Katrina Wounds Slow to Heal for South Asian Community

She returned about 90 days later, and thankfully, suffered virtually no material loss at all.

Zinia lived in the Metairie area of New Orleans, whose high elevation kept it protected from the flood waters that devastated this Louisiana metropolis after its levees broke. Yet one year after Katrina, there is an emotional wound that is still raw.

"After Katrina, the one thing that has not changed at all, is that awful feeling of fear," the Bangladesh-born doctoral student told India-West by phone in Bangla. "We are always scared. Now that the (hurricane) season has started, there is that constant fear that I will have to evacuate again."

Yet, as she is the first person to acknowledge, she is among the lucky ones. "At least I have a brother to go to," she said ruefully. "Imagine the situation of others in far more precarious situations than mine."

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, according to the information resource Wikipedia. "It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest landfalling U.S. hurricane ever recorded," according to Wikipedia. "Katrina formed in late August during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and devastated much of the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States. Most notable in media coverage were the catastrophic effects on the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, and in coastal Mississippi. Katrina's sheer size devastated the Gulf Coast over 100 miles (160 km) away from its center."

South Asians also suffered considerable loss, but the nature of the loss varied. While professionals often came out unscathed in the longer term, because federal assistance was on hand after they had survived the initial onslaught, students faced greater challenges, and undocumented workers faced terrible hardships, hit as they were by the double-whammy of natural disaster and ineligibility to government assistance, activists told India-West.

The vast majority of Indian American motel owners are still struggling to open their motels, Anil Patel, gulf director of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, told India-West from Jackson, Miss. in a phone conversation.

He said there were 19 Indian American-owned hotels in Biloxi. Miss., and Shreveport, La. In New Orleans, Indian Americans owned 20 hotels. "Out of these only five are open, rest are not open yet," he said.

Zinia said while many people she knew got assistance from the much maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency, it was heartbreaking to see the suffering of people, particularly students, who weren't immigrants, because the federal assistance spigot completely dried up for them.

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