Un-Natural Disasters: Reflections on Hurricane Katrina
If you are disabled and rich, or somewhat well-off, and lived in New Orleans [during the 2005 catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina—Ed.], you probably got out of the city before the levees broke and flooded some 60 percent of the parishes. If you are rich and use a wheelchair you probably had a van with a ramp or car of your own with gas money to get you to safety. If you are blind (and rich) you likely had a driver with a car to take you to the high lands. If you are deaf, use a cane, walker, crutches, service animal, or have mental health needs and you have money, you also got yourself out perhaps with the help of family. But if you are disabled and poor in New Orleans you likely had none of these options.
A 911 caller told the operator, “I am handicapped and have an eight-month-old baby. We are lying on the bed—the water is coming up fast. We need help.” But no help came. No help came because there was no planned evacuation for poor disabled residents. Being disabled and poor meant one’s chances for survival were less than one’s non-disabled counterparts. While many of the least fortunate were waiting and hoping for the absent cavalry to arrive on those rooftops, at least one quadriplegic could not be pulled up on the roof to semi-safety. He drowned instead. There were others. We know that in New Orleans 23.2 percent of residents were disabled persons out of a city of about 484,000 people. There were 102,122 disabled people 5 years of age and older who lived in New Orleans at the time of the flood.
At least half of the disabled persons in New Orleans who are of working age were not employed.
To be disabled and poor in New Orleans and much of the US meant to rely on a variety of government programs such as Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid to help one meet one’s daily service and support needs.
Being disabled and poor in one group home for the blind meant staff abandoned one to sink or swim. Being disabled and poor meant being separated from any type of accessible public transportation before the flood and there was no accessible transportation afterwards.
Being disabled and poor for blind people meant being unable to even get around in one’s own flooded neighborhood because one could no longer navigate the environmental landscape.
Being disabled and poor for people with physical disabilities who are over 65 years of age meant being unable to leave one’s home, group home, nursing home, or hospital without significant assistance.
Being disabled and poor meant to have lost or become separated from the drugs one relies on daily for diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic conditions and have little means to access pharmacies when it became apparent the cavalry was permanently absent.
Being disabled and poor for those driven by flood waters from institutions, group homes, or nursing homes meant being housed in less than satisfactory conditions, with considerably less than the necessary range of services and supports needed, for an unknown stretch of time.
Being disabled and poor meant that one stood a good chance of dying from the insufferable heat; at least one hundred and fifty-four patients died this way, suggesting that vulnerable people plummeted to the bottom of priority lists if they were on lists at all.
Being disabled and poor for those who have service animals meant not being able to rely on those animals outside of the house or group home because these animals could not navigate safely in the flooded streets.
Being disabled and poor for deaf persons meant being unable to access emergency information through television, TTY, or other communications for the deaf because public communications systems were compromised, and those available through the federal government were holed up outside the city awaiting orders to move into New Orleans.
Being disabled and poor meant being unable to secure life-saving food and water as many were trapped within the confines of inadequately supplied shelters, the convention center, or the Superdome with all the other evacuees.
Being disabled and poor meant that when you died sitting in your wheelchair some respectful survivor might cover you with a sheet or some plastic.
Being disabled and poor meant that when the first responders at long, long last got to the Superdome, disabled persons were forced to leave their wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, and service animals behind, as these were not allowed on the buses.
Being disabled and poor means that one will have to wait months and months—if not years—to replace the wheelchairs and service animals that were taken from them in New Orleans.
Being disabled and poor often meant being evacuated to some nursing home in a strange town where one will have to fight hard to ever acquire the support services to live in the community again.
Being disabled and poor means needing Medicaid yet being relocated to another state where state governors have cut Medicaid to the extent that it is not serving those already enrolled; it is to find out that people are being dropped off the roles by the thousands—not added—when you desperately need your medications.
Being disabled and poor in need of accessible housing means depending upon the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which has allowed its funding to be cut so thin by the Bush administration that it is pitting the evacuees against the already poor and homeless in need of low-income housing. At the time of writing, HUD has refused to offer any emergency funding to the nation’s housing authorities that are providing housing assistance to Katrina’s victims.
Being disabled and poor meant that if one managed to get to a Red Cross shelter with their wheelchair, that the Red Cross would deny one entrance into their shelters because the shelters were not accessible. When the National Organization on Disability advocates went down there to see what was going on, they too were denied access.1
We don’t have and may never have the data to tell us how many disabled people lost their lives when the waters rose above their heads. We do know that disabled people were disproportionately affected. I’m sure the government does not want the public to know how many disabled persons drowned—their bodies bloated, floating in the toxic sewer that was once a street—or dehydrated or starved in this preventable catastrophe and its aftermath.
But the tremendous loss of life and ongoing devastation was not at root caused by Hurricane Katrina. It was caused by a corrupt government run by people who saw more profit for themselves and their friends in diverting taxpayer dollars to multibillion-dollar corporate contracts in a senseless and lawless war, and doling tax cuts out to the richest people in this nation, rather than in buttressing the faulty levee system protecting New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain.
When Bush said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” he lied.2 The Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other scientific experts alerted the nation it needed to devote resources and taxpayer dollars to fix this “accident” waiting to happen. The Times-Picayune, the daily newspaper of New Orleans, published numerous articles during the last two years citing the danger caused by the loss of hurricane protection funds to the war in Iraq.3
The Bush administration slashed funds for flood control operations in New Orleans. Bush’s war left the Corps of Engineers only 20 percent of the needed funding to protect New Orleans.
Bush played golf and turned away as hundreds of people—including disabled persons—drowned and starved.
What happened to disabled poor people in New Orleans is nothing less than criminally negligent homicide. Bush says he is responsible; but the question is will the nation hold the man accountable for murder?