August 26, 2008

Friendships, community ties before Hurricane Katrina play role in recovery

"The damage to homes, the cost to rebuild or even death were not the deciding factors that influenced whether people returned to their neighborhoods after disasters like Hurricane Katrina," says Daniel P. Aldrich, an assistant professor of political science. "Based on historical evidence, people who were likely to return had strong social networks, such as neighborhood groups, churches, synagogues and parent-teacher associations, that they knew they could rely on for emotional support, information and even assistance. The people in communities who didn't know their neighbors' names or never picked up litter or had not given blood together were less likely to return. Civil society -- the bonds that ties us together through work and play -- provides many incentives to bring people back."

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, causing flooding as levees broke. More than 1,800 people died. Aldrich, who was a professor at Tulane University when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, is studying the recovery efforts in the city, as well as the disaster's effects on population and demographics. His focus, which includes interviews with residents, is on 300-block areas, including Village de L'est, Lakeview and the surrounding parishes.

"Recovery efforts after a natural disaster tend to focus on rebuilding a city, but it's really difficult to talk about recovery of a city," Aldrich says. "The actual recovery process takes place house by house, block by block. In order to talk about resilience we need to look at specific neighborhoods and areas before we can talk about rebuilding New Orleans."

Aldrich also has studied recovery efforts in Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake and in Kobe, Japan, after the 1995 earthquake, as well as the southeast India coast that was hit by a tsunami in 2004. He also has looked at how community groups in New Orleans fought temporary, emergency housing supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Aldrich is the author of the book "Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West."

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Source: Daniel Aldrich, (765) 494-4190, daldrich@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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