Hurricane Katrina was a devastating event to New Orleans. There was a mandatory evacuation of the city during which victims in affected areas were not allowed to return for months. Many residents were unable to return to their previous residence due to the destruction of their home or change in ownership. In its aftermath, a phenomenon of displaced residents becoming psychotic and returning to ...

BACKGROUND This study examines prevalence of respiratory conditions in New Orleans-area restoration workers after Hurricane Katrina. METHODS Between 2007 and 2010, spirometry and respiratory health and occupational questionnaire were administered to 791 New Orleans-area adults who mostly worked in the building construction and maintenance trades or custodial services. The associations between...

OBJECTIVE Existing research suggests that walkable environments are protective against weight gain, while sprawling neighborhoods may pose health risks. Using prospective data on displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors, we provide the first natural experimental data on sprawl and body mass index (BMI). METHODS The analysis uses prospectively collected pre- (2003-2005) and post-hurricane (2006-2...

BACKGROUND We examined patterns and correlates of speed of recovery of estimated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among people who developed PTSD in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. METHOD A probability sample of prehurricane residents of areas affected by Hurricane Katrina was administered a telephone survey 7-19 months following the hurricane and again 24-27 months posthurricane. The base...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects Hurricane Katrina had on the demographics and outcomes of patients receiving cochlear implantation at our institution. DESIGN This was a retrospective chart review of 179 patients (190 ears) receiving cochlear implantation from January 2003 to December 2007. METHODS Paper records and an outcome database were reviewed for analysi...

We examined the effects of Hurricane Katrina on disability-related measures of health among adults from New Orleans, U.S.A., in the year after the hurricane, with a focus on differences by age, race, and sex. Our analysis used data from the American Community Survey to compare disability rates between the pre-Katrina population of New Orleans with the same population in the year after Katrina (...

The life cycle of Hurricane Katrina (2005) was simulated using three different modeling systems of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model. These are, HWRF (Hurricane WRF) designed specifically for hurricane studies and WRF model with two different dynamic cores as the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) model and the Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM). The WRF model was developed and...

AUGUST 29: HURRICANE KATRINA LANDFALL: I am a neonatologist in private practice and had been at the hospital for 24 hours along with 40 other physicians. I had volunteered to take care of the patients at Memorial Medical Center (MMC) during Hurricane Katrina. There were 16 infants in the NICU, 260 patients in total at the hospital, 500 essential employees, and 1200 family members of the patient...

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita resulted in massive devastation of the Gulf Coast at Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas during 2005. Because of those disasters, dialysis providers, nephrologists, and dialysis patients used disaster planning activities to work to mitigate the morbidity and mortality associated with the 2005 hurricane season for future events affecting dialysis patients. As Hurricane ...

We appreciate the opportunity to discuss our definition of events of Katrina magnitude. Kennedy et al. (1) argue that our definition of Katrina magnitude events (2) is too low because we do not use any tide gauge data in the immediate proximity of New Orleans and the region of absolute maximal surge height. We note that hurricane best track records (3) for Katrina magnitude events show a ~20-y ...