Shirley Laska

Restoration of the Mississippi Delta: Lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita showed the vulnerability of coastal communities and how human activities that caused deterioration of the Mississippi Deltaic Plain (MDP) exacerbated this vulnerability. The MDP formed by dynamic interactions between river and coast at various temporal and spatial scales, and human activity has reduced these interactions at all scales. Restoration efforts aim to re-establish this dynamic interaction, with emphasis on reconnecting the river to the deltaic plain. Science must guide MDP restoration, which will provide insights into delta restoration elsewhere and generally into coasts facing climate change in times of resource scarcity.

RECONSTRUCTION OF NEW ORLEANS AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA: A RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE

Four propositions drawn from 60 years of natural hazard and reconstruction research provide a comparative and historical perspective on the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Decisions taken over its 288-year history that have made New Orleans so vulnerable to Katrina reflect a long-term pattern of societal response to hazard events—reducing consequences to relatively frequent events, and increasing vulnerability to very large and rare events. Thus Katrinas consequences for New Orleans were truly catastrophic—accounting for most of the estimated 1,570 deaths of Louisiana residents and

Social Vulnerabilities and Hurricane Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster in New Orleans

40–50 billion in monetary losses. A comparative sequence and timing of recovery provides a calendar of historical experience against which to gauge progress in reconstruction. Using this calendar, the emergency postdisaster period appears to be longer in duration than that of any other studied disaster. The restoration period, the time taken to restore urban services for the smaller population, is in keeping with or ahead of historical experience. The effort to reconstruct the physical environment and urban infrastructure is likely to take 8–11 years. Conflicting policy goals for reconstruction of rapid recovery, safety, betterment, and equity are already evident. Actions taken demonstrate the rush to rebuild the familiar in contrast to planning efforts that emphasize betterment. Because disasters tend to accelerate existing economic, social, and political trends, the large losses in housing, population, and employment after Katrina are likely to persist and, at best, only partly recover. However, the possibility of breaking free of this gloomy trajectory is feasible and has some historical precedent.

Three Years after Katrina: Lessons for Community Resilience

Studies have been done to show how social structures and processes that place at risk specific segments of human populations, as well as human populations in general, can create a disaster when a hurricane or other natural hazard strikes. The authors describe Hurricane Katrina and its impact, and how the stage was set for disaster through New Orleans political and economic history and land development patterns. The authors use past research to analyze the extent to which risk factors such as tenancy, gender, disability, age, minority status, and poverty were present in the pre-Katrina population of New Orleans and how they were related to citizen vulnerability. Influence of social vulnerability on outcomes of recovery, storm impacts, evacuation, preparation, mitigation and other Hurricane Katrina stages are discussed.The authors conclude that until social justice and inequality are addressed, communities cannot be disaster resilient.

Place Attachment and Environmental Change in Coastal Louisiana

WWW.ENVIRONMENTMAGAZINE.ORG VOLUME 50 NUMBER 5 N ew Orleans proved that it could recover from 27 major floods before Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed its levees in August 2005, flooding 80 percent of the city, causing some 1,300 deaths, forcing an extended evacuation, relocating (perhaps permanently) 100,000 residents, seriously damaging 70 percent of the city’s residences, and disrupting basic municipal services, economic activity, and social networks. The monetary loss to the city is estimated at

Organizing Hazards, Engineering Disasters? Improving the Recognition of Political-Economic Factors in the Creation of Disasters

40–50 billion. Three years after Katrina, levees have been partly rebuilt, the equivalent of two-thirds of the pre-storm population has returned, building permits for 30 percent of residences have been issued, and the hospitality economy has been restored. But large areas of the city are empty tracts, mainstays of the economy in medicine and Three Years after Katrina Lessons for Community Resilience

Blending Geospatial Technology and Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Enhance Restoration Decision-Support Processes in Coastal Louisiana

