![]() It took two days for 1,000 more FEMA officials to arrive, but once they did, FEMA "slowed the evacuation with unworkable paperwork and certification requirements." And according to Vox, when the Louisiana National Guard asked FEMA for 700 buses to help with the evacuation, only 100 were sent in response. The Black population of New Orleans has also fallen, since out of the 175,000 Black residents who left New Orleans, over 75,000 never returned.Īnd when the levees were breached, there were only two FEMA workers on the ground. According to FiveThirtyEight, the Black middle class in particular was all but wiped out, and Black household incomes have fallen. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Black families have also had a harder time rebounding than white families. And as Rob Nixon notes in " Slow Violence, Neoliberalism, and Environmental Picaresque," "Discrimination predates disaster: in failures to maintain protective structures, failures at pre-emergency hazard mitigation, failures to maintain infrastructure, failures to organize evacuation plans for those who lack private transport, all of which make the poor and racial minorities disproportionately vulnerable to catastrophe." Meanwhile, in the Senate committee report, race isn't mentioned once in over 700 pages. They were acquitted in 2007.Īs a result, according to ESRI, most minority communities ended up living in neighborhoods that were cheaply built and in areas more susceptible to flooding. The owners, Salvador and Mabel Mangano, ended up facing the only criminal charges directly related to Hurricane Katrina, as they were charged with negligent homicide due to their refusal to evacuate their residents. Rita's Nursing Home, residents were reportedly abandoned by the staff, and 35 people drowned as a result. In the United States, Louisiana has the "highest rate of beds per 1,000 persons ages 85 or more," but over half of the nursing homes in New Orleans decided against early evacuation.Īcross 13 nursing homes and six hospitals that were investigated in Louisiana, at least 140 patients died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. This was especially clear in the poor evacuations of nursing homes. The food inside the freezers had soon rotted, and " the smell was inescapable."Īccording to NBC News, the average age of victims was 69, and "just under half of all victims were 75 or older." The Social Science Research Council writes that this disparity occurred because elderly people were neither evacuated nor protected effectively. The backup generator for the lights was barely able to be kept afloat, and after the water supply gave out, the toilets " became inoperable and began to overflow." With the failure of the air conditioning, temperatures inside the Superdome reached the high 90s, with heavy humidity. Unfortunately, due to the sensationalist stories regarding the Superdome, the rumors were used to justify "turn New Orleans into a prison city," according to The Guardian.ĭespite the fact that the Superdome became the city's " refuge of last resort," it was woefully inadequate for housing the thousands of evacuees. NBC News reports that although there were stories of freezers full of bodies, "no such pile of bodies was found." The Society Pages writes that there were six deaths in the Superdome: one by suicide, one by overdose, and four from natural causes. However, it was later found that despite the poor conditions in the Superdome, "it was not the murderous hellhole" it was reported to be. Initially, the Superdome was described as a " lawless, depraved, and chaotic" place, with reports of numerous murders.
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