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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
When Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi/Louisiana Gulf Coast on August 29th, 2005, universities, colleges, and other campuses of higher education were among the many institutions that experienced severe disruption. New Orleans universities were forced to shut down for the Fall semester and many displaced college students enrolled at other colleges and universities throughout the nation. Mississippi institutions of higher education experienced less disruption, with those affected closing down for a week or less and most accepting some of New Orleans' displaced students. The college populations of New Orleans and Mississippi State University offered a unique research opportunity to gather comparative data from students who sustained both direct and indirect impacts from the Katrina disaster, as well as experienced the storm from different geographical locations. Utilizing data gathered from two web-based surveys administered during the first three months after the Katrina disaster, we analyze the comparative storm experiences of and impacts on students from Mississippi State University (N= 3,140) and three New Orleans universities (N= 7,100). Our findings show that compared to MSU students, New Orleans students experienced: (1) more fear and threat from the storm; (2) greater perceptions that the disaster was rooted in human or technological failure; (3) greater economic and personal loss; (4) less satisfaction with the response of disaster organizations; (5) less trust in institutions; and (6) higher levels of psychological stress. The overwhelming difference between the two groups attests to the severity of the Katrina catastrophe for students, particularly in New Orleans, and the need for universities to better prepare for future disasters.
INTRODUCTION
On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi/Louisiana Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm, creating one of the deadliest and most costly disasters in U.S. history. Packing winds of over 125 miles per hour with tidal surges ranging from 15 to 28 feet high, Katrina produced widespread physical devastation to some 90,000 square miles of the region and forced the evacuation of over one million Gulf Coast residents from their homes (Brinkley 2006). In the hurricane's aftermath, universities, colleges, and other regional institutions of higher education were among the many institutions and organizations that experienced disruption. At least 30 college and university campuses sustained varying levels of storm damage and many experienced the collapse of their infrastructures and normal telecommunication systems (Chronicle of Higher Education 2005a). More than 95,000 administrators, faculty, staff, and students were displaced from their respective institutions and communities, including 50,000 students from New Orleans, resulting in the cancellation of scheduled classes ranging from a few days to the entire academic year. Moreover, many of these campuses found themselves facing severe economic crises due to more than $1.5 billion in infrastructure repairs, payroll outlays, and lost tuition funds, among other unanticipated costs (Cass 2005; Ferrell and Hoover 2005; Gill et al. 2006; Herbert 2005; Mangan 2005a).
Although Katrina severely affected higher education in the Gulf region (Lipka 2005), the psychosocial impacts and geophysical context of the catastrophe were significantly different for college students (and residents) of New Orleans than they were for students in Mississippi. The breaching of the New Orleans levee system that followed the storm, for example, flooded 80 percent of the city with as much as twelve feet of water in some areas. For weeks, New Orleans universities were without electrical power, water, phones, or other basic services. In response, these universities became "virtual" institutions existing in cyberspace through web-based internet systems located off-campus (Foster and Young 2005). Colleges across the U.S. responded to the catastrophe by announcing that they would open their admission doors to any student displaced by Katrina. With their wind and flood damaged campuses closed for the entire fall, 2005 semester, more than 18,000 New Orleans students relocated to some 1,017 new colleges and universities outside the Gulf Coast to enroll in classes (Ladd, Gill, and Marszalek 2007; Mangan 2005b).
Although the Pearl River Community College in Waveland, MS was completely destroyed and a few other small coastal campuses suffered damages that forced them to cancel classes for the first week of the semester (Chronicle of Higher Education 2005b), the vast majority of Mississippi college students experienced relatively indirect storm impacts from Katrina and comparatively few were forced to evacuate their campus residences. Nevertheless, the state's largest university campus, Mississippi State University (MSU) in Starkville, MS, while not heavily damaged by the storm, was located in the northern periphery of Mississippi counties that were declared disaster zones. Indeed, the path of the storm passed directly over Starkville with heavy rains and winds gusting to over 75 mph. Although MSU was closed for only two days, many students had immediate family, relatives, and friends living in severely impacted areas and some MSU students were in the coast area when the hurricane struck.
The college populations of New Orleans and Mississippi State University offered a unique research opportunity to gather comparative data from students who sustained both direct and indirect impacts from the Katrina disaster (Fee et al. 2006; Gill et al. 2006; Gill, Ladd, and Marszalek 2007; Ladd, Marszalek, and Gill 2006). Utilizing data gathered from two web-based surveys administered during the first three months after the Katrina disaster, we analyze the comparative storm experiences of and impacts on students from Mississippi State University (N= 3,140) and three New Orleans universities (N= 7,100). These two university samples represent over 10,000 students who initially experienced Hurricane Katrina from different geographical locations in the Gulf South. We conclude by suggesting some implications of our data for disaster research, as well as how universities can improve future disaster response and resilience.
RESEARCH LITERATURE
Hurricanes and tropical storms are among the most prominent natural disasters that harm human populations, especially in coastal areas, and both their numbers and intensity have increased over the past decade (Associated Press 2005b; Noji 1997). These trends resulted in 2005 becoming the busiest hurricane season on record, marked by 27 named storms and 15 hurricanes, three of which entered the Gulf of Mexico with Category 5 winds (Associated Press 2005a; Associated Press 2006). The first of these three storms, Hurricane Katrina, produced the largest hurricane disaster in U.S. history, causing over 1800 deaths, one million displaced residents, 260,000 homes destroyed, and approximately $200 billion in estimated losses (Brinkley 2006). Physical recovery plans for portions of the devastated Gulf Coast are predicted to take at least a decade and two years after the disaster, tens of thousands of New Orleans residents remain displaced from their homes and neighborhoods (Alford 2006; Thomas 2005).
Because of their potential to generate traumatic physical and psychosocial impacts, including those associated with evacuation and relocation, disaster research on hurricanes has generated an extensive body of knowledge (see e.g. Adeola 1999; Baker 1991; Bateman and Edwards, 2002; Dash and Morrow 2001; Dow and Cutter 1998, 2000, 2002; Drabek 1986; 2000; Edwards 1998; 1999; Enarson and Morrow 1997; Fischer 1999; Franke and Simpson 2004; Gladwin and Peacock 1997; Howell 1998; Howell and Bonner 2005; Lindell and Prater 2003; Mittler 1997; Peacock and Girard 1997; Sattler et al. 2002; Tierney 1989; Van Willigen 2001; Waugh 1990; Whitehead et al. 2000; Wolshon et al. 2005). In particular, hurricanes have been shown to cause a wide array of negative psychophysiological responses ranging from fatigue, impaired concentration, and attention deficits, to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms (Gillard and...
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