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Twelve years after Hurricane Katrina, social

scientists seek lessons from its survivors

By Kelly Servick, in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 1, 2018

muggy quiet has settled over did return home. More than 12 years later, Abramson is one of three social scien-
New Orleans, Louisiana’s Gentilly tidy brick houses in Gentilly are inter- tists leading a project called Katrina@10.
neighborhood as it soaks up a late- spersed with empty lots while post-Katrina It’s looking for long-term predictors of
September rainstorm. Deep pud- lives play out elsewhere. resilience—factors that cushion the shock
dles hide dips in the street. And in Some of those survivors, wherever they of disaster and set the course for recovery.
a soggy patch of grass, a wooden ultimately ended up, are proving more resil- In their three long-running studies, the re-
kiosk tells a story of catastrophe. ient than others. “One household or family searchers have found a range of factors that
“This place is a memorial to manages to recover,” says David Abramson, seem to help, such as financial resources,
A the trauma of the Flood,” reads a public health researcher who studies di- social and cultural ties, and access to stable
the text, written by a local nonprofit, sasters at New York University in New York housing after the event, which all seem to
Levees.org. Near here, a section of concrete City. “The other remains dysfunctional.” help. Now, they’re combining their cohorts PHOTOS: (LEFT TO RIGHT) VINCENT LAFORET/POOL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
levee gave way one August morning in Abramson has been surveying people af- to see whether those results will general-
2005, sending the floodwaters of Hurricane fected by Katrina every few years since the ize. If the predictors they identify hold true
Katrina crashing into the neighborhood. Yet storm. Poor, predominantly black families on across other natural disasters—and that
the monument is not only a reminder of suf- cheaper property in lower-lying areas faced remains to be seen—Katrina@10 could
fering, but also, the text insists, “a symbol of disproportionate damage from Katrina—and help policymakers and disaster recovery
the residents’ resilience and determination a harder road to recovery. But with the pas- programs pick out especially vulnerable
to return home.” sage of years, the paths of survivors have groups. It might even steer them toward in-
Resilience and rebuilding—those two ap- diverged in complex, hard-to-predict ways. terventions that do the most good.
pealing themes bring hope after a natural “Initially, I thought that those with the least Following survivors wherever they end
disaster. The reality is more complicated. would do the worst,” Abramson says. “That up, year after year, is an unusual and
Many who fled Katrina’s destruction never wasn’t always the case.” costly proposition for a field in which di-

972 2 MARCH 2018 • VOL 359 ISSUE 6379 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
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