After the Storm

Hurricane Katrina and the failure of public policy.

Jacob Sullum, Jesse Walker, Ronald Bailey, Kerry Howley, Jeff Taylor & David B. Kopel from the December 2005 issue

(Page 4 of 6)

The results are ugly, as USCRI documents. Throwing refugees together spreads disease, engenders mental health problems, and creates security issues. Camp security has a tendency to turn militant, and authoritarian law enforcement can lead to a "fatalistic paralysis" that makes starting over harder and harder to imagine as time passes. Worst of all, isolation prevents displaced people from forming the social networks that help them spring back. It's tough to hunt for a job when you're packed in with thousands of other homeless, unemployed, increasingly passive people.

Temporary housing goes up faster than it comes down. Abroad, host governments develop bureaucracies that depend on an inflow of aid destined for refugee camps; some camps in Africa have endured for decades. Here in the U.S., mobile homes set up after last year's Hurricane Charley still fill a corner of Punta Gorda; the village has been dubbed "FEMA City." In a September 7 Slate piece on the history of emergency housing, Witold Rybczynski observes that "relief can be the enemy of reconstruction." He's talking about homes and sidewalks, but the wrong kind of relief can keep people from reconstructing their lives as well.

Following the lawlessness of Katrina's immediate aftermath, some shelters turned uncomfortably authoritarian. Reporting from a community college turned shelter in Colorado, The Denver Post described "roadblocks, security guards and enough armed police officers to invade Grenada." Reporters spoke to storm survivors through a fence. Anecdotal reports tell of authorities restricting freedom of movement and keeping evacuees from so much as cooking their own food.

What's the alternative? Consider how we treat actual refugees here. The U.S. absorbs tens of thousands of displaced people every year. We do not stick them on cruise ships or ask famous architects to build cardboard houses for them. Instead, they enter a nexus of volunteer, religious, mutual aid, and ethnic organizations. Private organizations help match immigrants to mentors, and church groups collect clothes and food. The federal government provides cash for at least a few months, but civil society helps people form support networks that will get them clothed, housed, employed, and rooted in a community. That partnership isn't a panacea, but it's no Superdome either.

Shortly after the disaster, The Washington Post ran a story about Anya Maddox, a New Orleans native who barricaded herself in during the storm, swam to a friend's house, caught a ride out of town, and talked her way into a job at a Louisiana Waffle House. "I'm a survivor," she told the Post. Maddox may not realize it, but her triumph was twofold: She eluded both the wrath of a deadly storm and the good intentions of those who would help her recover.

Kerry Howley ([e-mail]) is an assistant editor of Reason.

Unnatural Disasters
Is Katrina the beginning of a trend?
Ronald Bailey

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the average number of deaths per year from hurricanes in the United States has been falling. Katrina's rising death toll may have interrupted that positive trend.

Indur Goklany, the assistant director for science and technology policy at the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Policy Analysis, provides data showing that more than 800 Americans per year lost their lives to hurricanes between 1900 and 1909. A huge portion of those deaths occurred because of the devastating hurricane that killed more than 8,000 people in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. The next highest hurricane death toll occurred between 1920 and 1929, when an average of 253 Americans per year were killed by hurricanes. This number was substantially boosted by a single devastating storm, the Lake Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, in which between 1,700 and 2,300 people lost their lives. Somewhat reminiscent of Katrina's devastation, the hundreds drowned by the 1928 hurricane perished because dikes holding the lake failed.

Nevertheless, since 1930 the average annual number of deaths from hurricanes has been declining more or less steadily, reaching a low of only 13 deaths per year in the 1980s. Goklany shows that the annual death rate per million people also has been falling, sinking to an annual low of only nine deaths per million last decade. The last single hurricane that killed more than 100 Americans was Hurricane Agnes in 1972. This happy trend occurred even though an estimated 50 million additional residents have moved to coastal regions during the last 25 years.

Prior to Katrina, it could reasonably be argued that declining mortality rates from hurricanes in the U.S. were the result of better long-range warning systems, sturdier houses, improved roads, comprehensive evacuation planning, and high-quality hospitals. So why did all this fail when Katrina struck? Is Katrina a fluke, or is it possible that government programs are in fact making us less safe?

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency encourages people to live in harm's way. As of 2004, the NFIP had issued more than 4.4 million flood insurance policies in approximately 20,000 communities nationwide, representing nearly $637 billion in coverage. Since it was established in 1969, the program has paid $12.7 billion in flood insurance claims and related costs. In recent years, the NFIP has collected $1.1 billion in premiums and paid out around $1 billion in damages each year. Currently, the NFIP has about $1.1 billion in reserves; estimates are that the program will have to pay out more than $10 billion in claims for the houses and businesses destroyed by Katrina. People should be told that this is the last time the federal government will pay flood insurance claims to owners in areas prone to flooding. If private insurers want to take the risk, then their stockholders, not taxpayers, will be on the hook.

Let's set aside the larger question of whether the government should be encouraging people to live below sea level. The fact is that the federal government, which is in charge of all navigable waterways, failed to provide adequate infrastructure to prevent the inundation of a city that was home to nearly half a million people. Having taken the responsibility on itself, it failed to deliver on its promise--and it did so for built-in institutional reasons. The failure of the levees protecting New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana perfectly illustrates the fact that politicians generally engage in short-term thinking. Merely maintaining or bolstering some boring old levees will not garner many votes. But the senators and representatives who bring home the most tax dollars for restoring New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will become heroes.

The U.S. Congress established the Mississippi River Commission in 1879 to oversee and implement plans to improve navigation and prevent floods. But levee building for flood control in the Mississippi basin remained largely under local and state control until 1917, when the feds took over completely. Until then, states and counties formed levee districts that taxed local citizens for levee construction and maintenance. Local control meant that the people who lived by the levees had to pay for the risks of doing so. In the modern era, instead of taxing local citizens to take care of levees known to be inadequate, New Orleans' political leaders waited for federal money that never came.

Once the hurricane struck, the government got in the way of groups that were poised to offer immediate help. Red Cross officials complained that their volunteers were prevented from helping people in New Orleans on orders from the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security and the National Guard. Federal and state officials claim they prevented relief efforts because they were worried for the safety of volunteers. It is true that New Orleans experienced some lawlessness, but perhaps a lot of that could have been forestalled if effective Red Cross and other relief efforts had begun immediately to alleviate the misery of people stuck at the Superdome and the convention center. If the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Baptist Missions, or any other competent group wants to take the risk of helping disaster victims, the government should not stand in its way.

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