have seen in New Orleans, what the Army Corps of Engineers has done is even worse than wasting taxpayers’ money on a bloated “defense” budget, because the actions of the Corps have actually killed US citizens, our fellow Americans, and hence are a much more serious problem. What we know now that we did not know when I made The Big Uneasy has been noted by Bob Marshall, a great environmental journalist, who pointed out, just before the tenth anniversary of Katrina, that while the Army Corps of Engineers claims that the new levee system is superior to the previous one, it was in fact built under less stringent guidelines than the one that failed in the wake of the hurricane.12 The levee system that failed was congressionally mandated to withstand the maximum probable hurricane. But the Corps miscalculated this by ignoring new information provided by environmentalists and journalists like Bob Marshall about how the situation on the ground had changed. And so the old standard, based on the calculation of a one-in100-year event, was used to construct a new $14 billion levee system. It was Bob Marshall who pointed out that the reason this old standard was used was because it’s the minimum standard for a community to qualify for flood insurance. Both state and city governments were so desperate to get people back that they had to assure them that they would qualify for

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flood insurance and so they settled for that lower standard that both the Corps and Congress proposed. And that is the system we have today.13

Source: Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA

The second thing we've learned since Katrina hit is perhaps even more disturbing. My whistle-blower friend inside the Army Corps of Engineers, Maria Garzino, sent me a trove of documentation—“weeds,” as the journalists call it—comprising internal emails, drawings, and photographs from within the Army Corps of Engineers. As we just saw in the case of Palmdale, California, desert communities are subject to flash flooding and torrential rains even in the midst of a drought.14 In the Las Vegas area, the Army Corps of Engineers built a floodwall to protect against such flash flooding, but in September 2014 there was torrential rainfall and flooding and a portion of the floodwall collapsed.15 Internal memos and photographs reveal that the Army Corps of Engineers was aware that the reason a portion of the wall collapsed was because the entire length of the wall was structurally deficient. Internal emails indicated that what followed the collapse of this flood were several weeks of discussion inside the Corps debating whether it should admit that the entire wall had a design deficiency. The debate centered on whether the Corps would admit to the design flaw and fix the problem, or just prop up the part that fell down and deny any wrongdoing. I leave it to your imaginations as to which option was exercised by the Corps. The looting by people stuck in flooded New Orleans was reported again and again in the news media, but the reality was that looting was oftentimes the only way stranded people could get food or water.

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Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the government to provide hurricane victims with food, water, and shelter so they are not forced to loot in order to survive. Unfortunately, with one exception our legal system does not allow individuals to sue the federal government. But there is a lawsuit pending that has proceeded to trial on a noble theory of the law based on the principles in the 5th and 14th Amendments that prohibit the federal, state, or local governments from taking a person’s property without due process of law.16 The argument in this case is that, through their negligence in maintaining the levee system and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (MRGO), the Army Corps of Engineers were responsible for the destruction of people's property. One of the major reasons that the country and the world were led to believe that Katrina victims had gone on a rampage of looting and violence is because the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, and the police chief, Eddie Compass, went on the Oprah Winfrey show four days into the flood and repeated rumors about babies being raped and all sorts of unimaginable horrors going on in the Superdome and the Convention Center, all of which have been proven to be wrong.17 I go into this in some detail with my BBC documentary, where I show that all efforts to verify that rapes and murders had taken place in the aftermath of the hurricane have failed.18 Four people did die in the Superdome, but none of them were murdered. The period following the hurricane was incredibly stressful and a lot of the people in the Superdome were older. In fact, most of the people who died during and after Katrina were either old or poor, or both. Rather than calming people’s worst fears, mayor Nagin and police chief Compass went on television and spread these rumors. Both the mayor and the police chief are African American, yet Nagin never apologized or even acknowledged that what he said was proven to be wrong. And police chief Compass finally did admit he had spread unsubstantiated rumors, but defended his actions by claiming that, had he not repeated what he heard from his officers, he would have been accused of covering up.19 So the mayor and police chief were at least partly responsible for spreading lies which not only demonized people who were trying to protect their families but were at least one reason why it was so difficult to get National Guardsmen and volunteers to come to the city's aid in the days following the hurricane and flooding.20 Not only was there no evidence of murders and rapes, but no evidence has ever surfaced that rescue helicopters were ever fired on.21 Rumors will be rampant in situations of chaos, emergency, and disaster, and understandably spread through the Superdome, which had no lights, electricity, water, or air-

