Fifth anniversary of Katrina reveals mental health hurts from wrongadvice to victims

NATCHITOCHES, LOUISIANA - Carol Forsloff - My
neighbor stood sadly at my door.  "The city is flooded," she said;
and we both knew where that was, as we had worried about it for days.  I
put on my shoes, left the house and went down to the Red Cross to help.

The

victims from Hurricane Katrina's fury came by the hundreds through
Natchitoches, Louisiana, just as Governor Kathleen Blanco had directed
at the time.  They had started out early, heeding the advice to go
north.

I saw them, when I arrived at Northwestern University in
Natchitoches, sitting on blankets and mattresses strewn on the floor in a
section of a large building on campus that had been set up as a
shelter.  A single television screen held the attention of the crowd in
stretches, before some turned away, unable to manage the pain alone.

I
was there to assuage some of that pain.  As a licensed mental health
counselor at the time, I was the only one in Natchitoches available to
help the week of the flooding of New Orleans.  I stood beside, with and
worked around a handful of nurses and an elderly doctor,  as he wrote
out prescriptions for needed medicines.

The folks talked of their fears of being alone without a family in a strange town with nowhere else to go.

The
stories became a long litany of painful narratives, of homes
demolished, of lives turned upside down, and of friends and family gone.

Within
those days after Katrina, as people found temporary shelters or were on
their way to that somewhere else they found for more long-term support,
one statement stood out from the rest.  "They need to stop whining now
and get on with their lives.  They need to get over it as quick as they
can.  We've got enough trouble ourselves."

The local Natchitoches
businessman passing through the town mumbled what many people said
straight out loud.  And it is what I remember the most and what I worry
about too as storms become stronger and as the world is swept up into
tragedies greater and greater through man-made mistakes and climate
change.

"Just get over it" didn't allow the mourning to take
place and the inner hurts to heal so that mental health experts tell us
now that mental health problems are the biggest issue remaining as a consequence from Hurricane Katrina.

Mental
health experts say attention wanders from tragedies, as it did from
Hurricane Katrina, even in a few short days.  We become numb to hurts
and ready to move on ourselves when people don't respond the way we
think they should,whether that's the flooding in Pakistan, the
earthquake in Haiti or a devastating hurricane on the Gulf Coast.  And
our excuse for turning away is "just get over it" rather than the

understanding that grieving is a process for each person that is different from any other.

Engineer talks about the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and Rita

GHN News Editor - As the fifth anniversary of
Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, many are talking
about lessons learned, including a professor of engineering who
underlines the human element.

Knowing now then on what to do next
time.  He says the biggest lesson from Katrina is that municipalities
and citizens should take orders to evacuate much more seriously.



James N. Jensen, Ph. D and
professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the
University of Buffalo,  was one of those researchers who visited the
Gulf Coast soon after Katrina hit as part of a multidisciplinary look at
"extreme events" and disaster responses.  This is what he says now.

“By the time Hurricane Rita hit not long after Katrina, there was
something like a 95 percent evacuation rate,” Jensen recalls. “People
had really gotten the message.”

At
the time of the original New Orleans visit October 2005, Jensen and
colleague Pavani Ram, MD, UB assistant professor of social and
preventive medicine, met with public-health officials and with managers
from wastewater treatment plants. 

Jensen said that drinking water was restored by about 10 weeks after
Katrina, but one persisting problem was caused by loss of pressure from
water distribution systems that led to contamination of the pipes.

“They
estimated that as many as 1,000 or more breaks occurred in the water
distribution pipes due to the damaged fire hydrants,” says Jensen, “and
the loss of pressure that resulted lead to contaminating the water in
those pipes.”
Another issue, one that could complicate hurricanes this season, is the
problem posed by the potential loss of vegetation in wetlands due to the
Gulf oil spill. 

“If oil kills the vegetation in those wetlands, then you lose the buffer that that vegetation provided,” Jensen explains.

Jensen said one surprising comment was made during his original visit following hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“Pretty
much to a person, once people found out I was from Buffalo, they all
expressed the same sentiment,” he says: “Even though they were living
through the aftermath of these two horrible hurricanes, they told me
they could never live in a place that has blizzards.”

While Jensen's view is important
when it comes to the people's response, a grassroots organization called
Levees.org proclaims gives a message back to engineers, the Army Corps
of Engineers responsible for the construction and maintenance of the
levees, that their poor work on the levees failed the City of New
Orleans and they hope it doesn't fail them again.