![]() Half the students were randomly assigned to an intervention, receiving a scholarship of about $1,000 for maintaining passing grades. One of the 10 colleges happened to be in New Orleans where the researchers had signed up 1,019 students who were registering for Delgado Community College and Louisiana Technical College during summer and fall 2004, a year before Katrina struck. The study was called Opening Doors, and it was designed to evaluate ways of increasing the abysmally low graduation rate of community college students ( Richburg-Hayes et al. When Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2015, I was part of a group of academics overseeing a study of community college students in 10 different sites around the country. I identify themes that have emerged from our research, many of which affirm earlier studies of the causes and consequences of disasters, and some of which suggest important new areas of focus for this field. RISK is still an ongoing study, but at this point, approximately 10 years after Katrina, I take stock of some of the lessons we have learned about this disaster and its implications for two types of knowledge: how to conduct disaster studies and public policies to respond to disasters, and the study of mobility and inequality in American society. This project-RISK: Resilience in Survivors of Katrina-is a longitudinal study that takes advantage of rare pre-Katrina data to assess the impact of the disaster on people over time and follows them wherever they have relocated. Together with my colleagues, 3 I have been studying the long-term impact of Katrina on a sample of poor young women who were living in the New Orleans area and attending community college before the storm. In this article, I review findings from one study of a major American disaster-Hurricane Katrina-which struck the Gulf Coast and the city of New Orleans in September 2005. Each year, excluding droughts and war, nearly 500 incidents around the world meet the Red Cross’s definition of a disaster ( Norris et al. Disasters may be rare in any one individual life, but they are actually common occurrences across the globe and thus are also important to understand as a part of the structure of everyday life. Disasters often lay bare strengths and weaknesses in a society and allow the astute social scientist to discover truths about a wide variety of issues that are important in everyday life, not just at times of crisis and recovery ( Erikson 1976, 1994 Quarantelli 2005). This is because disasters are often an exogenous shock that lays bare how society functions and what promotes or destroys community, democracy, economic development, and health and well-being among the affected population. ![]() Poor and marginalized populations are especially vulnerable to such threats, and evidence-based policies for disaster preparation and recovery are crucial to reducing disparities in postdisaster outcomes ( Fothergill and Peek 2004).Īlthough it may sound heartless, disasters are also opportunities for social scientists, just as they are for other industries such as construction and the building trades. Policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels must prepare for the challenge of responding to communities devastated by disaster-related trauma and loss widespread displacement and relocation and disruptions to social, economic, and other systems that support survivors’ physical, mental, and economic well-being. These disasters pose many questions and opportunities for social scientists. Deadly tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other large-scale natural disasters are becoming regular occurrences in our lives, and climate change is likely to increase their severity and unpredictability ( Van Aalst 2006).
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