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conditioning. People were huddled together in a large building, part of the roof had collapsed, and rumors spread. But public officials and journalists have a responsibility to make sure that unsubstantiated rumors are not allowed to spread like wildfire. But what officials and the news media did was to collectively say "hey, I heard this” with little concern for the truth. Also, consider how the federal government bungled the effort to get food and water into New Orleans, even though Katrina had been in the Gulf of Mexico for four days, each day growing in strength. The Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for sandbagging in the case of flooding, didn't even have sandbags filled in the event of breaches in the levees.22 The Corps was so confident and arrogant about their own work that they didn't start filling sandbags or fill the breaches in the levees until the Wednesday following the Monday when Katrina first hit. But the federal government did do some things very quickly: they arrested innocent people, jailed them, and charged them with trespassing, theft, and even terrorism. David Eggers’ book Zeitoun is the true-life account of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American contractor, married with two children, who stayed in New Orleans during the flood and employed his boat to help rescue people. Zeitoun was arrested and charged with terrorism. For trying to rescue people, he was imprisoned twentythree days and denied medical attention. 23 I’m not sure how to effect change in the Army Corp of Engineers. When I was touring The Big Uneasy audiences would ask: "What is the solution to the problem you’ve presented in your film?" I never considered myself a problem solver, but I would like to suggest that the Army Corps of Engineers does not enjoy divine immunity. In fact, the power of the Corps was written into law after the 1927 Mississippi River flood, when Congress gave the Corps immunity against legal action in flood-control cases to avoid excessive bureaucratic timidity. So if Congress can grant the Corps immunity it can also remove the Corps from that immune status. A nice first step would be to demand that Congress terminate the Corps’ immunity from prosecution, because as it stands. as a whistle-blower in the Army Corps of Engineers said to me, “I couldn't believe it, but it really didn't bother them that their negligence ended up killing people." Certainly, the Corps answers to a court of law for what they did, but the painful reality is that, if the Corps is found responsible, it's not their money but our money that will be paid out. For example, the Corps was recently fined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the reality is that money was taken from the left pocket of the federal government and put into its right pocket.24 Nonetheless, the Army Corps of Engineers and other government agencies should at least experience the

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discomfort of being called into court to be held accountable in public for their misdeeds. But as of today, the Army Corps of Engineers has not been held accountable for its misdeeds; in fact, the Corps continues to receive federal money which it then transfers to private contractors. A recent study by the Times Picayune showed that the Corps paid out huge sums of money for clean-up that was then sub-contracted out to cheaper bidders as many as five times—so-called “fifth-tiered subs.”25 There was a time when the Army Corps of Engineers was a reputable agency, a world-class agency, but the mistakes made in, for example, building the London Avenue Canal, which was breeched in the wake of Katrina, were mistakes that wouldn't be made by a second-year engineering student.26 But if there’s no punishment for mistakes, if people don't even lose a parking space for killing two thousand people, there's no reason for them to pay attention and do it right. What happened in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina is part of a dynamic that spread worldwide in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008. With interest rates now below one percent there are millionaires worldwide looking for a place to park their money. Russian oligarchs, Arab sheiks, Greek millionaires, Malaysian factory owners, Chinese bankers—anyone with a business and access to a bank—won't invest their money in a weak world economy, and so they look for real estate to put their money into. There are developers in London, New York, and Los Angeles who are building “ultra-luxury projects” that are intended not for habitation but simply a place to park their money. In Los Angeles, some of these buildings are 90 percent unoccupied and are essentially ghost buildings.27 In New Orleans, the federal, state, and local governments were opposed to restoring public housing and public hospitals for the working poor. In fact, government and business officials saw the destruction in New Orleans as an opportunity to, for one, get rid of Charity Hospital, which is publicly owned but operated as a private, for-profit hospital by Louisiana State University. To privatize the hospital system, both Democrat governor Kathleen Blanco and Republican governor Bobby Jindal were called upon to keep Charity closed in order to pressure FEMA to fund the construction of a new for-profit hospital.28 Today, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, is renegotiating the state’s contract with the private managers of the state charity hospitals because the private operators are not, according to them, making a profit.29 The documentary Big Charity delineates exactly how this happened.30 Similarly, the government was ideologically opposed to public housing projects, so four big public housing projects in New Orleans, all habitable

