2005’s superstorm Hurricane Katrina caused the largest displacement of persons in United States history (Peek et al, 2008). With New Orleans under mandatory evacuation, hundreds of thousands of residents sought temporary shelter throughout the region and United States. And despite social stratifications of race or class, women were primarily responsible for this relocation as an extension of their gendered roles as caretakers in the domestic sphere (Peek et al, 2008). Intersectionality, the confluence of different identities such as gender, race, and class, compounds the difficulties of this relocation. During Hurricane Katrina, low-income African Americans primarily occupied the federally funded emergency shelters in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas (Brodie et al, 2006). Unfortunately, relocation sites often provided more grief than relief in the wake of disasters. Shelters during Hurricane Katrina were overcrowded and understaffed due to the region’s overall under preparedness for such magnitude of a storm (Peek et al, 2008). There was a complete breakdown of law and order during early phases of relocation which created a dangerous environment for women (Thornton et al, 2007). Charmaine Neville, a displaced resident who sought haven in a school44
turned-shelter recounts her experience (Thornton et al, 2007):
I had lain down and gone to sleep and somebody woke me up. They put their hand over my mouth, and a knife to my throat, and said... ‘If you don’t do what I want, I’m gonna kill you and then I’ll do what I want to you anyway and throw your body over the side of the building.’ Though some offenses were reported (only 47 reported for this event) [3], all incidents were surely not accounted for which provides us with an inadequate understanding of the real statistics on crimes such as rape and sexual assault during the early stages of a disaster (Thornton et al, 2007). Beyond the societal stigmas inhibiting women from self-reporting those crimes in non-disaster scenarios, in several cases, there were even greater barriers to reporting during disaster scenarios. For many, there was no
authority to report to and in some instances, when reported to a first-responder, the statements were not recorded due to more “lifethreatening” priorities or the fact that reports had to be made in the locality where the assault took place (Thornton et al, 2007). This aligns with a common delusion that in the wake of an emergency, there are are more “important” issues that take precedent beyond women’s health.