This article examines how residents of communities frame environmental change. Specifically, how do respondents from Louisianas coastal communities understand coastal wetland loss? For this article, the authors rely on 47 in-depth interviews from communities in two coastal parishes (counties). Respondents convey the meanings they give to land loss through constructing a narrative of place. The authors use a phenomenological approach that focuses on how stories are told and the subjective interpretations of societal members. Residents narratives of place reveal a strong degree of place attachment where ideas of fragility and uniqueness are employed to frame the place in which they live. The authors suggest that the slow onset disaster of coastal land loss forces a constant and heightened awareness of place attachment. The data for this study are collected during 2002 and 2003, and although restoration processes are well underway, for the most part, residents felt shut out. Their alienation increases their sense of fragility about place, and they warn of disasters like those of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As major restoration plans are considered, the nature of residents place attachment can shed light on the role the communities themselves can play in policy and restoration projects. In this regard, the meanings in residents attachments are important for how and what decisions are made.

Successful application of GIS technology for post-9/11 disaster management: overcoming challenges, capitalising on advantages

Disaster studies have made important progress in recognizing the unequally distributed consequences of disasters, but there has been less progress in analyzing social factors that help create natural disasters. Even well-known patterns of hazard-creation tend to be interpreted generically – as representing economic development or capitalism – rather than through focusing on the more specific dynamics involved. We illustrate this point with two recent and well-known cases of flooding – those in the upper Mississippi River Valley and in the Katrina-related devastation of New Orleans. In the former case, damage was caused in part by building the very kinds of higher and stronger floodwalls that were shown to be inadequate in the latter. In the New Orleans case, a more important factor in the death and destruction was the excavation of a transportation canal. In both cases, and many more, the underlying causes of damage to humans as well as to the environment has involved a three-part pattern, supported by the political system – spreading the costs, concentrating the economic benefits and hiding the real risks. In very real senses, these have been floods of folly, created not just by extreme weather events, but by deadly and avoidable patterns of political-economic choices. Comparable patterns appear to deserve greater attention in other contexts, as well.

What If Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed New Orleans

Abstract More informed coastal restoration decisions have become increasingly important given limited resources available for restoration projects and the increasing magnitude of marsh degradation and loss across the Gulf Coast. This research investigated the feasibility and benefits of integrating geospatial technology with the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of an indigenous Louisiana coastal population to assess the impacts of current and historical ecosystem change on community viability. The primary goal was to provide coastal resource managers with a decision-support tool that allows for a more comprehensive method of assessing localized ecological change in the Gulf Coast region, which can also benefit human community sustainability. Using remote sensing (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS) mapping products, integrated with a coastal communitys TEK to achieve this goal, the research team determined a method for producing vulnerability/sustainability mapping products for an ecosystem-dependent livelihood base of a coastal population based on information derived from RS imagery prioritized with TEK. This study also demonstrates how such an approach can engage affected community residents who are interested in determining and addressing the causes and mitigating the decline of marsh habitat. Historical image data sets of the study area were acquired to understand evolution of land change to current conditions and project future vulnerability. Image-processing procedures were developed and applied to produce maps that detail land change in the study area at time intervals from 1968 to 2009. This information was combined in a GIS with acquired TEK and scientific data sets relating to marsh vegetation health and vulnerability characteristics to produce mapping products that provide new information for use in the coastal restoration decision-making process. This information includes: (1) marsh areas that are most vulnerable; and (2) the areas that are most significant to community sustainability.

Planning, Plans, and People: Professional Expertise, Local Knowledge, and Governmental Action in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Post-9/11 conditions have modified disaster management requirements increasing the need for quick access to an array of geocoded information about community critical infrastructure, populations at risk and risk response resources needed for emergency incident decision making. Concomitantly, the risk assessment and risk reduction requirements to prevent disasters from occurring that have emerged post 9/11 require similar data. Merging the needs of the different disaster response phases into the same GIS creates a powerful tool. The process of creating the system, in turn, serves to develop organisational and community capacity needed for 21st century disaster management. This article reports on the creation of such a GIS-based software application, E3R.