![]() However, those evacuees who had arrived destitute were still, on average, experiencing extreme poverty. Within the next couple of months, emergency food services closed within five or six months (depending on the case) FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) benefits were depleted.Īs disaster services declined, household members were expected to find jobs, and to receive any needed assistance from regular poverty and human welfare programs. Within one month, the emergency shelters were closing, as social workers raced to find even temporary housing, sometimes in isolated neighborhoods outside the city. Katrina, however, displaced many on the Gulf Coast for months, years, and, for some, the rest of their lives.īoth our research team and the city of Austin tracked the experiences of evacuees as disaster services were reduced and finally closed. In most disasters requiring evacuation, evacuees can head back home in a matter of days or weeks. However, this system was not designed or financed to care for people more than four or five weeks. There they received medical care, food, shelter, clean clothing and advice about their next steps. Coast Guard/Petty Officer 2nd Class NyxoLyno Cangemi/Handout Relief efforts unprepared for long-term assistanceĮvacuees were received with a large but hastily constructed and temporary disaster help program, and nearly 5,000 people stayed in the emergency shelters opened by the city. Rescued survivors from a New Orleans apartment building. ![]() It took her weeks to discover where family members had landed. One mother, brought to the New Orleans airport for evacuation along with her extended family, told us how she was separated just before boarding from her brother, her adult daughter and her aunt. They were often separated from family members. Many lacked basic identification, a change of clothing, or necessary prescription drugs. Evacuees from these areas, which suffered the worst flooding and storm damage, often arrived with very little. While Gulf Coast residents from all walks of life came to Austin in the aftermath of the storm, those who occupied the poorest, and most heavily African-American, wards in New Orleans arrived with the fewest resources. ![]() The experiences of Katrina evacuees illuminate the strengths and weaknesses in our disaster and poverty policies, particularly as they affect the poorest among us. (Some of our research appears in the book, Community Lost: The State, Civil Society, and Displaced Survivors of Hurricane Katrina) and in this article.) We participated in interviews with evacuees whom we met as they first sought public assistance, and we also drew information from our work with city data collected by city of Austin service providers. Trained as an anthropologist, but with a social worker’s perspective, I have spent most of my career studying the lived experiences of United States families in poverty, and the ways in which poverty and other social welfare programs affect their lives.Īs 10,000 Katrina evacuees came into Austin, I joined a team of researchers who worked to understand the experiences of evacuees, and how they experienced the help offered them both as evacuees and as impoverished residents of a new city in a new state.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |