This qualitative case study explores the post-Katrina experiences of African Americans in Houston and in New Orleans. When the levees failed, residents from New Orleans were scattered across the country. Houston housed the largest population of displaced low-income African Americans from New Orleans. As the rebuilding process began, housing, employment, education, and healthcare policies in New Orleans changed. These institutional changes employed urban revitalization and poverty removal strategies adapted to disaster recovery. This study differs from previous research by examining these changes with an intersectional approach. It explores how African Americans frame obstacles as they attempt to return to a city with reformed housing, employment, education, and healthcare policies. To do this, I analyze three different cases 1) those that returned to New Orleans, 2) those still displaced in Houston, and 3) those that relocated to Houston after returning to New Orleans for over a year.

This dissertation examines local congregations in Puerto Rico to help articulate a theology of sustainable hope revealed through their outreach practices and ecclesiologies of public and political participation. Nurtured by qualitative research with six Christian congregations in Puerto Rico, the work moves from an articulation of context, hope, practice, and future to reveal its aim of liberation through sustainable hope. Puerto Rico’s continuous colonial history, and most recently its devastation during and after Hurricane María, heightened the socio-economic crisis that continues to hinder the hope of Puerto Ricans inside and outside the island. In this dissertation, I analyze the operations of political systems that suppress hope in Puerto Rico. I weave the theme of a theology of hope, with the fields of ecclesiology, memory studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, liberation theology, and the study of social movements to build a model that puts hope at the center of our practices and moves toward a recipe for a hope that is sustainable in practice. Along with many other theologians and theorists, I converse with the work of theologians Rubem Alves and Ellen Ott Marshall. Alves shapes the definition of hope in this dissertation by challenging how society is organized and revealing how this organization oppresses imagination and people’s liberative agency. Marshall describes hope as elastic, making room for the expectation of a hopeful future that coexists in tension with the challenges of our daily lives. My writing is framed by an ecclesiological context; an articulation of a hope that does not remain static and responds to the challenges of colonialism, the erasure of memory, and oppression; and a liberation theology of creation. I present a way to articulate a hope that is able to sustain the people of Puerto Rico through their practices of hope. / 2021-07-23T00:00:00Z

This thesis is an exploration into the lives of street-connected young people living in disaster prone communities in the Caribbean country of Jamaica. Street-connected young people’s lives have been well documented over the past few decades in relation to their immediate spaces, activities and more recently, relationships. Street-connected young people have been found to be part of wider social structures in society which have bearing on how they prepare for, react to, negotiate and overcome challenges that they are faced with, both at the local level and on a much larger scale, including adverse events like ‘natural’ disasters. While this study appreciates the progression of the literature on this once overlooked social group, it suggests that there is still a gap in the literature in respect to how street-connected young people’s relationality is understood and explored. Jamaican street-connected young people’s relationality is complex and formed of context-specific networks and relationships. These not only include close knit relationships with family and friends but also wider community relationships with neighbours and extended family and relationships with people out with the community in other parts of Jamaica and abroad. The wider political, social and economic structures in place nationally which street-connected young people are embroiled are additionally considered, particularly in how it influences the coping mechanisms of street-connected young people. This thesis draws on street-connected young people’s relationality to examine how it shapes their resilience and to what extent their positon within this wider web of relationships in Jamaica is crucial to how they prepare and manage the hurricanes and flooding taking place there. Extant studies on young people’s resilience have begun to appreciate the role of the social context and relational networks in enhancing or reducing their resilience, looking beyond traditional studies focusing on an individual’s traits or personal attribute. In this research I have expanded upon the concept of relational resilience to look at how it manifests itself in the lives of street-connected young people, an area currently understudied. A participatory ethnography approach has been adopted in the methodology, using a range of participatory methods to develop a comprehensive and holistic understanding of life for street-connected young people, with the view to establishing their situation in disaster events, how they demonstrate resilience when faced with adversity and how best to tailor national disaster risk management and reduction strategies to suit them and their communities’ needs. By using methods which encourage participation among everyone, a space of collaboration and knowledge exchange can be generated to gain the most informed responses and outcomes.

This paper aims to explore and discuss the points found in published research articles addressing posttraumatic stress disorder in children following the Bosnian Genocide, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. The articles vary in their emphasis, methods, and conclusions, but all focus in one way or another on how the occurrence of war, terrorism, and natural disaster have resulted in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in youth. Intervention following traumatic events, however, rarely focus on treating mental health needs, and instead, focus on resolving any primary needs of vulnerable populations. The recommended treatment strategies for PTSD in youth require high quality mental health care and great accessibility for victims of trauma. Considering the high prevalence of PTSD in children following traumatic experiences, treatment of PTSD symptoms is necessary to ensure that youth can fully function in their daily lives without a constant reminder of the trauma they experienced.

During high-impact weather events like Hurricane Harvey, broadcast meteorologists take on the role of sensegiver, as they develop frameworks to help their viewers make sense of the storm. These frameworks are communicated through rhetorical choices evident in the language the meteorologists use to describe the storm’s threat and impact. This study investigates the rhetorical choices of KHOU broadcast meteorologists during Hurricane Harvey in order to make sense of the disaster, using an inductive thematic analysis. The results indicate that the KHOU broadcasters framed Harvey figuratively as an all-encompassing monster and a heat-seeking machine. The meteorologists used emotionally intense language to emphasize their concern about the forecast, to compare the event to previous flooding disasters, to describe Harvey’s catastrophic impact, and to express disbelief regarding the situation unfolding around them. These results show how sensegiving can be articulated rhetorically via specific language features like describing Harvey as a monster, or comparing Harvey’s impact to Hurricane Katrina. These specific language features identified here should be tested for their effectiveness in order to allow meteorologists across the weather enterprise to speak about threats and impacts in a more consistent manner.

The stress and trauma exposure associated with disasters can lead to mental health problems. Studies have indicated a high prevalence of mental health problems among Hurricane Katrina survivors, in general, with worse mental health outcomes among survivors located in the New Orleans Metropolitan area as compared to those in other affected areas. Furthermore, in comparison to previous disaster research that typically shows decreases in mental health problems two years following disaster, the Katrina literature indicates continually elevated levels of mental health problems for this time frame. The proposed study examines the long-term mental health outcomes among Hurricane Katrina adult survivors residing in the metropolitan New Orleans area, two years after the storm. Specifically, the present study explores whether evacuation status and other hurricane-related stressors (length of displacement, neighborhood damage, and property damage) are related to symptoms of anxiety, depression, and hostility. The present study advances current knowledge by examining exposure to hurricane-related stressors, a broader range of mental health outcomes, and whether the relationship between the hurricane-related variables and mental health outcomes are moderated by income. The findings suggest that while evacuation status and hurricane-related stressors are not directly related to increased mental health symptoms, evacuation status is related to increased symptoms for those of low-income. Additionally, both age and gender predicted poor mental health outcomes. / acase@tulane.edu

In placing Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey in conversation with each other, my dissertation analyzes - alongside their poetry and prose - monuments, paintings, television, film, photographs, and performance as connected to understanding the impact of historical legacies on lived experiences within the empire of U.S. America. Toni Morrison's concept of recovering the "unwritten interior life" of the slave experience - a life hidden within slave narratives - assists in understanding the historical poetics of Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey as artists engaged in similar projects of reclamation. For Harjo this entails shedding a light on the weight of Native American histories for the descendants of survivors while contesting the myths that abound within popular culture regarding Native peoples. Trethewey's work intervenes within the public memory of the nation by centering on the inner-lives of African Americans as well as other people of color, stressing their various gendered and racialized experiences. The gaps within the records that each poet illuminates do not constitute a failure of history, per se, but rather emphasize limitations concerning traditional methodologies of history-writing. In order to further expand on this argument, throughout my work I rely upon certain ideas from 20th century ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas regarding our obligations to the past of the Other as well as the potential violence inherent within Western philosophical rhetoric regarding the Other. "Tending to the Past" argues that due to the gaps within the archival records we need multiple ways of approaching our history. The absence within the archives of the "emotional truths" or "interior lives" of historical subjects proves to emphasize the necessity for the poetic interventions of Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey.

