Topography and Demographics Presentation #1

Topography and Demographics:
Hurricane Katrina was very devastating to the city of New Orleans.  It destroyed people's homes and businesses and flooded around 80% of the city.  People were left homeless and forced to go to the streets where there was an increase of crime, theft, and murder.  Demographics which I went over in our presentation shows the changes in different aspects of a population over time.  Some different areas are population, employment rates, home ownership, disability, race, gender, and age.  The population of New Orleans has gone down 30% in the last decade, and flooding from Katrina forced 200,000 residents to evacuate their homes.  Families were forced to live in makeshift camps in Mississippi, Texas, and other parts of Louisiana.  New Orleans is a very cultural city and has a wide variety of racial groups.  There are 33% Caucasian, 60% African Americans, and smaller percentages of Asians, multiracial, Latinos, and non-Latino Caucasians, and gender was pretty evenly split between females and males with 51% females and 49% males.  The disabilities in New Orleans pre-Katrina was 23%, but post-Katrina this rose to 27%.  This can be directly related to Hurricane Katrina.  One huge problem with disaster relief plans is they are shortsighted and terminated prematurely.  Traumatic events tend to see signs and symptoms one year after the disaster has occurred, but FEMA's crisis counseling services end nine months after a disaster occurs, this is problematic because when residents start having signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the services for help are not available to them.  Studies show that crisis counseling after traumatic events need to be offered up to two years after a disaster.  Unemployment rates right after Katrina almost doubled, from 5.8 to 11.6%.  Now a few years after the unemployment rate is 7.3% which is lower than the national rate of 9.7%.  Some people say this is because when most of the poorer residents evacuated they never returned back to the city.  It is common in the Lower 9th Ward to not own your home, but own the land your home is on.  This is because the land can be bought for as cheap as $8,000.  In the Lower 9th Ward before Katrina there was over 5,000 housing units, now there is only 2,000 housing units.  This just shows how much that area is still in the rebuilding process. 

I am really excited to go to New Orleans!  I have always wanted to do a service project and this class was the perfect opportunity.  I am excited to actually see what it is like down there.  I think there is a huge difference between how people describe the city to you compared to how it really is when you see it.  It's like you think you know what you are going down to see, but when you get there you see something completely different than what you were expecting.  I hope I get to talk to some of the people to hear how they actually feel about it.  I am just really excited for the whole trip.  I think it will be life changing and I can't wait!