[StBernard] Study of Hurricane Katrina's dead show most were old, lived near levee breaches

[Westley Annis]

Study of Hurricane Katrina's dead show most were old, lived near levee
breaches
by Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune 
Thursday August 27, 2009, 8:10 PM

Four years later, researchers still count New Orleans' Katrina dead, parsing
them into categories, puzzling over exactly how each of the more than 1,400
victims perished -- and what might be done to protect them the next time a
big one rolls in off the Gulf.

Their findings, though incomplete, jibe with common sense. The dead were
overwhelmingly old. Most lived near the levee breaches in the 9th Ward and
Lakeview. About two-thirds either drowned or died from illness or injury
brought on by being trapped in houses surrounded by water.


The rest died from maladies or injuries suffered in or exacerbated by an
arduous evacuation -- or an inability to evacuate quickly enough, including
many who died in local hospitals that lost power and other life-sustaining
services. Neither race nor gender made anyone more likely to die, only a
failure to evacuate and a location near a levee breach.

Emergency preparedness experts and government officials say the data
reinforces the dire need for continuous improvement in the government's
evacuation apparatus, particularly for the area's most frail, poor and often
hardest-to-motivate residents.

Ultimately, that strategy may be replaced by the construction of a fortress
at home: a hurricane-resistant shelter that city officials want the federal
government to finance. Some believe that tack could be cheaper, safer and
easier for the city's most vulnerable.

"The evacuations probably cost us around $100 million last year, " said New
Orleans Emergency Preparedness Director Jerry Sneed, referring to federal
and state money that paid for buses, trucks and Amtrak trains used to move
people and their pets to faraway shelters, also government-financed.

"Down the road somewhere, what we need to do is not evacuate out of the area
but build a shelter than can hold our people, especially those that can't
afford multiple evacuations, " Sneed said.

He has already discussed the idea with Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano but believes it might take another busy hurricane season to force
the federal government's hand. At some point, Washington would be compelled
to calculate the costs of federally financed evacuation and compare them to
the shelter option, he said. But whatever was built would have to be
restricted to those unable to evacuate, he said.

New goal is risk reduction

The new details of 2005 deaths emerged in the most comprehensive report to
date of the still-murky picture of Katrina's deadly impact. The study of
Katrina deaths in the May issue of the scientific journal Risk Assessment
was written by Sebastiaan Jonkman and Bob Maaskant, researchers at Delft
University in the Netherlands, and Ezra Boyd and Marc Levitan, researchers
at Louisiana State University.

The results are no surprise.

But they reinforce warnings being issued by the Army Corps of Engineers and
local emergency planners that New Orleans-area residents must evacuate for
major hurricanes, even after improvements to the area's levee system are
complete in 2011.

The improved levee system is designed to reduce the risk of flooding caused
by storm surges created by hurricanes with a 1 percent chance of occurring
in any year, also known as a 100-year storm.

The corps has taken pains since the disaster to warn residents that even
improved levees will not protect everyone from the strongest storms,
changing its parlance from "protection" to "risk reduction."

"Safety is a word you shouldn't use anymore, " said Ed Link, a University of
Maryland researcher. "The world is risky. You live in a risky place . . .
There's no way any organization like the corps can guarantee someone's
safety."

Link estimates the risk faced by New Orleans, even after the 100-year
system, at a potential 100 deaths a year. That doesn't mean every year but
rather that "over the next 1,000 years, you could have some big events that
would average out to be something like that."

Reluctant to evacuate

New Orleans residents' experience with back-to-back evacuations for
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike last year pointed out another unexpected aspect of
risk: that residents might be less likely to evacuate, or more likely to
feel they can't afford to leave, when faced with several hurricanes in the
same season.

The study of Katrina deaths provides a grim reminder of the hazards of
staying for a dangerous storm. The authors concentrated on 1,100 victims in
New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. They found that nearly 85 percent were
older than 51, 60 percent older than 65 and almost half were older than 75,
the report said.

That compares to pre-Katrina population statistics showing only 25 percent
of the two parishes' residents were older than 50, 12 percent were older
than 65 and only 6 percent were older than 75.

The Katrina statistics were similar to studies of deaths during a
catastrophic 1953 flood that overwhelmed levees in the Netherlands.

Gender apparently played little role in the Katrina deaths, with 50.6 of the
victims male and 49.3 percent female, compared with the pre-Katrina
population of 47.1 percent male and 52.9 percent female.

The statistics "do not directly support claims that African-Americans were
more likely to become fatalities, " as some believed in the storm's
aftermath, the study said. A slightly smaller percentage of African-American
residents died in comparison to the pre-Katrina population numbers for the
neighborhoods in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes that the study examined.

Of the 818 fatalities for which race is listed, 55 percent were
African-American, compared to 40 percent white, 2 percent Hispanic and 1
percent Asian-Pacific. There were 35 victims in the deaths studied for whom
race was unknown.

Deaths had many causes

Cause of death data was unavailable for 31 percent of Louisiana fatalities.
For the 771 victims for which detailed cause of death information was
available, 81 percent occurred in flooded areas, including 106 victims whose
bodies were recovered from public shelters or hospitals, which the study
said indicated they were not directly related to the impact of floodwaters.

For the 518 remaining water-related fatalities, which represent 67 percent
of victims for whom information was available, the most likely causes of
death include drowning and physical trauma from debris or building
collapses.

Many of the deaths occurred in areas near large breaches, such as the Lower
9th Ward, or in areas where deep water came in. Included in this total were
31 residents of St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard, most of whom
drowned. Floodwater-related diseases and exposure to toxic materials were
not found to cause many deaths, the report said.

More than 20 others "were recovered from residences inside the flooded areas
from attics or floors that were not flooded, " the study said. Those people
died from such conditions as dehydration, heat stroke, heart attack, stroke
or a lack of needed medical supplies.

. . . . . . .

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein at timespicayune.com or
504.826.3327