Louisiana - 5 years later study shows heavy health costs of hurricane Katrina

Pathfinder · Aug 29, 2010

HURRICANE KATRINA — MOST DESTRUCTIVE HURRICANE EVER TO STRIKE THE U.S.

On August 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina was in the Gulf of Mexico where it powered up to a Category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale packing winds estimated at 175 mph.

At 7:10 a.m. EDT on August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southern Plaquemines Parish Louisiana, just south of Buras, as a Category 3 hurricane.

Aug. 29, 2005 at 9:15 a.m.

http://www.katrina.noaa.gov/

Katrina’s Children

(2008) 83 min
Explores the impact of hurricane Katrina from the point of view of children from all walks of life in New Orleans

This memorable and highly evocative documentary examines the effects of Hurricane Katrina through the eyes, voices, and drawings of the city’s children. With their disarming honesty and innocent wisdom, the children are at once witnesses, victims, heroes and survivors. The film, like the children, is both deeply moving and at times refreshingly funny.

The children come from all walks of life: from the daughter of a former queen of Carnival, to underprivileged kids still stuck in Texas. Their common denominator is Katrina - an event that affected them all, to varying degrees. The similarities and differences between these children are at times surprising and reveal patterns and problems that predate Katrina.

By focusing exclusively on children’s experiences, KATRINA’S CHILDREN humanizes this epic storm and seeks to understand the tragic ramifications in a small intimate way. The children’s artwork is brought to life through animation and captures with vivid poignancy the children’s interior universe.

Aching with sadness, yet grounded in hope, KATRINA’S CHILDREN is ultimately a celebration of children’s extraordinary resilience and a tribute to New Orleans’ unique and indomitable spirit.

Credits

You can view the movie here:

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/watch/katrinas_children/

Roehl_JC · Aug 30, 2010

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Is there any research on the effects that Hurricane Katrina's aftermath had on those of us Red Cross workers and volunteers who cared for the families and children of Katrina evacuees?
I am in NZ now, but 5 yrs ago today I was in Austin, and on the 2nd day we were already hearing news items of desperate people needing urgent rescue and removal from N.O.
That's when I got up from my armchair, and cried, for I realized if help was coming it would probably have to be from the Red Cross vols. I saw some elderly people and children at N.O.'s Convention Center crying and I decide that those folks were like my mother and my own family and so I went and joined up and helped for nearly a month of 60-80 hr weeks. Whatever I've done since, nothing compares with the days/nights I spent with Katrina victims learning from them what it's like to go through such a tragedy. My heart goes out to everyone who's going through such events, whether in New Orleans or Pakistan. Sometimes we just need to be there for those in dire need. Help one another, that's the way of humanity.
W/ prayers and love to FT readers and mods/posters. jcr

Pathfinder · Sep 9, 2010

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Published on August 23, 2010

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Children as Bellwethers of Recovery:
Dysfunctional Systems and the Effects of Parents,
Households, and Neighborhoods on Serious Emotional
Disturbance in Children After Hurricane Katrina

David M. Abramson, PhD; Yoon Soo Park, MS; Tasha Stehling-Ariza, MPH; Irwin Redlener, MD

Abstract

Background: Over 160 000 children were displaced from their homes after Hurricane Katrina. Tens of thousands of these children experienced the ongoing chaos and uncertainty of displacement and transiency, as well as significant social disruptions in their lives. The objectives of this study were to estimate the long-term mental health effects of such exposure among children, and to elucidate the systemic pathways through which the disaster effect operates.

Methods: The prevalence of serious emotional disturbance was assessed among 283 school-aged children in Louisiana and Mississippi. These children are part of the Gulf Coast Child & Family Health Study, involving a longitudinal cohort of 1079 randomly sampled households in the two states, encompassing a total of 427 children, who have been interviewed in 4 annual waves of data collection since January 2006. The majority of data for this analysis was drawn from the fourth round of data.

Results: Although access to medical care for children has expanded considerably since 2005 in the region affected by Hurricane Katrina, more than 37% of children have received a clinical mental health diagnosis of depression, anxiety, or behavior disorder, according to parent reports. Children exposed to Hurricane Katrina were nearly 5 times as likely as a pre-Katrina cohort to exhibit serious emotional disturbance. Path analyses confirm the roles played by neighborhood social disorder, household stressors, and parental limitations on children's emotional and behavioral functioning.