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post-flood, were closed and the inhabitants could not even return for their possessions. This stuff is hardcore, and what the government did postKatrina illustrates how little they really respect private property when the owners are poor people.31 There is something else going on in New Orleans as well: an influx of young people came post-Katrina, often as volunteers, and fell in love with the city and decided to attend Tulane University, and so moved into places like Bywater, which had been a crack-infested poor neighborhood. The first guy I knew who lived in Bywater was a professional mask-maker. It was the mid-1990s and he paid $10,000 for his house, but at that time you couldn't walk the streets after dark. Today, homes in Bywater are a lot more expensive; the neighborhood has been gentrified, and it’s now safe to walk the streets. The other thing that happened in New Orleans to make it more difficult for working people was the absence of federal programs to assist people in rebuilding their rental properties. The federal government did have a program to assist homeowners to rebuild, and while there were a lot of restrictions, red tape, and waste, money was allocated to homeowners to rebuild, but almost no money went to people who owned rental units. Most rental units in New Orleans are two or four units. There's a neighborhood in New Orleans East where real estate companies own two hundred units, but in the main part of the city rental units are mom and pop operations made up of people who own a home of their own but also own a couple of units that they rent out. If the government provided compensation to rebuild their house but not to rebuild their rental units, what are they going to do? The result was that there was a withdrawal of rental units from the market which immediately drove rental prices up. This problem has not been solved and there continues to be a shortage of affordable rental housing in New Orleans. Of course, there's a rental unit shortage all over the country, but the shortage in New Orleans is unique in that the federal government made the decision to help home owners repair their damaged homes but not to help people repair damaged rental units. I think the response to and clean-up after Katrina speak to the failure of public-private partnerships, since these are a way to use public goods for public purposes to enrich private agents.32 On a more positive note, a lot of young, creative people coming to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina want to help and make a difference and so there’s been a flourishing of the arts and an increase in galleries and music venues. New Orleans has been stereotyped in many ways, and one stereotype is that the only art in New Orleans is music. What happened in the post-flood era really changed people’s notions about New Orleans and what kind of art could thrive there. New Orleans has

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always been a writers’ city—just think of William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, or John Kennedy O’Toole. But the city’s community of visual artists has existed there for a long time as well and has a story to tell that was largely unknown until the horrific events of Katrina. Art is supposed to be our way of responding to events that happen to us, both good and bad, and the New Orleans art community responded in many positive ways. There was an art curator who was in New Orleans post-Katrina and we started an art biennial, which is now a triennial, and there are artworks and galleries all over town, including the Lower Ninth Ward which depicted the total devastation that Katrina brought.33 But there was a citywide artistic response to the devastation of Katrina and that has continued. There's been a large increase in galleries and the visual arts around town and this is not because, as in New York and Los Angeles, there is a large, wealthy community of benefactors. The New Orleans’ art scene is not collector-driven, it’s artist-driven, which is a very different phenomenon. Music has responded as well, of course, and postKatrina there has been an outpouring of writers. As part of the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the author Cynthia Joyce read sections from her book Please Forward at Acadia Books, a famous used bookstore in the French Quarter.34 Joyce had ploughed through blog posts in the two years after Katrina to compile her book, and I was surprised to discover that a lot of people didn't want to read about and revisit that darker reality of the flooding as part of the anniversary. Many people really wanted to be as far away as possible from the painful blog entries compiled by Joyce. But there are people willing to re-experience what happened by reading their own works or works like Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza or Nine Lives by Dan Baum, which are both wonderful books.35 New Orleans responded as a city with a deep artistic temperament and a million different kinds of artistic expression. Some of the most memorable artistic expressions were during the first Mardi Gras after the flood, and in that two-and-a-half-week period was parade after parade making fun of Kathleen Blanco, George W. Bush, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Ray Nagin with a rolling festival of satire at the expense of those who had almost destroyed their city. I can't pick one other city in the world that would have had such a rich response to its near death, and that was one moment when I thought that New Orleans was going to make it back as New Orleans. Another moment was the story by John Besh, a great New Orleans chef who appeared on a BBC show with me talking about Katrina and its aftermath. Besh, like Mr. Zeitoun, had a boat at the time of the flood and went out into his flooded city and asked himself: "What I can do? Well, I

