Marine biologist explores mysteries beneath the waves

FACULTY VOICES:
Katrina’s second storm

BY MATT GETTY

RELATED LINK AU Experts Guide

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, a storm still rages. The skies may have cleared, but as the death toll mounts and thousands of displaced families struggle to start over, the storm of debate and controversy has gathered in Katrina’s wake.

Despite round-the-clock media scrutiny, public debate, and political analysis, burning questions about race, class, disaster preparedness, and the hurricane’s far-reaching impact remain. To help understand Katrina’s second storm, American Weekly put some questions to five AU experts on public policy, civil rights, race and the media, manufacturing and trade, and even jazz.

School of Public Affairs professor BRIAN FORST is currently completing a book, Terrorism, Crime, and Public Policy, which will include a chapter on the Department of Homeland Security’s handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Q. Hurricane Katrina gave the Department of Homeland Security its first opportunity to respond to a national disaster. How would you rate their effort?
A. It’s hard to see it as anything but a failure. This had been predicted both in the long term and in the short term . . . FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] had ranked the New Orleans levees as one of the top three vulnerabilities in the nation. Then we knew that this hurricane was building over the gulf for days, and still for days after the levees broke thousands of people were left wondering, “Are they going to come today?”

There were a lot of dots that just weren’t connected . . . People and nonprofits who came in to help were turned away because they hadn’t filled out the proper forms. There was a Coast Guard ship in the Gulf with hospital facilities, doctors just ready and waiting, but ignored . . . And this is after four days of knowing this was a potential problem. That has to worry you, because terrorists don’t give you four days of advanced warning.

Q. Why do you think the initial response was so inadequate?
A. From the beginning there’d been concern about putting all these agencies under one department, and I think you can see why here. FEMA has basically been demoted. It was a cabinet level organization, and now it’s tucked away with 21 other offices in Homeland Security. This country has a huge problem coordinating activities among agencies, so maybe FEMA needs to be elevated, but we also need more training. If there’s one silver lining to the dark cloud of Katrina, you can only hope it will serve as a very costly lesson that can better prepare us for future disasters.

School of Public Affairs professor STEVEN TAYLOR’s research focuses on civil rights, the interaction between race and politics, and school desegregation.

Q. Would you say the government’s failure to reinforce the New Orleans levees prior to Hurricane Katrina combined with its initially inadequate response to the flood reflects a lack of concern for blacks and the poor who were most affected by this disaster?
A. Minorities and the poor in this country have been shafted in so many other ways that people might expect them to be shafted here as well, but it’s too early for that accusation. There were a lot of businesses in the downtown areas most damaged by the flooding, so plenty of wealthy constituents probably wanted the levees reinforced too. As for the rescue effort, you’ll need an investigation . . . You’ll just have to look at where the helicopters were landing. Were they going to the areas with the most need, or were they going where the money was?

School of Communication professor JANE TWOMEY is completing a book on the interaction between racism and the media coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Q. Has the coverage of the hurricane revealed any class or racial biases in the media?
A. One of the things the media often does when it frames stories about the poor is make them out not to be victims, but to be responsible for whatever ails them. What was stunning to watch here was that we can’t do that this time. Even if the media tried, you just couldn’t blame poor people for the hurricane . . .
There’s been a lot of talk about racism and the two photos with different captions [one of a black man described as “looting,” and another of a white couple described as “finding bread and soda”]. They came from two different sources, so you can’t call this a case of blatant, intentional racism. But, of course, racism is rarely blatant and intentional. It’s an underlying ideology that colors our assumptions about people, and that’s important to consider here.

Kogod School of Business professor FRANK DUBOIS’s research and consulting experience centers on international manufacturing strategies, business, and trade.

Q. Aside from the impact on gas prices that we’re seeing right now, what are likely to be some of Hurricane Katrina’s long-term economic effects.
A. The major issue is the shut down of the ports of New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile. Products like grain, steel, bananas . . . everything that used to come in through those ports can’t right now . . . Also, New Orleans is nicely located in the center of the country. You can ship goods right up the Mississippi near to the point of consumption. Shipping something on a barge costs about a quarter what it does to ship by truck. So even after they reroute their shipments a lot of industries will face higher shipping costs, which means this is going to percolate through the economy until the infrastructure along the Gulf gets rebuilt.

College of Arts and Sciences music professor WILL SMITH directs the AU Jazz Ensemble and has performed and recorded with such jazz greats as Wynton Marsalis and Kenny Burrell.

Q. Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans has reminded a lot of people of this unique city’s importance to the country, both economically and culturally. How would you characterize its contribution to American culture?
A. New Orleans is the birthplace of American music. Jazz grew out of the synthesis of African and European music, and New Orleans is largely where that happened. You had blues mixing with European opera and classical music, and the mingling of all that created not just jazz, but a blending of all the cultures, which is what’s really original about American culture.

Q. Understanding, of course, that the largest tragedy here is the loss of human life, how do you see this disaster impacting the jazz community?
A. The loss of human life is exactly why this is such a blow to the jazz community. Jazz is its people. Because the music takes such a long time to learn, the masters are very important, and we’ve probably lost a lot of them now. We know that some of the big names like Fats Domino were rescued, but many other performers who’ve played in the French Quarter for years are still missing. There are plenty of jazz masters across the country, so there’s no doubt that the music will continue, but a lot of the specific styles, the stories . . . a lot of that may have been lost.