Vincanne Adams - Former director of Medical Anthropology with UC Berkeley.
Diana English - Assistant Professor at Stanford Hospital and Clinics.
Taslim van Hattum - Director of Behavioral Health Integration for the Louisiana Public Health Institute. Research focuses on public health.
Katrina, being that astronomical disaster that it was, has a response factor on a whole new level. The article touches on the response both immediately after and in a longer term context. It touches upon the aid provided by relief agencies throughout and the difficulties faced by those organizations due to scarcity and over demand of recourses.
Emergency response isn't specifically addressed, though follow-up aid is the main focus.
The article uses personal anecdotes from individuals that were there during Katrina and data obtained from the NIH and FEMA.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, numerous issues arose for the evacuated citizens of New Orleans.First, the immediate affects of lack of access were apparent, such as lack of schooling, pharmacies, and employment. Then psychological affects appeared as people were told they couldn't return home, even if they were minimally damaged. The combined affects of the physical and mental conditions, combined with the lack of physicians and psychiatrists, led to a massive instability in the people.
The government further exacerbated this instability by providing limited resources and shelter for victims. More exactly, the resources and shelter were unevenly distributed to the victims, favoring white mid- to upper-class citizens. The funds that otherwise should have gone to essential care facilities and housing, were unseen by the people. Promises of finanicial aid were never fulfilled, and no legislation (such as that in the wake of 9/11) was passed to support victims.
This leads to the creation of "disaster capitalsim" in which private companies benefit from the disaster and state-of-emergency, raising prices and suspending insurance policies. Poor government oversight of the private sector created deficiencies and health crises.
The article concludes by suggesting the response to Katrina be examined to prevent the same mistakes from occuring in the future. However, there is a lack of optimism, as the system of response is ingrained into American Society.
“The response to the disaster was recognized as a bureaucratic nightmare that, regardless of the intent of the federal and state governments, appeared to homeowners as a sign of their having been abandoned.”
"What I experienced was coming back to the devastation of the city. No grocery stores, no cell phone service, certainly no phone service, no regular phone service. We actually had to get other cell phones. You know, it was a ghost town."
'“Chronic disaster syndrome” thus refers in this analysis to the cluster of trauma-and posttrauma-related phenomena that are at once individual, social, and political and that are associated with disaster as simultaneously causative and experiential of a chronic condition of distress in relation to displacement."
I did research into disaster capitalism. I found a book written by Naomi Klein titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", and it mostly disscusses how places may use event such as Katrina to pass legistlation that will benefit their own personal desires.
This article examines "chronic disaster syndrome," a situation that arises in the wake of a large-scale disaster that perpetuates the life in an emergency through government institutionalized and private-sector supported barriers. The article first looks at some of the physical and mental conditions that were created or exacerbated by the disaster. It then follows up with the government's betrayal of the people, first in providing support to the victims, and then actively barring victims from recovery. The article ends with the future in the wake of this disaster, including the "perpetuating of emergency" and continued institutions in place as a result of the hurricane.
This article is supported with the following:
- Anecdotes from survivors whom have experienced the turmoil of living in the remains after Katrina.
- Showing the disproportional treatment of individuals based on wealth. Those wealthy enough are able to relocate, but those who live in poverty are less likely able to relocate and forced to live in subpar conditions.
- Showing price gouging done by private companies in order to gain funds from federal funding.
This article has a very lengthy bibliography which contains a variety of government resources for data collection. Many of other papers cited focus on Katrina response, this shows the ideals this article are widley supported by other researchers and scholars.