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can cook." So, Besh made up pots of red beans and rice and put them in giant canisters and went out on his boat looking for people. He found a guy that was standing chest high in water and asked him: “Are you hungry?” The guy responded: "Am I ever!" To which Besh replied: "Well, here. I got food." The guy swam over to Besh’s boat and John gave him a Styrofoam cup into which he ladled out some red beans. The guy took one taste and said: "Where is the onion? My mama never made red beans without no onion.” And with that ability to focus on the good things in life, in this case his mother’s red beans and rice, I knew that this beautiful, wonderful, poor, violent, soulful city was going to make it. And that is because New Orleans is a city with a real indigenous culture, where culture is not an upper-class European thing that lives in concert halls up on a hill. In New Orleans culture is what lives in the streets, whether it's the blowing of trombones or the making of food or the drawing of pictures. Culture in New Orleans is a deeply engraved impulse in the life of the city and its arts.

Notes 1

Harry Shearer is an actor, comedian, musician, author, radio host, producer, and director. Shearer was a member of the Saturday Night Live cast and has written for and starred in a number of films, including the “mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap. Shearer has also been a voice actor, most notably on The Simpsons. Shearer is the host of the radio show Le Show and is currently an “artist in residence” at Loyola University in New Orleans. Shearer has homes in both New Orleans and Santa Barbara. Many thanks to Pam Halstead for all her work in helping to bring this article to fruition. 2 Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan, The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina--the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist (New York: Penguin Books, 2007); Rick Plitz, “Two Whistleblowers Who Exposed Misconduct Further Endangering Katrina Victims are Honored Today,” Climate Science and Policy Watch (December 16, 2009), http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2009/12/16/two-whistleblowers-whoexposed-misconduct-further-endangering-katrina-victims-are-honored-today; Matt Krupnick, “Experience Keeps UC Berkeley’s Robert Bea in the Hot Spotlight,” East Bay Times (September 27, 2010), http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2010/09/27/experience-keeps-uc-berkeleys-robertbea-in-the-hot-spotlight. 3 Mary Landrieu was a Louisiana Senator from 1997 to 2015, and was often in the media during and after Hurricane Katrina. 4 Jonathan Mahler, “What Do We Really Know About Osama Bin Laden’s Death?” New York Times Magazine (October 15, 2015),

