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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
This paper provides results from a study funded by the National Science Foundation to examine the effects of Hurricane Katrina on an area of the Mississippi Gulf Coast immediately to the west and east of St. Louis Bay. This Study Area includes portions of three towns in Mississippi, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christian. Specifically, the paper describes selected housing, demographic, and social impacts of Katrina on the Study Area. In regard to housing and demographic effects, we find that 27% of the housing was destroyed in the Study Area and 47% significantly damaged. Related to the effects on housing, Katrina caused a 40% decline in the Study Area's household population. In regard to social effects, the results of one of our research hypotheses about the effect of social networks on the well-being of people show that social isolation significantly increases perceptions of disaster disturbance and decreases perceived rates of disaster relief. Recommendations (and potential implications for other areas affected by large-scale disasters) based on our results are provided, as well as descriptions of the Study Area, study design, and data collection procedures.
INTRODUCTION
According to most measures, the landfall of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast on August 29th, 2005 represented the greatest natural disaster in American history. The geographic spread of the disaster stretched 90,000 square miles, roughly the size of Great Britain (Johnson, 2006). In human terms, at least 1,836 people lost their lives from Katrina (only 65 did so due to Hurricane Andrew in August of 1992 and 265 from Hurricane Camille in August of 1969). In economic terms, hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents lost their homes and jobs. One authoritative source estimates economic losses at $81.2 billion in 2005 dollars (Johnson, 2006), nearly double the costs associated with the next most costly disaster, Hurricane Andrew ($45 billion in 2005 dollars) and nine times more than Hurricane Camille ($9 billion in 2005 dollars).
While the preceding numbers are staggering and likely in the general ballpark, they are only estimates. As such, they fall within the tradition of post disaster assessment in that estimates of damage and destruction are the norm (Johnson, 2006). Because of the ephemeral nature of the data and the high costs, it is not surprising that estimates rather than complete counts are made in regard to the damage from hurricanes and other large scale disasters. However, as observed by Chang (1983), Dynes et al. (1987) and Smith and McCarty (1996), the lack of reliable data poses a major problem in measuring and evaluating the demographic and economic effects of major disasters such as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. It is this problem that formed one of the two major objectives of the study we report on here
The other major objective of our study was to examine the effects of social networks in regard to mitigating the effects of a disaster for people. We followed this line of inquiry because social science research clearly shows the importance of social networks in many activities, including obtaining employment (Montgomery 1992), maintaining one's health (Haines and Hurlbert, 1992), building safer and healthier communities (Coleman 1990; Portes 1998; Putnam 2000) and in mitigating the effects of unexpected events such as hurricanes (Haines, Beggs, and Hurlbert, 2002; Haines, Hurlbert, and Beggs, 1999; Hurlbert, Haines, and Beggs, 2000; Hurlbert, Beggs, and Haines, 2005; Kirschenbaum, 2004). In designing our study, we built on this and other previous disaster-related research by measuring social networks before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Thus, we developed temporal measures of social networks and disaster effects using primary data of Hurricane Katrina survivors in our Study Area. Because of space limitations, we do not provide an exhaustive report on the results of this part of our study. However, we do give an idea of the effects of social networks by examining one of the social network hypotheses we examined in our study:
A person embedded in a larger personal network group will perceive lower levels of disturbance in his or her economic, health, and social well-being than a person in a smaller personal group network, where "disturbance" refers to the difference between responses for "now" (four months after the hurricane) and those for "before" (before the hurricane).
DATA AND METHODS
As one of nine "social network" post-Katrina research projects funded by the National Science Foundation under the provisions of the SGER program, (3) the recipients of SGER Grant #0555136 (Swanson, Van Boening, and Forgette) received $96,212 to conduct a study that:
(1) gathered pre- and post-Katrina information on housing and population from 573 targeted census blocks at the epicenter of Katrina's impact on the Mississippi gulf coast that the 2000 census showed as containing people (the "Short Form"); and
(2) employed a random start, systematic selection, cluster sample targeting...
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