The Pathology Of Katrina

The people of New Orleans, Louisiana believed that it would be a storm like any other, nothing to set this Hurricane apart from the others that they had dealt with over their lives living in their beloved city below sea level. Unfortunately, that proved to not be the case and indeed it would be a storm they would remember for the rest of their lives.

The devastating and deeply rooted traumatic effects of Hurricane Katrina will live in the psyches of the people of New Orleans and beyond for generations to come. Katrina was the largest and third strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States barreling in as a Category 5 with up to 175 mile-per-hour winds and a 20-ft storm surge that would create a humanitarian emergency with the likes never before seen in the United States. This hurricane caused unimaginable death, destruction, and displacement, leaving a known death toll of 1,836 and an unknown number thought to be washed out to sea. The real truth is we will never know exactly how many people lost their lives during Hurricane Katrina.

“When communities are rebuilt, they must be even better and stronger than before the storm,” (“Bush”). This is what former president George W. Bush said during his speech in New Orleans concerning the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was a massive natural disaster that consisted of high powered winds and immense amounts of water. The hurricane was initially a category 3, but gradually rose to the classification of a category 5 storm, which is the largest storm there is (“Hurricane Irene”). In fact, there were accounts of winds recorded at about 127 miles per hour in the Gulf areas such as Grand Isle, Louisiana, and near the Mississippi River (“Hurricane Katrina Statistics”). All of these factors are made

2. Gender roles impact identity just by showing the ways a person is “supposed” to act in society. A typical man does manly things, right? So, a boy who grows up watching a man do that can be influenced to grow up

The onset of Hurricane Katrina proved to be the very element that separated the economically challenged residents of New Orleans from financially stable residents. The residents who resided in the suburbs were able to evacuate early because of accessibility to more resources. Inner city residents were forced to wait on the arrival of Katrina. This ideology of the residents and the authorities led to a reactive approach being employed in efforts to save inner city residents. Although the efforts did save some residents, the emotional blow had already been received and soon would be reopen with the acceptance of less than adequate rescue accommodations. According to Jacqueline Rhoads, Faye Mitchell, and Susan Rick (2006)

Hurricane Katrina will always be remembered for the devastation it caused, my close friends, the Adams family knows this better than anyone else. My family has been close friends with the Adams for nearly my whole life, the thing that stood out about them the most was their passion to help others and their obsession for the New Orleans Saints. The Adams have numerous relatives who live in Louisiana, including their parents on the father’s side. The parents live just twenty minutes south of New Orleans on a small farm. During Hurricane Katrina, when the levees were breached, water flooded the town and their farm. They lost what few livestock they owned and their home was damaged beyond repair due to the high flood waters. The couple had to seek shelter on their roof until help could arrive. Meanwhile, the Adams family had no way of contacting them to ensure that they were alright and worried for almost a week. Finally, almost a week had passed before the parents were able to contact our friends, the Adams. After the parents were rescued from the roof of their flooded house, they were taken to the Superdome that housed thousands of other helpless victims. The only reason the parents had chosen not to evacuate the city like most other residents is because they both had survived Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992 with minor damage. Also the parents could not bear to abandon their livestock, which was their main source of income. After staying in the Superdome

As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans, federal and local officials underestimated the severity of the storm. Once the storm hit, they believed that it was not horrible and that it would be easy to recover from the storm. They were not expecting the levee system to fail and that 80% of the city would be under water hours after the storm passed. Once the levees failed, it took days before residents of New Orleans to get the help that they needed and many people lost their lives waiting for help. Since many New Orleans police officers lived in the city, they were the first to respond to the crisis. Due to the lack of electricity, it was hard for officials to communicate with each other, making crisis response difficult. People reported acts of violence without actually having proof. The media publicized the inaccurate information without getting evidence.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed onto the gulf shores of Louisiana in 2005, few people understood what impact the storm would have on the city of New Orleans. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Katrina caused an estimated $108 billion dollars of damage, displaced 250,000 residents and killed over 1800 lives, most being African-American and the poor ( Downey, 2011). To present a sociological view of how Hurricane Katrina affected the people of New Orleans, one must first understand how the people of New Orleans lived before Katrina caused its mass destruction. The focus of this paper will be to uncover how race and class affected the people of New Orleans pre-Katrina and how post-Katrina has altered their cultural

By the 1960s the ecosystem concept had become a central ecological idea.3,4 It dovetailed with the rise of systems thinking in other fields, for instance in cybernetics, a new science that studied feedback and control in any kind of system.