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-aboutosama-bin-ladens-death.html?_r=0. 5 Seymour Hersh, “The Killing of Osama Bin Laden,” London Review of Books 37 (10) (May 2015): 3–12, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/thekilling-of-osama-bin-laden. 6 “Ex CIA Official: WMD Evidence Ignored,” CNN.com (April 23, 2006), http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/23/cia.iraq. 7 Peter Maass, “The Toppling,” New Yorker (January 10, 2011), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/10/the-toppling. 8 Craig Pittman and Andrew Waite, Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2009). 9 See, for example, Michael Grunwald, “An Agency of Unchecked Clout,” Washington Post (September 10, 2000), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/05/12/AR2006051201550.html. 10 Joseph Trevithick, “The F-35 is Still Horribly Broken,” The Week (February 26, 2016), http://theweek.com/articles/605165/f35-still-horribly-broken. 11 Amy Butler, “F-35 Deal Targets Unit Cost Below $100 Million,” Aviation Week Network (July 30, 2013), http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-deal-targets-unitcost-below-100-million. 12 Bob Marshall, “The New Levees: Just Good Enough,” Weather.com (August 25, 2015), http://katrina.weather.com /chapter/new-orleans-levees. 13 Bob Marshall, “Best-ever Levee System is Here to Protect Property, not Lives, Experts Warn,” The Lens (August 25, 2015), http://thelensnola.org/2015/08/25/best-ever-levee-system-is-here-to-protectproperty-not-lives. 14 “Flash Flooding, Mud Flows Trap Drivers and Close 5 Freeway,” Daily News (October 15, 2015), http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20151015/flashflooding-mud-flows-trap-drivers-and-close-5-freeway. 15 Colton Lochhead and Annalise Little, “Students Stranded in Moapa; Part of I-15 Washed Away,” Las Vegas Review Journal (September 8, 2014), http://www.reviewjournal.com/weather/students-stranded-moapa-part-i-15washed-away. 16 Michael Kunzelman, “Few Hurricane Katrina Lawsuits Linger 8 Years Later,” Claims Journal (January 6, 2014), http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/southcentral/2014/01/06/242459.htm. 17 “Murder and Rape-Fact or Fiction?” The Guardian (September 6, 2005), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/06/hurricanekatrina.usa3. 18 Harry Shearer, New Orleans: The Crescent and the Shadow, BBC Radio 4, (August 18, 201), http://harryshearer.com/new-orleans-flood-failings-and-fearsfor-the-future. 19 Maureen Pao, “Swept Up in The Storm: Hurricane Katrina's Key Players, Then and Now,” National Public Radio (August 27, 2015), http://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/434385285/swept-up-in-the-storm-hurricane-

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katrinas-key-players-then-and-now. 20 Robert Pierre and Ann Gerhart, “News of Pandemonium May Have Slowed Aid,” Washington Post (October 5, 2005). 21 Miriam Hill and Nicholas Spangler, “No Evidence Backs Up Reports of Rescue Helicopters Being Fired Upon,” Knight Ridder Newspapers (October 3, 2005). 22 Lolita Baldor, “Corps of Engineers Admits Sandbag Error,” Associated Press (September 15, 2005). 23 David Eggers, Zeitoun (New York: Vintage Books, 2010). 24 “EPA Fines Army Corps of Engineers for Chemical Releases,” New Hampshire Union Leader (October 8, 2015), http://www.unionleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20151009/NEWS22/1510 09057/1029. 25 Gordon Russell and James Varney, “From Blue Tarps to Debris Removal, Layers of Contractors Drive Up the Cost of Recovery, Critics Say,” Times Picayune (December 29, 2005), http://www.nola.com/katrina/2005/12/from_blue_tarps_to_debris_remo.html. 26 Christine F. Andersen, Jurjen A. Battjes, David E. Daniel, Billy Edge, William Espey, Jr., Robert B. Gilbert, Thomas L. Jackson, David Kennedy, Dennis S. Mileti, James K. Mitchell, Peter Nicholson, Clifford A. Pugh, George Tamaro, Jr., and Robert Traver, “The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went Wrong and Why.” Report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (2007), http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/reports/ERPreport.pdf. 27 Armin Rosen, “A Third of the Most Expensive Apartments in New York are Empty Most of the Time,” Business Insider (January 22, 2016), http://www.businessinsider.com/expensive-new-york-apartments-empty-2016-1; Paul Davidson, “Many Downtown Luxury Apartments Remain Empty,” USA Today (August 16, 2016), http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016 /08/15/many-downtown-luxury-apartments-sit-empty/88621454. 28 Roberta Brandes Gratz, “Why Was New Orleans’ Charity Hospital Allowed to Die?” The Nation (April 27, 2011), https://www.thenation.com/article/why-wasnew-orleanss-charity-hospital-allowed-die. 29 Tom Aswell, “Edwards Administration Renegotiating Disastrous Hospital Contracts Even as Rating Service Gives Grades of ‘F’ to Two,” Louisiana Voice (May 23, 2016), https://louisianavoice.com/2016/05/23/edwards-administrationrenegotiating-disastrous-hospital-contracts-even-as-rating-service-gives-grades-off-to-two-hospitals. 30 Alexander Gruston (dir.), Big Charity: The Death of America's Oldest Hospital (2014). 31 Julia Cass and Peter Whoriskey, “New Orleans to Raze Public Housing,” Washington Post (December 8, 2006); Daniel McClain, “Former Residents of New Orleans’s Demolished Housing Projects Tell Their Stories,” The Nation (August 28, 2015). 32 Mindy Fetterman, “Replacing Lost Housing is Off to a Slow Start,” USA Today (April 7, 2006), http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/200604-16-new-orleans-housing-usat_x.htm; David Hammer, “Examining the Post-

