[WSIS CS-Plenary] Hurricane Katrina, one week later

[Wesley Shrum]

This is Wesley Shrum, from Louisiana.  I'm a professor of sociology at
Louisiana State University and I'm organizing the "Past, Present, and
Future" event just before the summit in November.  I know many of you from
the PrepComs and the Geneva summit. With luck, I will still see you in
Tunis.  

I have not seen anything on this list about Katrina, but I have not had much
opportunity to keep up this past week.  Things are bad, and there's not much
anyone can do from afar, but I'd like to get this out somehow, and I'm not
on many listservs.  

>From the emails I've received, I guess everyone knows what happened.  But
I'd like you to know some things, because the media--not all, but
some--sometimes make it seem like we are a bunch of looting animals here in
Louisiana.  Some may remember, back at PrepCom 2 before Geneva, I was the
semi-official CRIS videographer.  And today two of us are going down to
Plaquemines, south of New Orleans in the swamps, to film there.  But I
wanted to tell you about what we found on Monday, partly to counter some of
what you might be reading or seeing.

On Sept 5, one week after Katrina, our group of ten from the Department of
Sociology here in Baton Rouge did some video ethnography.  We conducted
interviews in the parking lot with approximately 50 displaced persons at a
central Baton Rouge location. Afterwards, we met for a couple of hours, to
abstract a consensus view of what we had learned.  It is important to keep
in mind that we spoke with individuals with some mobility (own car, other's
car, bus) that had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina and we have not yet
interviewed those living in collective shelters.

--The vast majority are from the New Orleans metropolitan area (including
Kenner, Metairie, Chalmette, but not the New Orleans North Shore or
Plaquemines).  The vast majority of displaced persons are staying in private
homes.
 
--The further one goes away from hurricane areas, the more, the better, and
the quicker is the assistance (people came back to Baton Rouge because they
want to be closer to home, even in spite of reduced assistance).
 
--Crime and fear of crime was universally unobserved or insignificant, both
for early and late evacuees.
 
--Blacks are more committed to returning home to New Orleans than whites,
who express more reservations about returning (note, this does not take into
account social class).
 
--Displaced people have received assistance from (in order of importance),
family, friends, and strangers.  Churches have helped.  Public (government)
assistance was not just negligible-no member of the team recalled any
instance of government assistance reported by this group of individuals (in
the rare cases where help was requested, it was not provided). 
 
--Most people consider themselves to be very lucky, doing well, or doing
reasonably well given the circumstances.  They are not requesting assistance
(beyond that they are receiving, and some of the most fortunate have their
own means).  But the minority of persons who are not doing well DESPERATELY
NEED HELP.
 
--The main concerns are financial, for a place to stay, and education for
their children.  

Put simply, depending on how long before they move back (if they do), people
are worried that they will wear out their residential welcome.
 
Summarized by Wesley Shrum, 5 September 2005 
http://worldsci.net     world summit side event
http://4sonline.org 	society for social studies of science
http://worldsci.net/global     science, internet, & development project