Vincanne Adams is an anthropologist, and former director of Medical Anthropology with UC Berkeley. Diana English is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford Hospital and Clinics. Taslim van Hattum is a well-known researcher focused on public health, she currently works as Director of Behavioral Health Integration for the Louisiana Public Health Institute.
Emergency response is addressed both in short term, through the interviews with survivors about their escape from the floodwaters and transport out of the city, as well as the lasting effects of the program and response efforts. The immediate response was not as effective as it could have been, in great part the collaborative efforts of communities rather than response groups. The delay in the arrival of response groups such as the National Guard and the Red Cross was in part due to a lack of communication, after the hurricane a significant amount of damage was done to the infrastructure of the city, creating difficulties for the rest of the country to know how serious the flooding was when the levees broke. This delayed the response and likely was responsible for the loss of many lives and continued traumatic experiences of many survivors. The following years showed an immediate lack of interest by the nation once the initial disaster was over. The article highlights this problem with emergency response, that rebuilding after a disaster can be even more challenging then the initial response and requires continued support for those effected.
The article uses historical statistics to support the claims of physical displacement and the psychological feelings of displacement, as well as accounts of the government programs that were put in place and the public’s lack of faith in the ability of these programs.
The main argument is supported primarily through interview segments with displaced residents from New Orleans, some of whom had returned to the city and some who had not yet been able to go home. The article also supplied descriptions of the government programs and security teams that were assigned to protect the city, which supported the claims that the government failed to properly support survivors. Finally the article included statistics as to the conditions of the communities after several years and the percent of the population that had returned, rebuilt, or was still living in trailers or temporary housing.
The bibliography shows that the article used extensive resources for accurately describing the programs and funding options for displaced residents of New Orleans, as well as to cite statistics. A significant portion of the article was interviews conducted by the authors about the evacuation, flooding, and lasting effects of Katrina. While some of these interviews were cited, many seem to have been conducted for this article specifically.
The article focuses on the lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent years of rebuilding that never fully repaired the communities and lives destroyed. The authors attribute a lasting sense of displacement to the treatment of survivors directly after the destruction of New Orleans, and the subsequent failures of the government to effectively support displaced survivors.
The article has been referenced in several other published works that look at hurricane Katrina and the long term effects, including Aging Disaster: Mortality, Vulnerability, and Long-Term Recovery Among Katrina Survivors, on which Vincanne Adams and Taslim van Hattum both worked.