Hurricane Katrina will forever remain as one of the most devastating natural disasters to have taken place on American soil. On August 27th, 2005, more than a day before Katrina made its way to New Orleans, President Bush, at the request of Louisiana state Governor Kathleen declared a state of emergency to both Louisiana and Mississippi. In doing so, these areas were considered major disaster areas that the federal government would concentrate most of its resources. Despite a declared emergency and the need to evacuate the city immediately, many residents decided to stay in their homes and shelter in place for various reasons, while others left the city as suggested or seek refuge at the state’s designated last resort shelter, The Superdome.

Oil spills are usually associated with environmental disasters; because of this the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and related policies have inadequate amount of tools that will help humans deal with these accidents. When the Macondo blow out happened, we had to assess the impact that it also had on human health, mental and physical because it had affected a large area. The Macondo spill unfortunately happened less than five years after Hurricane Katrina damaged Louisiana and Mississippi coast. Clearly, a lesson that was learnt from the oil spill was that the nation wasn’t prepared for widespread, poor effects on human health and mental well-being. Most of the communities along the Gulf had resided there for the majority of their lives or at least 20 years; this oil spill had worried the residents about payments, money issues, and the stability of their communities, which in turn affected their health.

The current problem which the city of New Orleans is experiencing is flooding which is caused by heavy storms as well as hurricane Katrina. For instance, August this year, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards acknowledged a state of emergency since city’s failure of water pumping system exposes the residents of the city to the greater menace of tainted –weather flooding. This was less than a week where a flash flood had completely overwhelmed the city's water pumping system, and the city officials were struggling to make some repairs to the fire-damaged equipment which are at a power station plant and also shore up its drainage system. Therefore several residents were inundated by this incident. However, hundreds of homes as well as businesses

Hurricane Katrina was a horrible disaster that made so many people's lives miserable “1.7 million people were affected by the hurricane” ("Hurricane Katrina"). It came through on the South Coast and destroyed anything in its path mainly New Orleans though. The hurricane destroyed billions of dollars worth of homes, businesses, and anything else on the South Coast where it struck. The main reason the flooding was so bad in New Orleans, was because New Orleans was and is under sea level, which makes it very vulnerable to flooding, and hurricanes. New Orleans is also a very poor area so people who didn’t have much already lost everything they owned.

Like Hurricane Sandy, it was a perfect storm that was given just the right conditions to grow into a monstrosity but also landed in an area that was barely ready for the incoming catastrophe. Hurricane Katrina was able to form to such a massive degree do to that it grew in the remnants of a Tropical depression, the shape of the Gulf of Mexico, and the natural defense of the mainland. Katrina was given ample room to grow, fueled by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and grew exponentially from the remnants of a previous tropical storm as well. All of these factors allowed for a gigantic hurricane to form and nearly wipe away the Big Easy. However, despite the destruction caused, one would hope that other coastal or hurricane prone towns have learned from Katrina and the strength of nature at its

BBC news introduces the article by giving a statistic showing the devastating effect of hurricane Katrina on the gulf coast. The article covered Katrina’s impact on New Orleans, which was hit the worst, and on other areas in the United States. BBC showed little bias in their coverage of Katrina. They used specific examples from New Orleans such as quotes from New Orleans resident Harvey Jackson when he lost his wife and his house. Jackson said, “We got up the roof and the water came... "I held her hand tight as I could and she told me 'You can't hold me'. She said 'Take care of the kids and the grandkids” (BBC). The use of an individual account created an emotional appeal to the reader. BBC using Jackson’s story shows how hurricane Katrina