Conclusions: Children and youth are particularly vulnerable to the effects of disasters. They have limited capacity to independently mobilize resources to help them adapt to stressful postdisaster circumstances, and are instead dependent upon others to make choices that will influence their household, neighborhood, school, and larger social environment. Children's mental health recovery in a postdisaster setting can serve as a bellwether indicator of successful recovery or as a lagging indicator of system dysfunction and failed recovery.

.../

Full text of the original research:

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http://www.dmphp.org/cgi/rapidpdf/dmp.2010.7v1

Pathfinder · Feb 28, 2011

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Katrina's ruins home to thousands of homeless

More than five years after hurricane, New Orleans struggles with more than 40,000 abandoned properties

By CAIN BURDEAU
The Associated Press

updated <ABBR style="DISPLAY: inline" class="dtstamp updated" title=2011-02-13T11:49:38 itxtvisited="1">2/13/2011 6:49:38 AM ET</ABBR> 2011-02-13T11:49:38

Excerpt:

Blighted New Orleans

Enter America's Queen City of Blight.

More than five years after Katrina, New Orleans is struggling to deal with about43,000 blighted residential properties ? in various states of neglect and collapse. The city has a larger percentage of blighted properties than any other U.S. city, about a quarter of its housing stock.

And in these wastelands, an estimated 3,000 homeless find refuge every night. They are wretched people suffering from mental illness, disability or substance abuse, or simply down-on-their-luck working poor. They can be found sleeping in schools, rundown shotgun-style houses, warehouses, sprawling factories and even funeral homes and hospitals.
...

'Very Third World'

Decades of poverty, the trauma of Katrina, the economic downturn and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are a toxic socio-economic cocktail that has made the reality of dire homelessness stubbornly vivid here. With about 11,000 homeless, New Orleans has the nation's highest number per capita, according to UNITY.
...

"The homelessness here does seem very Third World, and that shouldn't be happening in America in 2011,"

Full text:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41554935/ns/us_news-life/

Pathfinder · Feb 28, 2011

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

Re: Hurricane Katrina - 5 years today

New Orleans neighborhoods that suffered worst flooding lost most residents, census data show

Published: Sunday, February 06, 2011, 8:00 AM

By Michelle Krupa, The Times-Picayune

Five years after Katrina prompted the largest mass migration in modern American history, the city's overall population stood last year at 343,829 people, a 29 percent drop since the last head count a decade earlier and 3 percent less than the Census Bureau had estimated in July 2009.
...

Recent across-the-board losses mean New Orleans had roughly the same number of residents last year as were counted by the 1910 census, though the city's physical footprint was far smaller a century ago, she said.

The result has left "many excess homes, commercial and institutional buildings abandoned," she wrote.

Indeed, while the 2010 census counted about 190,000 housing units in New Orleans -- 12 percent fewer than a decade earlier -- it found that the ratio of vacant homes had doubled, Plyer's analysis shows. Such homes now make up 25 percent of the city's overall housing stock.

Full text:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/02/new_orleans_neighborhoods_that.html

Demographics and Census Geography
Louisiana State Census Data Center
2010 CENCUS RESULTS:

http://www.louisiana.gov/Explore/Demographics_and_Geography/

Pathfinder · Apr 3, 2011

Louisiana - 5 years later study shows heavy health costs of hurricane Katrina

In New Orleans flood waters covered large portions of the city.
http://www.katrina.noaa.gov/helicopter/helicopter-2.html

Study shows heavy health costs of Katrina

wwltv.com
Posted on April 3, 2011 at 1:03 PM
Meg Farris / Eyewitness News

NEW ORLEANS -- The New Orleans area is making medical history.

For the first time, doctors looked at the long-term effects when an entire region and its infrastructure are devastated by a natural disaster.

The serious health toll of Hurricane Katrina is still coming to light. All these years later, people are sicker because of the life changing disaster they witnessed.

"To our surprise, we found a three-fold increase in heart attacks after Katrina, four years later," said Tulane Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Anand Irimpen, who was the principal investigator on the study.

Dr. Irimpen, of the Tulane University Heart and Vascular Institute, looked at all the heart attack cases at Tulane Hospital two years after it reopened post-Katrina and four years after. He expected to see problems start to decrease, but he found the population was not getting better and in some ways was getting worse.

"I think a lot of it may be attributable to stress because the way some people cope with stress is they indulge in unhealthy habits," he explained.

More...
http://www.wwltv.com/news/health/Study-shows-heavy-cost-of-Katrina-on-health-119102829.html

Louisiana - 5 years later study shows heavy health costs of hurricane Katrina

Pathfinder

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Roehl_JC

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