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Katrina Road Home Program: 'It’s More Than the Money. It’s the Hoops We Had to Jump Through to Do It’,” The Advocate (August 23, 2015), http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_f9763ca5-42ba-5a62-9935c5f7ca94a7c4.html. 33 Prospect New Orleans, http://prospectneworleans.org/past-prospects-p1. 34 Cynthia Joyce, Please Forward: How Blogging Reconnected New Orleans After Katrina (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2015). 35 Tom Piazza, Why New Orleans Matters (New York: Harper Books, 2005); Dan Baum, Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010).

POSTSCRIPT

The articles in this book deal with a particular event, Hurricane Katrina, that occurred at a particular place and time, the Gulf Coast in 2005. Hopefully, this volume will serve to improve the response to disasters and potential disasters throughout this nation and world. Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this nation’s infrastructure is in a dismal state. Roads, bridges, dams, levees, canals, and nuclear reactors are in dire need of repair. A failure to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure could lead, and likely will lead, to the type of disaster that unfolded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The painful reality is that it wasn’t the hurricane that caused the death and destruction chronicled in this book, it was the failure of both leadership and infrastructure. In particular, the failure of the levee system to withstand the rising waters brought by Katrina coupled with the refusal by both government and business elites to plan for such a disaster made the tragedy of Katrina an inevitable outcome even before the hurricane made landfall. As this book illustrates, Katrina was neither unique nor unanticipated, and the potential for disaster was noted by scientists and activists alike years before, while the disaster that unfolded on the Gulf Coast in 2005 was years in the making. With urban sprawl and the growth of industry, the wetlands, so vital to protecting the cities and towns of southern Louisiana, were seriously compromised, which contributed to the storm’s impact. Additionally, the poor construction of the levee system and the increased potential for flooding with the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet also made death and destruction inevitable. The false confidence of the Army Corps of Engineers along with an almost complete lack of planning prior to the hurricane meant that authorities were unprepared for what should have been a well-anticipated hurricane and flood. Like Hurricane Katrina, a human-made disaster struck southern California, where I was born and raised, in 1928 when the St. Francis dam burst in the Santa Clarita valley, forty miles north of Los Angeles. The wall of water unleashed by the dam break resulted in the deaths of over 450 people.1 And like Katrina, the Saint Francis dam break was years in the making. In 1913, William Mulholland, chief engineer for the city of Los Angeles, headed a team of workers to construct the Los Angeles aqueduct, bringing water to the city from the Owens Valley, 233 miles

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north of Los Angeles. And while Mulholland’s aqueduct brought water to Los Angeles, that same aqueduct incensed the farmers of the Owens Valley, who believed that they had been scammed into surrendering their water rights and realized that having lost them their farms were no longer viable. Not surprisingly, these irate farmers sabotaged the aqueduct, which led Mulholland to oversee the construction of a dam in the Santa Clarita valley north of Los Angeles. The Saint Francis dam was built as a reserve water supply in case the Los Angeles aqueduct was put out of commission. On the evening of March 12, 1928, the dam gave way and a wall of water rushed down the Santa Clara river valley to the coastal town of Oxnard, sweeping away the towns and settlements in its path, including Saugus, Piru, Fillmore, Saticoy, and Santa Paula. The official death toll is now 431, but the real death toll is likely much higher because the migrant settlements that lined the banks of the Santa Clara river were swept away, and there is no accurate record of how many people inhabited them. As with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the St. Francis dam break encapsulated all the elements of greed, hubris, and willful disregard for human life that was Los Angeles in the 1920s. The construction of the Los Angeles aqueduct was fueled by land speculators seeking to spike land prices by providing a steady water supply to Los Angeles. If water was denied the farmers in Owens Valley, reasoned these speculators, so be it. When Owens Valley farmers struck back, Mulholland and the waterboard responded with a poorly constructed dam that ultimately burst. Greedy land speculators, irate farmers, unaware town dwellers, and vulnerable migrant workers all played a role in a disaster that should not have happened. So too with Hurricane Katrina, where a decaying levee system coupled with wetland erosion and a complete lack of planning by both business and government elites conspired to flood New Orleans, that most unique and cherished of cities, and kill thousands of innocent people. And it, too, did not have to happen.

