How the government has failed hurricane victims… repeatedly

Part I: Katrina

Hurricane Katrina was an unusual storm in many ways. It was the first hurricane that killed over 1,000 people in the United States since 1928, when a Category Four storm struck Florida. In fact, there have been only five such hurricanes since the U.S. became a nation: two hurricanes in 1893, the Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900, the 1928 Florida hurricane… and Katrina, in 2005. And its toll in human life and property is not even finalized yet.

As of July 2006—ten months after Hurricane Katrina–over 1,800 people in Mississippi and Louisiana remain reported missing. Certainly some of these are duplicate names, and some of the people likely have been found (dead or alive) but not removed from the missing persons databases. However, for a number of this magnitude, this cannot account for more than a fraction of the total.
Engineers and building experts have determined that most of the total destruction on the Coast occurred because of storm surge. Storm surge in the hurricane acted as a “reverse tsunami” and slowly flooded the coastline, only to be “sucked” back into the sea as the storm passed—pulling buildings and people with it. It is grimly easy to make a guess as to the fate of many of the missing.

The number of missing, ten months after the storm struck, is as high as the number of confirmed dead. This is yet another way that Katrina is, shall we say, different. After most recent major hurricane strikes, the number of reported missing is fewer than 100, and the death toll is finalized far earlier than ten months after the storm. It begs the question, “What’s taking so long?”

After a natural disaster of this magnitude, unknown in the United States since before the Great Depression, surely the relief agencies would make an unparalleled effort, one would think. Following the catastrophe of 1928, which resulted in more than 2,500 deaths along Lake Okeechobee, what disaster relief existed did a notoriously poor job of handling the recovery. For years after that terrible storm, the death toll was listed as significantly less, around 1,800, because hundreds of victims had been poor, often black, and their bodies were not identified before burial. It was a disgraceful scandal that was finally acknowledged when the storm’s death toll was officially raised in the records. Surely, in these modern times, the country would not allow gross negligence, racism, and classism to interfere in the aftermath of a tragedy. Surely the government would take proper care of the survivors this time.

Obviously, I would not be writing this piece, had that been true. As has been documented in the media, the government, on multiple levels, utterly failed the residents of the city of New Orleans. What is less commonly known is that the negligence was not limited to that city, nor, in fact, was it limited to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Later:
Part II: "Nothing Left"–A Volunteer’s Perspective
Part III: The Priority List
Part IV: A Warning Shot in 2003?
Part V: Fiasco in Florida
Part VI: A Dire Situation