Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest, costliest, most destructive natural disasters in the United States. It struck the U.S. on August 9th of 2005, killing at least 1,833 people by the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1928. Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, adding up to almost $81 billion in property damage.
After the Hurricane Katrina struck, the city of New Orleans had more than just the flood waters to address.
The Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans was located three miles southwest of the city's French Quarter and three feet below sea level. By the time Katrina hit New Orleans, around 2,000 people were bunking in the hospital, including more than 200 patients and 600 workers. Within days after the Hurricane flooding, an investigation into what happened at Memorial Medical Center was launched. The hurricane knocked out power and running water and sent the temperatures inside above 100 degrees. Despite circumstances, investigators filed charges against a doctor and a few nurses for the treatment of patients by injecting them with lethal doses of drugs. Mortuary workers carried 45 corpses from Memorial Hospital, more than any other comparable-size hospital in the flooded city. In 2006, nearly a year after Katrina, Louisiana Department of Justice agents arrested Anna Pou, a doctor at the hospital and four other nurses who were all connected to the deaths of four patients. Pou defended herself on television, saying her role was to "help patients through their pain", a comment she still defends today. She has since been released from her second-degree murder charges. The story of Memorial Medical Center raises other questions: Which patients should get a share of limited resources, and who decides? What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and does that end justify all means? Where is the line between appropriate comfort care and mercy killing? How, if at all should doctors and nurses be held accountable for their actions in the most desperate of circumstances.
Outside of the hospital, another conflict was facing the city. Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported "New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers." Immediately after the flood hit, civilian aid was scarce, but private security forces were as armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo. The security officers drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates. Locals asked what authority they were operating under and the response was, "We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.'
If African American men were caught outside, they ran the risk of being shot at will by passing patrols. The Common Ground Collective is a decentralized network of non-profit organizations offering support to the residents of New Orleans. In the dangerous environment, the Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had become to perilous for blacks. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Camp Greyhound jail "was constructed by inmates from Angola and Dixon state prisons was was outfitted with everything a stranded law enforcer could want, including top-of-the-line recreational vehicles to live in and electrical power, courtesy of a yellow Amtrak locomotive. There are computers to check suspects' backgrounds and a mug shot station-complete with heights marked in black on the wall that serves as the backdrop." In his latest book Zeitoun, Dave Eggers tells the story of a local Syrian immigrant who stayed in New Orleans to protect his properties and ended up organizing makeshift relief efforts and rescuing people in a canoe. He continued right up until he was arrested by a group of unidentified, heavily armed men in uniform, thrown into Camp Greyhound, and questioned as a suspected terrorist. In an interview, Eggers said: "Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing 'Katrina time' after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it."
People act desperately in desperate times. When the immediate needs of food, clothing, and shelter are threatened, people tend to act in ways that would normally seem out of character. When a city faces disaster, more smaller scale disasters will begin to surface. When left un-addressed these small scale emergencies could begin to grow much bigger over time. It's important to accurately and truthfully assess everything that happens, so the city itself and other cities in the U.S. can be more equipped to handle a similar disasters in the future.
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