Ten years ago, four-fifths of the city of New Orleans was destroyed by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina--a storm that affected Florida, Cuba, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. By Aug. 28, the storm’s intensity escalated to a Category 5 storm with winds at 160 miles per hour, and 25,000 to 30,000 New Orleans residents took refuge in the Superdome. On Sept. 2, Congress approved a $10.5 billion aid package, and President Bush announced, “I am satisfied with the response. I am not satisfied with the results.” By Nov. 21, estimates put the death toll at 1,306 people. Looking back, how did Katrina affect you, and how can the cities be better prepared for future superstorms?

Professor Jasmine M. Waddel (HS)

When the hurricanes hit, the idea that I was created in New Orleans by two trailblazers who left their Gulf Coasts homes in Florida and Alabama to become the first in their families to graduate from college weighted me with a sense of responsibility for the resiliency of the region. To this end, I held a senior research position at Oxfam America where I led reports on the impact of the storms on the lives of socially excluded populations including the working poor, undocumented immigrants, women and people of color.  I have an article, “Employment Change among Hurricane Katrina Evacuees: The Impacts of Race and Place,” with Sara Chaganti, coming out in a peer reviewed journal later this year that shows the benefits of remaining in place, despite disaster.  All of my work suggests that empowering people through social justice advocacy is the only way to prepare for future storms.

Prof. Jasmine M. Waddel (HS) is a visiting scholar at the Heller School. Her work on race relations in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was published in Brookings Institution Press and in a New Republic blog post.

Rebecca Holman ’17

The effect Katrina had on me was, of course, a negative one, but I think many citizens of New Orleans can agree with me when I say one of the worst parts of Katrina was the response from the rest of the United States. At eleven years old, I heard news reports where people claimed that New Orleans deserved all that it got. People tried to tell us that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God. It was not. It was a failing on the part of the U.S. government to effectively protect its people. The Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency, was in charge of constructing and maintaining the levees that protected the city. Their levees broke, and not because a category five storm barreled through them. Katrina hit New Orleans as a category three. New Orleans was prepared, the United States was not.

Rebecca Holman ’17 is a resident of New Orleans. 

Professor George J. Hall (ECON)

After Katrina devastated so much of the gulf coast, my father volunteered for a month in Louisiana with the Red Cross. Although this touched my family, I’d like to make it clear that it doesn’t matter how Katrina affected me. All I did was watch the destruction from my living room. What really matters is what people from the affected areas went through and are still going through. To prepare for future natural disasters, I support a serious implementation of evacuation plans, especially focused on the indigent, who have fewer options for a safe exit and sustained support. Unfortunately, I also believe in a sincere consideration of relocating the city’s population. I say this with an extremely heavy heart and with the awareness that NOLA has a soul. But as the sea levels rise, we creep toward the inevitable day when the city goes underwater for good, and that scares me beyond belief.

Prof. George J. Hall is a professor of Economics. 

Molly Pearlman ’16