No abstract

No abstract

Hurricane Katrina constitutes the most costly natural as well as technology-induced disaster, in terms of both human suffering and financial loss in the history of the United States. Even years later, it continues to profoundly impact the livelihoods and the mental and physical health of those who have experienced evacuation and return and those who have begun lives anew elsewhere. Our study focuses on these geographical processes associated with the Katrina disaster experiences of African Americans and Vietnamese Americans comprising an overwhelming majority (93.4 percent) of residents in a racially mixed pre-Katrina eastern New Orleans neighborhood. We examine the spatial morphology of routes, volumes, and frequencies of evacuees; their return rates and experiences; and rationales and motivations to return or stay. The conceptual framework is based on the disaster migration, place attachment, and social network literature. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence indicates that the evacuation and return experiences of each minority group substantially differed, especially among African American women, and this was strongly influenced by existing social networks.

No abstract

In 2005, the National Science Foundation funded a number of projects to study the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The current article provides an overview of several research approaches used to conduct post-Katrina research. Each method had some advantages and disadvantages. The post-disaster context meant that experience from traditional survey methods often did not apply. Comparisons of advantages and disadvantages associated with each sampling method serve to