2.3.4.3. Displacement Feedback on the Earth System

Hurricane Katrina and displacement in New Orleans

In cases where an acute, rapid-onset disaster occurs, human mobility responses will vary at the household and individual level. For example, Hurricane Katrina destroyed around 300,000 homes, and forced the displacement of approximately 1.5 million people from across the Gulf Coast of the US. However, despite the evacuation order, an estimated 110,000 people remained in New Orleans. The majority of those remaining within the city were African American, poor, elderly, and/or living with a disability – an example of how climate disasters can compound existing social inequalities and create trapped populations (Weber and Peek, 2012). Post-disaster, many of those who remained were then forced to evacuate. They had little agency over their destinations; while the majority of the displaced population, especially those who had pre-emptively moved, remained in the region, those who were forcibly evacuated were scattered across all 50 states (Fussell, Curtis and DeWaard, 2014; Peek and Weber, 2012). 

After the initial post-disaster ‘pulse’ of outmigration from New Orleans and the surrounding area, displaced populations had to choose whether to return or resettle elsewhere. The rate at which people returned to the city was influenced, at least in part, by racial dynamics. Even when controlling for socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics, Black residents returned to the city at a much slower rate than white residents (Fussell, Sastry and VanLandingham, 2010) due to a higher rate of housing damage sustained by Black communities, and these disparities increased with time. The least-impacted communities – often those with significant prior social advantage – were able to rebound more quickly, reducing the length and permanence of displacement. 

As of 2019, New Orleans still had 100,000 fewer occupants than it had prior to Hurricane Katrina. This gap is almost the same as the number of Black residents who have not returned – a 6 per cent drop in the share of the city’s population (Babb, 2021). As a result, New Orleans is now both whiter and wealthier than it was pre-disaster, with implications for social cohesion and post-event inequality retrenchment. According to Go, (2018), the stronger the civic structure, i.e. local organisational resources, the more likely spatial inequality will be deepened in the rebuilding effort. This is especially true along racial lines; white residents concentrate in geographically safer areas, while Black residents are left with lower-lying, flood-prone areas (Babb, 2021; Go, 2018).