It's That Time Again

It is Atlantic hurricane season again. As this time rolls around, I find myself happy to be living in a second floor apartment and nervous about the prospect of another storm coming our way. In addition to the terrible stress that impending storms bring to residents of a region still trying to recover from the physical and emotional damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, evacuation is expensive. Further, the mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Gustav last year, which was the largest evacuation in U.S. history, demonstrated that local, state and federal officials haven’t done enough in the last four years to make the evacuation process easier, particularly for our poorest and most vulnerable residents.

Evacuation for a hurricane is a human rights issue. In the New Orleans area, shoddy levee construction and environmental degradation mean that it might not even take a direct hit from a hurricane to flood the entire city and drown thousands of people. We have to consciously construct policies that make it possible for everyone to evacuate.

Though this is not an exhaustive list, there are a few things I’ve learned about through my own work and relationships, along with the work of other advocates and organizers that need to change in order for everybody to be able to evacuate.

The New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice has taken the important position that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS):

… needs to issue a standing, written policy that immigration enforcement shall not be undertaken in association with any phase of disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery, to ensure that the protection of public safety and human life takes absolute priority in times of disaster.  The policy should also state clearly that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) shall protect the confidentiality of information obtained in the course of providing humanitarian assistance to disaster victims, so that individuals may seek assistance from FEMA without fear that it will be used for enforcement purposes by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

People shouldn’t have to choose between deportation and evacuation. I’ve seen how difficult it can be to make this decision because I tried to convince an undocumented loved one to evacuate last year. Until DHS issues a policy in regards to this matter, some people are going to continue hiding in their houses rather than risking deportation, which means that people will die unnecessarily if a storm does hit.

People also need to know that they will still have jobs and homes that they can return to when they do evacuate. After Gustav, city officials would not allow people back into the city for several days, and people that had to evacuate to public shelters on city chartered buses got stuck in small towns all across the South. I spoke to people that were fired from their jobs because they took city chartered buses that did not get them back to their jobs in time. Many low-wage workers may have gotten time off for the evacuation, but they certainly didn’t get paid for it. My office received non-stop calls for weeks after the Gustav evacuation from people facing eviction. Gustav hit on September 1, and many of our poorest residents found themselves spending their rent money in order to comply with the mandatory evacuation order. Government officials could mitigate these factors by providing incentives to companies and landlords who take steps like continuing to pay their employees and not evicting their tenants in the event of a mandatory evacuation. State lawmakers should also legislate tenants’ rights in order to provide some of the basic guarantees that tenants in other places enjoy.

Finally, people need to know what they can expect in the event of a hurricane evacuation. Many people evacuated for Gustav thinking that they would get reimbursed for things like hotel and food costs. Often this suggestion raises cries about entitlement. I have heard some suggest that poor residents just need to learn how to manage their money and save up for evacuations that we know are bound to happen again. It is hard to imagine saying something like that to some of the desperate families that called us when they were on the brink of homelessness choosing to spend the rent money on a mandatory evacuation. No matter how thrifty you are, $6.55 an hour and no health coverage doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for evacuation savings.

But beyond that, Gulf Coast residents are entitled to assistance in the event of a mandatory evacuation. We deserve not be hungry or homeless because we follow mandatory evacuation orders. Katrina demonstrated that many of us are not able to assert those rights, and three years later, Gustav demonstrated that there was insufficient improvement for many of the most vulnerable in our communities. Hurricane season always brings with it a general sense of uneasiness, but policymakers need to do a lot more to foster calm before the storm.

(Photo of Hurricane Evacuation Route by Allio)