Hillsborough County, Florida is subject to a variety of natural and technological hazards, which have the potential to threaten both the population and the built environment. This research focuses on several natural hazards (coastal flooding, sink hole, and hurricane) and technological hazards (toxic transportation spills and toxic release from fixed storage facilities) and the population that is potentially exposed to these hazards. Social vulnerability for this population was determined using racial composition, gender, age and household rental/ownership status. Both social vulnerability and exposure to hazardous conditions occur as a continuum across geographical space. The determination of who is exposed; the extent of exposure; and the hazardousness of their environment; requires converting this continuum into discreet values. There is little agreement on how this should be accomplished. The goal of this project is to improve on this situation by developing a multiple hazard map and a social vulnerability map using the best available data with a focus on data integration. The resulting maps were used to determine the extent that the community of Hillsborough County is exposed to hazardous conditions and the social vulnerability of that exposed community. The impact of hazard analysis is dependant on the creation of the hazard map. The hazard map can be affected by application of weighting factors to the individual or groups of hazards. Weighted linear combinations were used to examine how the exposed population changes when different hazard models are used. A technique of cumulative frequency mapping was used to examine how the composition of the exposed population changed as the hazard scores increased. This was useful in visualizing that different vulnerable communities were not exposed to hazards equally. This technique will be useful for future vulnerability/hazard assessments. The results of this research show that the most vulnerable populations in Hillsborough County, Florida are not exposed to the most extreme hazards. Instead the preponderance of the population is moderately vulnerable and is exposed to moderate hazards. It is important to focus on this population to help prepare for and respond to hazardous events and to work toward diminishing their social vulnerability.

Using advanced composites, an emergency shelter system has been designed. The system parameters are hurricane resistance to 138 mph wind velocity, simple erection, light weight, high durability and rapid construction. The project involves the solicitation of design proposals from several building system manufacturers and the development of an optimized emergency shelter system. The usage is well suited to pultruded members made from fiber reinforced polymers (FRP). Due to the anisotropic nature of FRP composites, a limited amount of research has been conducted to develop design optimization techniques for panels used in construction. This project allows for the development of optimization techniques for use in pultruded FRP panel members. The Project consisted of a detailed literature review conducted of emergency building industry to assess the validity of existing shelter systems, a state of the art review of connection design in FRP structures with an emphasis on non-standard types of connectors (ie...snap type), systemic structural optimization of emergency shelter for building geometry, roof configuration, foundation anchorage and building envelope, development of statistical methods for evaluation of viable existing emergency shelter systems. Subsequent to the initial phase of the investigation, an interlocking FRP composite panel system was developed. The system was analyzed for local buckling, first ply failure and global deflection criteria using modified equations originally developed for open section members. The results were verified using Finite Element Methods analysis software. The findings from the study indicate the need for a second phase in which the most promising available systems and the concept developed are fully tested to verify their capacity to withstand high wind forces including impact of wind borne debris.

The Florida Keys Coral Reef Monitoring Project (CRMP) began video transect sampling in 1996 and has continuously monitored 107 Florida Keys stations through 2002. The video was downward pointing and produced images from which planar projection data were calculated to determine percent cover of living benthic organisms. An absence of data assessing correlation between octocoral percent cover and octocoral abundance motivated a study to compare octocoral percent cover with abundance data acquired from the same video transects. The methods employed to extract octocoral abundance data from videotape were validated. Temporal changes in octocoral abundance, size and taxonomic group were determined by examination of video transects of 28 randomly selected stations from 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2002. Size classes were defined as40cm (short, medium and tall respectively). Taxonomic groups were Gorgonia ventalina and "other octocorals" in three size classes, and Scleraxonia. An in situ study assessed the accuracy of video-derived counts. Average densities of G. ventalina and Scleraxonia were consistently about one colony/m2. Other octocoral as a group averaged 7-9 colonies/m2. When summarized by height, short and tall averaged about 1-2 colonies/m2, while colonies between 10 and 40 cm in height consistently averaged about 6 colonies/m2. Hurricane Georges, in September 1998, impacted the octocoral assemblage. Abundance declined most at stations near the storm center and stations in shallower water. Storm impact was related to octocoral height. Tall octocorals were removed more frequently than medium, short and encrusting forms. A dramatic increase of short individuals in 2002 is indicative of successful post-hurricane recruitment. By 2002, octocoral abundance had recovered to pre-hurricane levels. This study demonstrated that abundance data can reliably be derived from archived video data, reinforcing the value of standardized video data archives. Octocoral abundance and octocoral percent cover are not strongly correlated because tall individuals disproportionately influence percent cover estimates. Nevertheless, trends in octocoral percent cover are reliable indicators of the trends in octocoral abundance.