Notes 1

Les Standiford’s Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles (New York: Ecco Publishers, 2016), 235– 50, is the most recent work to chronicle the collapse of the St. Francis dam.

INDEX 17th Street canal, 6, 115 9th Ward, 158, 168 A. Philip Randolph, 175 ACORN, 54 African Americans, 19, 27, 48, 49, 75, 83, 105, 108, 126, 127, 128, 142, 145, 146, 152, 158, 159, 174, 175, 177, 181, 187, 193 Airline Highway, 4 Alexander Cockburn, 180 Angola State Penitentiary, 14 Angola State Prison, 12, 13 Arne Duncan, 151 Atlanta, 10 Barak Obama, 56, 149, 151, 170, 186 Baton Rouge, 10, 49, 52, 141, 147, 160, 161, 162, 180, 186 Bayard Rustin, 175 Big Charity documentary, 195 Big Uneasy documentary, 187, 191 Blanco, 65, 69, 70, 75, 144, 152, 153, 170, 195, 197 Bossier City firefighters, 11 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 188, 193, 197 Broad Avenue, 16, 22, 29 Broad Street, 12, 19 Bywater, 196 Cable Network News (CNN), 188 Café Du Monde, 129 Cajuns, 127, 128, 130 California State University Channel Islands, 86 Cambium Learning Group, 150 Canal Street, 22, 29 capitalism, 44, 45, 49, 133, 137, 138, 139, 143, 144, 169, 174, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181 capitalist crisis, 173

Charity, 152, 153, 154 Charity Hospital, 64, 65, 68, 69, 76, 142, 143, 152, 153, 154, 158, 170, 195 Charter schools, 142, 143, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 158, 170 Chicago, 133, 159 Chicago Public School District, 150 Clean Water Act of 1972, 189 Continuity of Operations Planning, 62 Convention Center, 25, 49, 193 Credo Report, 151 Creoles, 21, 127, 128, 130, 146 Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication, 67 Danziger Bridge, 67 Delacroix forest, 87, 89, 91, 92 Delgado, 18 Delgado Community College, 2 Demands Working Group, 179 Diane Ravitch, 149 Ecosocialism, 133, 138, 139 English Turn Peninsula, 87, 88, 92, 93 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 194 FEMA, 29, 36, 62, 106, 144, 145, 153, 155, 159, 169, 195 Free People of Color, 127 Freedom Budget, 175 French Quarter, 43, 46, 49, 56, 125, 129, 177, 197 G.W. Bush, 24, 106, 142, 145, 157, 176, 177, 186, 187, 197 Garden District, 125, 129, 158 global warming, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138 Greater New Orleans, 55 Green Party, 180

Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief greenhouse gas, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138 Gretna, 36, 130 Guatemala, 17, 21 Gulf of Mexico, 82, 83, 84 Gusman, 25 Haiyan, 135 Hammond, Louisiana, 4 Homeland Security, 106, 144, 145 housing, 55, 79, 120, 141, 146, 148, 155, 157 Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), 148 Houston, 53, 106 Hurricane Center, 144 Hurricane Cindy, 3, 40 Hurricane George, 3 Hurricane Katrina, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77, 79, 82, 83, 85, 95, 98, 102, 106, 108, 113, 115, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 138, 141, 143, 144, 145, 148, 151, 156, 157, 159, 160, 168, 169, 181, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 202, 203 Hyatt Regency Hotel, 30, 34, 35 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), 180 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 134 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 135 Intra -Coastal Waterway, 86 Intracoastal Waterway, 86, 117 Ivor van Heerden, 186, 189 Jackson, 4 Jackson Square, 126, 129 Jackson, Mississippi, 10 Jindal, 55, 152, 195 John Kennedy O’Toole, 197 Kathleen Blanco, 157

