UNITY & IWES Hurricane Preparedness Study Highlights
Credit: The West Cover oyster reef © JCW Creative
IWES’ Research & Evaluation team has been working with UNITY of Greater New Orleans for the past year on a hurricane preparedness project and we’re finally ready to share a peek into our findings!
We designed our study around four main areas of interest concerning hurricanes:
prior experiences preparing for a storm,
factors impacting decision-making,
perceived risks, and
what local supports already exist, or should exist, to protect residents who are most vulnerable to storm impacts.
New Orleans is an interesting site for many reasons, but especially because of its historic and recent weather events. Additionally, the direct impacts of climate change are felt by New Orleans area residents daily. Though agencies at the local, state, and federal levels work collaboratively to protect the city and its residents from these impacts, there are still several areas of concern.
To dive deeper into what exactly these concerns were, we conducted a mixed-methods study using a survey, semi-structured focus groups, and in-depth interviews to explore experiences and knowledge of hurricanes in the Greater New Orleans area among 92 residents, 9 social service providers, and 6 experts.
What did we learn?
We found that residents are aware of the risks around hurricanes and are also doing everything they can to prepare themselves and their community members before, during, and after a hurricane, such as gathering resources for themselves and sharing their resources with others.
One expert explained,
“We're so tight as family networks. People aren't gonna leave until their grandma leaves, right. Until they can get their grandma in the car with them. And sometimes their grandma and grandpa isn't gonna want to get in the car. And so everybody's gonna stay because they're not going to leave their grandma by themselves.”
This demonstrates that hurricane preparedness goes beyond the individual. Hurricane preparedness is also about the built environment, infrastructure, climate change, and policy implementation and enforcement. The New Orleans hurricane preparedness system consists of many parts controlled by many different entities, making the entire system susceptible to failure if any one of them malfunction. Another expert spoke about energy solutions in response to the power system failures after Hurricane Ida, saying,
“What I think we need to continue to advocate and educate the community is about an add-on, an additional support to the grid. So the grid doesn't fail during the hurricane season or the grid is well protected during strong winds.”
Infrastructure initiatives need to be reliable, accessible, sustainable, and equitable for people to depend on when an emergency happens. A legacy of abused trust among residents is a barrier to hurricane preparedness. A provider of youth services shared,
“[Two young people] walked from Franklin and St. Claude to Poland and St. Claude to get to a cooling center and when they got there it wasn't open yet, even though it had been announced that there would be a place that was available to cool down.”
Due to this legacy of strained trust, residents are resistant to utilize government-provided social services and resources because there is doubt that the systems will function reliably and with respect and dignity for all residents. One resident shared,
“In terms of shelters in New Orleans, I don't feel like they've got their stuff together. After seeing Katrina, everybody in the Superdome and at the Convention Center, I don't have a lot of confidence in local government.”
However, with concerted support, social service providers may be key in repairing trust between residents and the government. When asked about hurricane-related services offered at their organization, another provider stated,
“That’s not in my job description but, ultimately, as a community engagement professional [it] means that I end up doing [it].”
Ultimately, the hurricane preparedness system is intended to protect the City and its most vulnerable residents from the harshest impacts of a storm. To achieve that goal, we must think critically and creatively about what gaps exist and how to repair them. We explore these ideas further and offer some solutions based on our data analysis in the full report, which will be coming out this year and available on the IWES website, so make sure to look out for it.
Now that hurricane season has started, we want to share some resources with you. Click the buttons below for some hurricane preparedness resource guides!
If you have questions about the Study or want to find out more, please contact Gabriella Roude at groude@iwesnola.org.
Blog post written by Amber Domingue, MA, IWES Research & Evaluation (R&E) Coordinator.