Katrina Resilience
Natural disasters can bring catastrophic destruction and significant disruption in the lives of those who live in disaster-affected regions. Natural disasters tend to make low income and poor people even more vulnerable to physical assault as well as to more significant economic challenges in the years that follow. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 tropical cyclone that occurred in August 2005, which made landfall off the coast of Louisiana. Because of the ensuing destruction and loss of life, particularly in New Orleans, the storm is often considered one of the worst in U.S. history. While women make up to 54 percent of the population in New Orleans, they made up about 80 percent of the people left to fend themselves after the storm.
According to research, Thirty-five percent of pregnant and 34% of the postpartum women were resilient from depression, whereas 56% and 49% were resilient from the posttraumatic stress disorder. Resilience was most likely among White women, older women, and women who had a partner. A greater experience of the storm, particularly injury/illness or danger, was associated with lower resilience. Experiencing damage because of the storm was associated with an increased report of some perceived benefits. Many pregnant and postpartum women are resilient from the mental health consequences of the disaster and perceive benefits after a traumatic experience.
Faith plays a decisive role in resilience building: utilizing faith for meaning-making and framing of events contributed to the enhanced ability of individuals to deal with significant negative life situations like Katrina. Faith is called upon by individuals to provide them with a sense of control and an understanding of their stressful situations, positively contributing to the protection. Faith sensitive strategies should be incorporated to promote and offer a source of resilience after traumatic life events, such as Cyclone Katrina.
Grassroots women organize and develop their human, social, financial, and other assets; they are working to address not only their practical, disaster-related needs, but also their strategic, and development related interests. Women’s savings effort in Kenya helps women set up businesses and projects, which in turn help in their resilience and economy. Working with both preexisting and newly constituted grassroots women’s groups will lead to more significant successes.
After a disaster, the most urgent need of all is for those most affected to reclaim their sense of place, some degree of control and autonomy, and the specific knowledge that their views count too in the re-imagining of the future. Women should be a priority when disaster management measures set; also faith, combined with other mechanisms, should be integrated within disaster risk reduction disaster management and activities as this would help build more resilient communities.