Photo: Liz Roll. When Hurricane Katrina hit, more than a quarter of people living in New Orleans in August of lived below the poverty line. Many of the poor in stayed at home to weather the storm. People without the means to leave are also the most likely to rely on the television—as opposed to the radio or Internet—for news. TV news began warning people how bad the storm would be only 48 hours before it hit; some people, then, had only 48 hours to process this information and make plans.
Poor people are more likely than middle- and upper-class people to never leave where they grew up. This means that they were much less likely to have a network of people outside of New Orleans with whom they could stay, at the same time that they were least able to afford a motel room. For those who were on government assistance, living check-to-check, it was the end of the month.
How it worked: More than a decade after Hurricane Katrina, several of the states most frequently impacted by disasters requiring evacuations have come up with strategies to help pets and their people.
When Hurricane Matthew hammered the Southeast in , it was well after the PETS Act was in force and national and local attention was firmly focused on the need to incorporate animals into disaster planning. More than pet owners affected by the storm filled out a questionnaire designed by DeYoung and her co-author Ashley Farmer in March Just over 70 percent evacuated and nearly all of those who had left before or during the storm did so with at least one pet.
But that did not mean they necessarily knew where to go with them. Some reported having to drive farther to find a pet-friendly hotel or having to stay with non-pet-owning relatives. And just because pet-friendly shelters were in operation, that did not mean pet owners necessarily knew about them. But by putting it to locals, there can sometimes be confusion about how mandates from the state and federal government are carried out.
And some people still choose to leave some of their pets behind, DeYoung and Farmer found in their paper. Robinson pointed to programs and policies in some of the states most frequently hit by disasters, including North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and California.
One thing the PETS Act does not do is mandate that hotels and motels accept pets during a mandatory evacuation. This common misconception pops up online frequently during disasters and has to be debunked just as often. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Hurricane Katrina inspired a national pet evacuation policy. Hurricane Rita further complicated evacuation and recovery efforts when it made landfall along the Louisiana-Texas border on September Like Katrina, Rita came ashore as a Category 3 storm.
Five people died during the storm, and property damage along the coast of southwestern Louisiana and Texas was extensive. Despite the setback, on September 30, much of New Orleans was reopened, allowing evacuees to return to what was left of their homes. More than 1. The U. Government Accounting Office estimated that demolition and renovation of damaged property in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina resulted in million cubic yards of debris.
Katrina also generated the largest single loss in the history of the U. Claims in Louisiana accounted for 63 percent of those losses. As the rebuilding process began, state, local, and federal officials traded blame for delays in the evacuation, which became a subject of prolonged controversy.
His successor, R. David Paulison, promised to reform agency operations. In , Blanco signed a law to consolidate levee boards and streamline oversight. The same year, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for levee design, issued a report acknowledging that design flaws in the levees caused most of the flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina prompted the evacuation of 1. Thousands of evacuees ended up in other states, and some chose to resettle permanently. By , New Orleans had regained about 75 percent of its pre-Katrina population.
In , President Barack Obama created a federal task force to oversee this restoration of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines. Brinkley, Douglas. Dyson, Michael Eric.
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