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saster experts tend to lurch from one ca- Katrina “is a flash point in people’s minds Workers clean a New Orleans, Louisiana, Downloaded from
on March 1, 2018
tastrophe to the next. Last year alone saw about how bad it could really be,” says school (right) after Hurricane Katrina breached
flooding across Houston, Texas; wildfires Jeffrey Hebert, a city planning expert who levees (left). Long after debris was cleared,
in California; and a crushing hurricane in from 2014 to 2017 served as the city’s first families struggled to recover.
Puerto Rico; to name a few. But studying “chief resilience officer.”
survivors long after the floodwaters recede Despite his catchy title, Hebert acknowl- of Vietnamese immigrants who had settled
can pay off, the researchers say. “The 10- to edges that resilience has many meanings, here after evacuating from Saigon in 1975
15-year time frame allows us to see what’s some easier to measure than others. Engi- with those of families who stayed behind
real recovery,” Abramson says, “and not neers may gauge a city’s physical resilience by in Vietnam. In the summer of 2005, his
just fleeting.” the strain a levee can bear. Pinpointing what team was wrapping up a survey on the
makes a person or community resilient is health and well-being of people in 125 Viet-
KATRINA SLAMMED into the Louisiana coast harder. But by a stroke of luck, two social scien- namese households.
on 29 August 2005, and 80% of New Or- tists who later became leaders of Katrina@10 Meanwhile, another sociologist, Mary
leans was soon underwater. The city’s were uniquely poised to try. That’s because Waters from Harvard University, was part
Superdome, normally home to raucous foot- both had been following New Orleanians be- of a nationwide study examining how
ball games, overflowed with refugees. Some fore the storm for unrelated studies, and so higher education affects the health of sin-
families trudged out of the city on foot; were able to pivot and compare subjects’ lives gle parents. The team had reached about
others who couldn’t escape waved for help before with what came after. 500 first-generation college students in the
from rooftops. It’s estimated that more than One was Mark VanLandingham, a New Orleans area for a phone survey when
1800 people died and that the damage ex- sociologist at Tulane University here. In Katrina sent them fleeing for dry ground.
ceeded $100 billion. The country had never 2002, he launched a project in the quiet area Waters, safe and dry in Cambridge, Mas-
seen anything like it. of eastern New Orleans comparing the lives sachusetts, and VanLandingham, who es-

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