New Orleans: The Making of An Urban Catasrophe

Most residents of New Orleans were unaware of the potential destruction of Katrina until Saturday, August 28, less than 48 hours before it struck. Hurricane Katrina was the most awesome disaster that Louisiana has ever seen. But the deadly results of Katrina were as much a product of human callousness as an act of nature. The world watched as people were herded into the Superdome only to find themselves in a wretched and unsanitary place without food, water, or proper medical care. Those in areas of high flooding fled to rooftops begging rescue helicopters to save them. Many died trapped in their attics or waiting to be rescued. Meanwhile, several police officers were dispatched to protect property from looters. As Hurricane Katrina promises to be the new textbook case for urban "natural" disasters, social dislocation, and (lack of) urban planning, it’s important to examine the failed policies that contributed to the disaster.

•Misguided Priorities
Social services are unde-funded while working people depend on low wage service jobs and send their kids to dysfunctional public schools. Largely, the city depends on the scraps of the tourism industry for its sustenance. Therefore, it’s of no surprise that in the lead up to Katrina, hurricane preparedness was woefully under-funded by the federal government. President Bush and Congress ignored those who explained that solid infrastructure would prevent flooding in New Orleans in the event of a levy break. According to columnist Sidney Blumenthal, "FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war." Beyond the monetary cost, almost half of the Louisiana National Guard was deployed outside the state when the hurricane hit. Meanwhile, about 3,000 members of the 256th Infantry Brigade were equipped with high water gear in Iraq.

•Race and Class Dynamics

Katrina wasn’t the first hurricane, or the first major flooding disaster, to hit Louisiana. During Hurricane Betsy, Lower Ninth Ward, an area almost entirely under the poverty line and 99 percent Black was intentionally flooded to "save" the wealthy white uptown neighborhoods.

The poverty and blackness of those bearing the brunt of the hurricane is obvious to anyone. The plight of these victims underscores the existing race and class inequalities in New Orleans, but also provides a lens through which to understand another facet of racism that is ever-present in the U.S. poor people were the least prepared for a hurricane.

During a benefit concert, rapper Kanye West explains: "George Bush doesn't care about Black people, …[America was set up] to help the poor, Blacks, and the less well-off as slow as possible.” Tulane Hospital (a private hospital) was evacuated well before Charity Hospital, the region's trauma hospital whose patients are poor and predominantly Black.
There is also a surge in more explicit racism. According to Malik Rahim, white vigilante gangs were patrolling Algiers, riding around in pickup trucks, armed, and searching for young Blacks whom they figured didn’t belong in their community.

•Blaming Victims

Both former FEMA chief Michael Brown and the media were announcing that the high death toll would be "attributable a lot to people who didn’t heed advance warnings." Brown's comments suggest that hundreds chose not to evacuate, but the reality is that hundreds of New Orleanians didn’t have the means to comply with an evacuation order.

Reporters and right-wing Internet trolls filled news outlets and message boards with stories of looting, while thousands in the city begged for help. The lawlessness of looting, full of drama and intrigue of savage Blacks, provided a narrative that shifted away from the thousands still stuck in the horror and the political decisions that kept them there.

Officials comforted tense onlookers with a promise of order: they would use troops to protect stores from looting. But by doing so, they shifted scarce resources away from the search, rescue, and evacuation of residents whose lives they deemed less important. As convoys of National Guard reinforcements finally rolled into New Orleans, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco used the occasion to warn looters and assure the ruling class that troops were under her orders to "shoot and kill" if needed.

•Lackluster Response

The response from Federal agencies was too little too late. While the U.S. has a history of dropping humanitarian relief to famine and disaster affected areas, media reported that supplies were being diverted because helicopters couldn’t land due to hostile gunfire. If the U.S. is capable of sending planes that can withstand enemy fire to drop bombs in Iraq, certainly they are capable of air dropping supplies into a US city.

On NPR's September 1 broadcast of All Things Considered, Homeland Security Czar Michael Chertoff dismissed an NPR field reporter's claim that 2,000 or more were at the convention center without food or water and in unsanitary conditions. Subsequent reports verified that 15,000-20,000 were at the convention center. Deplorable conditions including dead bodies. The Convention Center was on dry ground and could have been accessible by military ground transport vehicles.

Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow response: "They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.”

•Environmental Trigger

The ecological component of this disaster is clear. New Orleans, like many major cities, was built in a dangerous location, but environmental problems like global warming and coastal erosion have exacerbated the precariousness of the City.

Marshes and wetlands help to slow a hurricane's effects as it approaches. But erosion has diminished the size and ability of coastal marshes and swamps to absorb a hurricane's force. Coastal erosion is due to the redirection the river silt that built the delta to the deep waters of the continental shelf. It’s also attributable to salt-water intrusion from canals built for oil and natural gas drilling and pipeline needs.

Global warming also contributed to the deadly hurricane. Ross Gelbspan, columnist for the Boston Globe, explains that global warming "generates longer droughts, more intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more severe storms." While Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Unhappy Ending

The Bush administration fiddled while New Orleans flooded. The federal government failed to provide basic preventative infrastructure. It didn’t even have a rescue plan. Instead, tax cuts for the rich and spending for the war in Iraq were given priority. Many perceive this as a "war at home" on poor and Black people. Many hurricane refugees feel abandoned. But the ruling class abandoned New Orleans long before Katrina hit. Racism, environmental disregard, and capitalist deference to social planning set the stage for this catastrophe. As money begins to trickle in, hotels, casinos, chain stores, and commercial developments will compete for money needed to reinforce a system that was unable to respond to peoples' needs in the first place. But New Orleans can be rebuilt with a different ethos: environmental sustainability, transportation infrastructure upgrades, public evacuation plans, a bolstered public works system, stable union jobs, better public schools, compassionate healthcare, and the cultivation of participatory neighborhood councils that engage the working class, poor, and oppressed in governance. The people of the U.S. can help with an alternative vision too. First, we should demand that troops deployed in Iraq return. Then, we should move to change national priorities to focus on the needs of the oppressed and working class. This should begin with rebuilding New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf South.

Robert Caldwell Jr. is a resident of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans and a member of the Green Party and Solidarity. He can be reached at jamais.vu [at] gmail.com.