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leadership development programs, 65, 66 Los Angeles, 49, 188, 189, 195, 197, 202, 203 Louisiana, 66, 82, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120 Louisiana Highway Patrol, 49, 50 Louisiana State University, 118, 144, 152, 153, 154, 186, 195 Hurricane Center, 114, 186 Loyola Avenue, 30 March on Washington, 175 Mardi Gras, 33, 95, 127, 130, 197 Marlin Gusman, 15 Marxism, 48, 174 Mary Landrieu, 187 Memorial Medical Center, 64, 65 Milton Friedman, 137, 148 Mississippi, 39, 66, 84, 85, 91 Mississippi Delta, 82, 83 Mississippi Flood of 1927, 95, 96 Mississippi River, 92 Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, 85, 117, 193, 202 Mitch Landrieu, 159, 168, 169, 172, 180, 181 MREs (meals ready to eat), 16, 26, 28, 31, 34, 36 Nagin, 3, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 144, 146, 150, 197 Naomi Klein, 180 National Academy of Sciences, 135 National Association of County and City Health Officials, 66 National Guard, 25, 30, 32, 34, 49, 50, 62, 70, 75, 193 National Hurricane Center, 136 National Public Radio (NPR), 187 Navy Seals, 25 neoliberal, 176 Neoliberalism, 169, 172, 175, 176, 180 New Orleans, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 12, 16, 19, 21, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41,

206 42, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 63, 64, 69, 76, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203 New Orleans Center, 31, 32, 33, 35 New Orleans police, 35, 49, 170 New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), 66 New Orleans public housing, 177 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 83, 144, 195 New Public Management (NPM), 148 “No Child Left Behind” Act, 149 Occupy Wall Street, 179 Oprah Winfrey, 193 Orleans Parish, 88, 149, 150, 151 Orleans Parish Prison, 12 Orleans parish schools, 151 Osama bin Laden, 187 Owens Valley, 202, 203 Oxnard, CA, 203 Paul Krugman, 137 Philippines, 135 police, 48 prison, 14, 15, 150 prisoner, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 105 prisoners, 24 public health, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 77, 78

Index public housing, 142, 146, 147, 148, 158, 160, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 195, 196 Rampart, 45, 129 Rampart Street, 44 Ray Nagin, 145, 157, 193 Recovery School District (RSD), 150, 151, 152 Red Cross, 10, 11, 25, 38, 42, 43 Riverwalk, 22 Saint Francis Dam, 202 Saint Louis Cathedral, 126 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, 65, 68 sheriff, 9, 12, 19, 25, 28 St. Francis Dam, 203 St. Thomas housing project, 147, 177 Superdome, 2, 3, 9, 12, 19, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 49, 55, 193 System Change Not Climate Change, 138 Teach for America (TFA), 150 Tennessee Williams, 197 Texas, 24, 26, 29, 35, 36, 37, 52, 53, 106, 150 The Big Uneasy documentary, 186, 187, 188, 190, 194 tourism, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131 Tulane, 9, 12, 20, 30 Tulane Avenue, 8, 20, 24, 28, 29, 30 Tulane University, 196 typhoon Haiyan, 135 Uptown, 39, 145, 146, 158 US Army Corps of Engineers, 83, 103, 108, 113, 116, 144, 145, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 202 US Congress, 143, 189, 191, 192, 194 US Department of Defense, 191 Vallas Group Inc., 150 Washington DC, 52, 143

Hurricane Katrina and the Lessons of Disaster Relief wetland(s), 96 William "Bill" Clinton, 142, 176, 177 William Faulkner, 197

William Mulholland, 202, 203 Women, 17, 19, 28, 34, 63, 138 Woodlands Conservancy, 86 WWL, 9

207