Hurricane Katrina provided an opportunity to observe the public health and medical care response system in practice and provided vital lessons about identifying and learning critical response measures as well as about ineffective investments of time and effort. The Southwest Center for Public Health Preparedness (SWCPHP) response team, while working among evacuees housed at Reliant Park in Hous...

The purpose of this work is to examine the relationship between alcohol use and level of involvement during Hurricane Katrina among law enforcement officers, and to investigate whether marital status or previous military training offer resilience against negative outcomes. Officers in the immediate New Orleans geographic area completed surveys that assessed their involvement in Hurricane Katrin...

civil society as a double-edged sword: Siting trailers in post-Katrina New Orleans"

On the morning of Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana. The levee system of New Orleans failed catastrophically. Storm surges penetrated the entire city and lingered for weeks. Hurricane Katrina became known as one of the most intense, costliest, and deadliest natural disasters ever recorded in the history of the United States. Almost exactly 3 years l...

The present study examined survivors' use and misuse of cigarettes and alcohol following Hurricane Katrina. We also examined several psychosocial factors that we expected would be associated with higher or lower rates of substance use following the hurricane. Participants were 209 adult survivors of Hurricane Katrina interviewed in Columbia, SC or New Orleans, LA between October 31, 2005 and Ma...

From multiple perspectives, the current mental health concerns in the Gulf communities began significantly earl ier than the Deepwater Horizon oil spi l l , when Hurricane Katrina hit much of the area now affected by the oil blowout. The major impact of Hurricane Katrina on mental health reflected the enormity of the devastation, including destruction of the infrastructure resulting in a dramat...

Call for Papers Hurricane Katrina (2005) devastated New Orleans thereby revealing inherent vulnerabilities that resided in the socio/political/ecological/technical infrastructure (system) of the city and the nation. The event highlighted the ‘...city’s fragile physical environment, aging infrastructure, and declining economic and social structure’ (Comfort, 2006:1). Comfort (2006:2) asks the qu...